Solitaire
As I stood bleeding on the roadside in the middle of the Namib desert, delicately plucking glass shards out of my forearm, with the sun already on the last stretch of its downward arc towards the distant Naukluft mountains, my car resting on its roof and all my baggage spread across the grey gravel road, I should have been thinking how lucky I was to be still alive. Instead my only immediate concern was how to stop Paul Simon singing. I had been doing about seventy or eighty kilometres an hour on a straight stretch of road, admiring the orange grey landscape, singing along with the cassette, thinking about how I was making good time . Thinking I would probably arrive in time to set up my tent before dark. Seemed like a week had passed since then. In fact, it was barely five minutes ago. One of the wheels on the upside down wreck was still spinning. And Paul Simon was still singing Train in the Distance. And I wanted it to stop. Right now. There was nothing more urgent in the worl...