Time travel may offer a chance to destroy the motor car – and all the world's ills, writes Kilian Doyle
DRIVING HOME from Sligo recently, I spotted a road sign that said Dublin was 204km distant. A minute later, exiting a roundabout, I saw another suggesting it was but 196km away.
That’s a bit odd, I thought – I was only doing 60km/h. Several hundred metres later, a sign said 200km to go.
I was mightily perplexed. Could this be the work of some bumbling gang of dimwitted sign-erectors? Surely not. In this day and age of multi-billion euro road-building schemes overseen by globally-recognised experts in the field, such an act of unbridled numptyism is utterly implausible, wouldn’t you have thought?
I certainly did. Therefore, I deduced that I must have stumbled upon some bizarre, nightmarish netherworld where the dimensions of time and space had become mangled, like that in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman. It was the only possible explanation.
Professional that I am, I decided to do a little experiment to confirm my suspicions. I retraced my steps to the roundabout and drove my car right onto it.
By the looks of it, I was not the first motorist to do so.
I pitched my tent plum in the centre of it and moved in, where I lived like a feral animal, surviving on a diet of worms, surfboard wax and antifreeze.
My hair grew four inches, as did my fingernails. I could feel my toenails poking through my boots. I took them off. My feet resembled the talons of a pterodactyl and smelled like its droppings.
At the end of what felt like three months, I could take no more. I hopped in my car and put the foot down. Approaching the “200km to go” sign, I looked down at my watch. I’d only been in the Sligo Triangle for a mere 27 minutes.
This was a phenomenal discovery. I was elated. I’d finally discovered my route to the fortune I so richly deserve.
I just need to buy some second-hand cars for peanuts and clock them by reversing them widdershins a few times around this time-warping roundabout and the odometer will whiz backwards at a phenomenal rate of knots. Probably. Then all I have to do is sell them on at hugely inflated prices. Genius, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Speaking of geniuses, some commentators have opined that one of the goals of The Third Policeman, in which O’Brien proffers his theory of molecular exchange between man and bicycle via the interface between buttock and saddle, is to have a dig at the bicycle itself. Indeed, one of the three policemen, Sgt Fottrell, spends most of his waking hours stealing or immobilising bicycles to prevent people from succumbing to the aforementioned bicyclosis.
The experts say O’Brien may have been driven by the belief that the widespread availability of cheap bicycles brought too much freedom to the previously pedestrian Plain People of Ireland. As we all know, with great freedom comes great temptation. And that way lies trouble.
Which got me thinking. If O’Brien felt that bicycles had a detrimental effect on people, how pernicious must he have thought the car to be?
While it is disputable as to whether or not you can have too much freedom, the car is undeniably to blame for many ills. Not least congestion, of both road and lung, and deaths and injuries in their tens of thousands. But worst of all, it is to blame for this column.
The car is therefore evil and must be stopped. If anyone’s looking for me, I’ll be on a roundabout in Sligo brandishing a garrotte.
When the men in white coats come, I take it I can trust you to explain to them I’m merely trying to go back in time for the sake of humanity to throttle Karl Benz before he gets the chance to inflict his dastardly invention on us. I’m sure they’ll understand. I know you do.