The tailgates of hell

Last week, full of the joys of spring and the sense of freedom a new car brings, I strapped a few surfboards to my roof and set off for Easky in Co Sligo. I was in no rush. I was going to enjoy the journey.

All was going swimmingly until I passed Mullingar. Then it went horribly wrong. From tipping away nicely, crooning along to Johnny Cash and successfully ignoring the dozens of maniacs overtaking me on every blind bend, to Hell.

He came from nowhere. A massive, virulent beast of a man in a filthy Ford Transit who latched onto my rear bumper like he was a pit-bull and my car was made of ham. And stayed there. No attempt to overtake. He just sat three feet behind me, as if tied on by an invisible rope.

He was so close I could read the tattoos on his knuckles in my rear-view mirror. At first I thought he was a Basque separatist sympathiser with three fingers, until I saw the rest of his hands. ETAH read one hand. ETAH read the other. He was evidently unequivocal in his opinion of the world.

He began ranting and railing into his mobile phone while scowling and gesticulating wildly at me. For a dreadful moment, I thought his wife was telling him that some freak in an old green beemer with surfboards on the roof had stolen his prize racing pigeons and sold them to a sausage factory. Such was my state of mind.

Suddenly, I felt guilty, like one feels guilty when a Garda car materialises behind you even though you've done nothing wrong. For a fleeting moment, I almost thought I had kidnapped his birds. My nerves, you must understand, were frazzled. "But what if," I thought, "this psychopath thinks I've done something to him, thinks he's tracked down his man? I'm done for. Just keep driving, maybe he'll go away."

So I did. And he didn't. For 30 miles this Van Driver of the Apocalypse followed me unwaveringly. I was too scared to pull over, too frightened of speed traps to try and lose him. I was stuck.

Eventually, solace came in the form of a Longford village. "Traffic calming ahead" read the signs. I exhaled for the first time in half an hour.

I envisaged rounding the next bend and entering a golden sun-drenched path, bordered on both sides by gigantic sweet-peas blowing gently in a warm breeze heavy with the soothing scent of newly-mown grass while Vivaldi's Four Seasons was piped through loudspeakers embedded in the road surface.

This chap, I foresaw, would be overcome with sweetness and light, and turn into a local graveyard to put flowers by the headstone of a stranger and compose an ode on the fragility of the human condition while he was at it.

How disappointed was I when I did turn the corner and saw not freedom but instead a few bollards and a concrete chicane?

This wasn't how it was supposed to be. I peeked meekly in the mirror and saw the face behind had transformed not into that of the placid bohemian I had hoped for, but rather into a bulging purplish-red knot of rage. "Oh, Minister Brennan, why hast thou forsaken me?" I cried dejectedly.

But then, miracle of miracles, his indicator went on. I heard a grind of gears and saw a muddy blur as he raced to pass me before reaching the chicane, missing the bollards by millimetres and disappearing into the distance.

I saw the van stopped outside a pub a hundred yards down the road. He was ambling slowly through the front door, as unhurried as could be.

I almost jumped out and inform him of the contrast and ridiculous nature of his rush to get to his destination and leisurely amble once arrived. Almost.