Night Driving

Despite living in Edinburgh for a year and being a regular visitor since, I had never actually driven up to the city before. Well, I still haven't, but I have been a passenger. There's something about night driving I simply adore. I find it almost hypnotising, which is probably why I'm better off being the passenger.

The feeling of motion always sends me into a really euphoric, almost trance like state, as if the world around me has finally caught up with my train of thought speed. When travelling by day my mind bulges with ideas and ambitions which reverberates a positive energy throughout my body. But travelling at night sends out a different tone. It's still a nice feeling but it becomes an almost hypnotising effect. Passing lights seem to incite notions about the passing of time and I complacently begin to ponder my place in the universe. I think it all stems, really, from a semi-conscious states of mind I would be in as a child travelling back late at night from a holiday or day out, with my parents behind the wheel. Being a passenger at night seems to bring me back to that place.

Following on from any existentialist thoughts, during our journey we passed a large expanse of pitch-black nothingness at the borders. We had to stop, this was too good an opportunity to pass up star-gazing. Pulled up in a lay-by in between snoozing truckers - who I could hear snoring - we stood in the dark and stared up at the sky. It was pretty phenomenal, but also a tad eery. After our eyes adjusted you could faintly make out the milky-way, which always incites a sense of awe. Yet, I couldn't help but be distracted by an ominous clanking sounds originating from the woods. We never did work out what it was, but being as far out in the nothingness as we were, I don't think I was too keen to really find out and we carried on, Edinburgh bound.