It Never Rains…

Ben Wildsmith

It started with ice. I’m trusting the satnav, and it’s sent me up here so it must be a proper road. It seems a bit farm tracky, though, and steep, very steep.

‘You okay, you look worried?’

That’s Duncan in the passenger seat. He’s on trial at 10am at the Crown Court and it’s my job to get him there on time.

‘Not sure, Dunc,’ I admit, as my knuckles whiten around the steering wheel. ‘It seems really dangerous driving up here in this weather.’

We slide over a frozen cattle grid, lurching sidewards towards a ditch.

‘Jesus!’

‘Don’t panic, Ben,’ Duncan says soothingly. ‘Would you like me to drive it down off the mountain?’

Insurance

I’d have loved that; it would have been the perfect solution as he’s a far better driver than I am. He doesn’t have a licence though, or insurance, and that’s why I’m taking him to court.

So, the responsible thing to do is to set an example by pressing on and killing us both.

Courts are a branch of showbusiness. From the security guard banter as you go through the metal detector, to the lawyers pretending not to be mates, to judges wrestling with imposter syndrome to embody justice, it’s a wigs ‘n’ robes exercise in camp farce.

‘Court rise!’ The judge says each time he bursts in from stage left in his silks and bows.

‘Anything for you, Dearie!’ I want to reply, but you mustn’t, must you?

I’m in these places a lot with my work and there are layers to what they offer as a spectacle. Besides the main event, where people’s lives are weighed and determined, are a thousand little moments during the endless delays in proceedings. D

efendant and prosecutor ceding precedence through a doorway; a man in a wig struggling with a coffee machine; a judge forgetting the order of the day and looking like a bit of a tit; the differing attitudes of ushers: some deferential, others truculent. It’s an interesting place to spend a day.

Not a week, though. The procedural grind of a trial under horrible, yellow lighting is gruelling. You can see it on everyone’s faces by Friday.

Lord Lucan

So, I’m looking forward to Saturday. It’s going to rain, so I’m going to watch the BBC thing about Lord Lucan. That mystery is around as old as I am, I wonder if it’ll outlive me?

I’m sat in front of the telly ready, when the phone rings. They don’t ring much nowadays, do they? Not for me, anyway, my ‘please just text’ vibes are powerful enough to mean phone calls are rare and thus terrifying.

‘Uh huh, life support? Yes, I can come, course I can come. It’ll take me about two and a half hours. Mind you, the rain is bad down here, might be longer. I’m putting my coat on now, see you at the hospital.’

It’s not wholly shocking, he’s old after all but blasting up the M4, then through the shortening light over Monmouth before really feeling it in my guts as the M50 pretended to be a motorway, I knew I’d loved the man, however complicated that had been.

Around the serene excellence of the intensive care unit, there’s another of those treasure troves of incidental entertainment. People are seriously pissed off at the broken parking ticket machine, I am too but with the compensatory glow of knowing we don’t pay back home. These poor Pagans…

On the way home, little Porth is in the news! Floods! Outside the Rheola! Cars floating towards Cardiff! Locusts up Trebanog! Seven fat Staffies and seven thin Staffies!

Reaching the A470 around 5pm, with the last smudges of light snuffed out and the rain pinging off the car like a nettle rash, it seemed like a cheap pastiche of a portent; a schlocky Hammer House cash-in on desperate times.

Sunshine

The trial concludes tomorrow, and there’s decisions about life support to made on Tuesday. A glimpse of sunshine would make all the difference, it really would.

I find it on Facebook, on those local groups that are usually consumed by bored spite. Someone will lay floors for free; someone will cook soup for volunteers clearing up, someone will coordinate sandbags.

The world will do a turn.