Around the bend

I have a recurring nightmare. I’m driving or walking or cycling, I’m not sure which, up a winding, muddy country lane. At a sharp, uphill bend, I’m overwhelmed by terror of what lies beyond and can go no further. Freudians, I imagine, would interpret this as a psychic utterance of repressed homoeroticism.

I know exactly where this bend in the lane is, oddly enough, though I haven’t seen it for 35 years. When I was at school, the family home was briefly on the outskirts of an Essex village right on the edge of London. (Although our house was surrounded by fields, and felt sufficiently rural, after dark the western sky was apocalyptically ablaze with energy and light from the metropolis.) The bend in the lane was on the bus route on the way home from school. It marked the point at the end of the journey where I pressed the bell and went forward in good time to stand at the front of the bus, ready to alight.