Low life | 19 March 2011

Beside the roundabout a woman was standing with her thumb out. Late thirties. Black knee-length boots. Old jeans. No coat. The thumb was resigned, indifferent.

I swung in sharply, positioning the door handle precisely level with the thumb. She pulled the door open and sat in. A red, careworn face. I stated my destination. She said she would ride with me as far as Graves Cross. I clicked the lever into drive and we set off up the hill.

Silence. She stared resignedly ahead. If hitch-hikers prefer not to speak, it’s fine. I’m not one of those who feel they are owed an explanation or a potted biography. I usually have the music turned up in any case. But this woman’s indifferent, fatalistic air impressed me. I strongly sensed a woman hemmed in by bullshit and poverty; a woman expecting nothing from life but more of the same; a woman without a single life-enhancing delusion.