Spectacles

by Sue Perkins

Local:

  Yeah, you – ya big bastard. Screw you!

  Another joins in.

  Local 2:

  Screw you!

  Me:

  How is that helping?

  Local 2:

  Best way to get ’em. Swear at ’em. Always works, no idea why.

  Me:

  Oh.

  I make a mental note, in case any of my First Great Western trains back home ever encounters a Reindeer on the Line.

  Local 3:

  Fucker! [A man in a visor to my left] You little fucker!

  Local 4:

  Fucker! [A woman from behind me]

  Local 5:

  Asshole! [A kid who’s just joined the group]

  Me:

  Any of you been on the ET ride at Universal Studios? You’d love it!

  By now the reindeer has taken a few tentative steps towards us. The crowd redoubles its efforts. I join in.

  Crowd:

  Asshole! Fucker!

  Me:

  You … massive dick!

  Sure enough, the reindeer increased her speed towards us, crossing the railroad and finally submitting to the tether. Brenda slapped her hard on the butt, emitted a throaty laugh in my general direction and headed off to whittle something horny back at the shop.

  Once the reindeer was safely back in her enclosure, I pottered over to say goodbye. I like to think that the look she gave me, right before she stepped on my toe, was one of pure devotion.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Oh, and by the way, I’m a boy. You can tell from the antlers. Fuckwad.’

  We resumed our relentless drive northwards, stopping briefly at Wasilla on the way. Lovely John the Fixer had said he could get me an interview with Sarah Palin at her house as he had an in with Todd, her husband.

  En route, Charlie asked me, ‘Who’s Sarah Palin?’

  ‘She’s Michael Palin’s wife,’ I replied, jokingly.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, and carried on driving. I still don’t know to this day if he was winding me up or if he genuinely believed me. Either way, we travelled the next seventy kilometres in silence.

  Once in Wasilla, we parked at the security station at the end of what looked like a very long, posh driveway. I got out.

  ‘What do you want?’ said the robotic voice over the intercom.

  ‘I’m here to see Sarah Palin,’ I ventured politely.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’

  ‘No, but I’m with the BBC.’

  In retrospect that might not have helped. It was a little like trying to curry favour with Kim Jong-un by telling him about your work experience fortnight with Sony Pictures.

  ‘Wait there,’ said the security Dalek as he went off to check my details.

  There was a long pause. I could make out John the Fixer in the distance, gesticulating wildly. The more I looked, the more I realized the frantic waving seemed to be for my benefit. I wandered over to find him finishing a phone call.

  Me:

  Hey, John, security is just checking me out. I think I’ve managed to swing it.

  John:

  I just got off the phone with Todd.

  Me:

  Cool!

  John:

  He said you get the hell off his property or he’ll blow you off.

  We’d been travelling for hours before the constant bump of hard core gave way to the smooth icy surface of the Dalton Highway. I’d been droning on about early contrapuntal music and Charlie had been telling me what his watch could do at two hundred metres below sea level when we felt the change. Suddenly we were no longer buffeted by loose chippings. We were gliding.

  The highway is some 414 miles long, stretching from Livengood, north of Fairbanks, to Deadhorse, near Prudhoe Bay by the Arctic Ocean. It is one of the most remote roads in the world. Sometimes the only thing travelling alongside you is the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It’s grimly ironic that this blot on the landscape – an ugly reminder of our addiction to fossil fuels – is the very thing that created the road and, therefore, the very thing that enables us to experience the pure wonder of this part of the Alaskan landscape.

  The moment we hit the ice, I knew we’d hit trouble. The road itself is well maintained and robust – you quietly skate along with no hint of trouble. It’s steering that’s the issue. It’s easy to get in a trance state, overwhelmed by the views, the magnitude of the landscape, the barren beauty of it all, and in doing so let your hands relax a little on the wheel. If you veer, even a tad, that’s where they’ll get you – those fingers of black ice splayed at the road’s edge. Hit one and they’ll claw you off track and pull you into a snow-lined gulley with no hope of getting out.

  We’d been going an hour or two. I’d been expressing my thoughts on Gothic architecture and Charlie had been telling me how, on an expedition, you can make dirty pants like new by simply reversing them. Occasionally he would pause from his anecdotes to give me helpful pointers on my driving.

  ‘So these bike tours, you get a load of grimy lads, couple of cases of grog, make a fire, get some meat on the go, start telling stories …

  ‘WATCH OUT ON THE RIGHT!

  ‘Sometimes you’ll wake and you’ll be in the desert with a mouth full of sand and a tent full of empty bottles and you won’t ever know how you got there.

  ‘SUE! YOU’RE VEERING TO THE RIGHT!’

  It was warm in the car – rhythmic puffs of hot air gusted from the vents, and my belly was full of cheese sandwiches and bad coffee. Visibility was excellent – I could see for miles ahead. Nothing coming. Nothing going. My muscles relaxed. My famously limited attention wavered.

  ‘The local guy will fix us up with a couple of shots of local whisky, then we’re back on the bikes. Your arse gets sore after a while, but you can get a half-decent massage from some of the local girls …

  ‘WATCH OUT ON THE RIGHT!’

  I had gone into a hypnotic state – snow – road – snow – road – snow. The car drifted too far and suddenly hit a talon of black ice. It became impossible to control the steering. It was over in a flash. Our vehicle, now stationary, was at a forty-five-degree angle in a ditch.

  Charlie rolled his eyes. Poor guy. Every moment I remained next to him, his masculine credibility plummeted further.

  Not knowing anything about cars, I turned the engine on and ceaselessly revved the engine until the smell of burning rubber overwhelmed us.

  Charlie:

  Shit. Axle might be broken.

  Me:

  Is that bad?

  Charlie:

  Yep.

  Me:

  Oh. Sorry. Can we get a new one?

  Charlie said nothing and merely turned his attention towards the horizon.

  Suddenly, from behind us, a noise like a vast mechanical exhalation. A giant truck hove into view, stopping gracefully just a few inches from our car. The fenders were sparkling and you could smell the heat of the metal.

  The cameras turned to the driver, who was stepping down from his cabin. It was an impossibly handsome man in his early thirties – trimmed beard, piercing blue eyes. I felt my personal polarity shift a little, then settle.

 
Man:

  You guys in trouble?

  Me:

  No.

  Charlie:

  Yes.

  Man:

  Need a hand?

  Charlie:

  Yes, please.

  I stood there, dumbstruck, as thick, sleek cabling was uncoiled, hooks attached, weights and tensions considered.

  Throughout, the trucker worked silently. I couldn’t help but notice he averted his gaze from the camera. Fascinating, I thought. Perhaps he has escaped to the wild country after a divorce and doesn’t want anyone to find him. Perhaps he is on the run. Perhaps he’s worried the publicity will alert his pursuers to his location and he’ll be caught again.

  (I can’t emphasize enough how exhausting it is being me.)

  Man:

  What are you guys filming?

  Charlie:

  Oh, just a documentary for the BBC back home.

  Me:

  Is it bothering you? You want us to stop?

  I am trying to make maternal concern sound a little sexy, and failing.

  Man:

  No, it’s OK.

  Me:

  I can’t help noticing you don’t like the camera.

  Man:

  Nah. It’s just, you know …

  Me:

  What?

  I am getting close to finding his secret. I lean in.

  Man:

  It’s just … well … I wanted a break from all that stuff.

  Me:

  A break?

  Man:

  Yeah, we just finished season three of Ice Road Truckers, and I needed a bit of downtime before the next one. You know.

  In the middle of nowhere – nowhere – I had managed to crash a car and be rescued by a bone fide global superstar, Jack Jessee. The only thing that could have made the experience weirder was if we’d been hit by Joey Essex, treated on the scene by one of the doctors from 24 Hours in A&E, then flown home by Jeremy Spake.

  Day six. We’d overnighted in Fairbanks, where I’d caroused with a female roller derby team. Boy those girls can party like it’s 1958. Sadly, I had to get up and be in the car ready for filming at the crack of dawn.

  I was starting to regret the bit in my contract where it said I would be working ‘daylight hours’. The closer to the Arctic Circle we got, the more the days lengthened, until we’d only have a few hours of gentle dusk before I’d be back at the wheel.

  After I’d finished a fascinating monologue on Dadaism, Charlie took out his earplugs and we stopped for the night. Our pit stop was one of the most magical on earth. Wiseman. I’d call it a village, but the population was fourteen. What does that make it? A grouping? A settlement? Who knows? The moon backlit the pines and the only thing you could hear was the occasional drift of snow in the mountains. A local hunter had told me that I had to be quiet, because the moose were always listening. And so that night I whispered ‘Hello’ into the depths of the forest, then told them the hunter’s exact location – just in case he had been serious about them earwigging.

  The next morning I rubbed my nose with the heel of my palm to get the blood flowing again, ate a stack of pancakes, three eggs and a portion of gravy and biscuits. Then we got back in the bloody car.

  It was my turn to drive again. By now Charlie was sick of my driving. He was better at the wheel, capable of focusing on the road for more than ninety seconds without getting distracted by a bird or an animal. Plus I think he hated being in the passenger seat because that meant he had to work the CB radio – and this compromised his masculinity. It wasn’t right – two grown men, revealing their coordinates to one another. It was just too intimate.

  The CB radio is your best friend on the highway. Once your eyes fail in the endless and unrelenting white, you turn to the radio and listen to your salvation – your voice. It is your voice, and the crackling one in the box that comes back at you, that tell you where you are and how you are doing. And whether or not you are still alive.

  The temperature was dropping and a vicious wind started to kick around the tyres. As we passed a lone worker at the side of the road, the director, Ian, travelling in the support car behind, radioed through.

  ‘Charlie! Stop! Let’s do a piece here, with this guy. This guy spraying the road.’

  I was pretty relieved I wasn’t involved. It looked like they were going to be talking about technical stuff, plus the wind chill looked like it could turn the tops of your ears into Frazzles.

  I watched Charlie chatting away. Poor Ollie, the best sound guy in the business, was standing holding the boom above him, trying not to faint with the cold.

  The highway worker was resurfacing the road with a pressure hose. The water started to freeze as soon as it hit the ground. He was motioning forward violently with his hands.

  Ten minutes later Charlie bounced back into the car. The ends of his whiskers were crispy.

  ‘Blizzard’s coming in,’ he said. ‘We need to get out now, else we’ll get stuck.’

  ‘Right,’ I said, trying to pretend this sort of thing happened to me every day. ‘I should probably turn the ignition on then.’ (I really am very lacking when it comes to initiative.)

  ‘OK!’ shouted Ian. (Shouting was Ian’s default setting; he really was very commanding.) ‘We’re breaking for lunch!’

  Me:

  What do you mean? We can’t break – we’ve got to get out of here! There’s a storm coming!

  Ian:

  I know. There are some plastic cheese sandwiches and some cold moose cuts. Oh, and Oreos. [He adds, as if that will somehow sweeten the deal]

  I got out the car and opened my mouth long enough for my taste buds to get anaesthetized by the chill. Then I tucked in. It’s amazing how good plastic cheese and moose can taste when you can’t taste at all. I plucked up courage to speak to the gaffer.

  Me:

  Hey, Ian, can I have a word?

  Ian:

  Sure. You want to try some of this bear? It’s weirdly fishy.

  Me:

  No. Listen, why are we waiting? Isn’t that a bit reckless? Can’t we have synthetic sandwiches and wild animal meat at our destination?

  Ian:

  Yes, but … Well, thing is … they’ve seen the rushes back home …

  Me:

  So?

  Ian:

  And they’ve decided they’re not … not … dangerous enough.

  There is a slight pause before I respond.

  Me:

  Dangerous?

  Ian:

  Yes. Dangerous. I can see what they mean. There’s no point in having ‘dangerous’ in the title if nothing dangerous happens. You see?

  Suddenly everything around me begins moving very slowly.

  Me:

  Why would ‘dangerous’ be in the title, Ian?

  Ian:

  Because it is. Because that’s what this show is – The World’s Most Dangerous Roads.

  Me:r />
  No, no, no. The show I’m doing is called The World’s Most Interesting Roads.

  Suddenly, I’m thinking, am I on the wrong shoot? Is there a crew somewhere pottering around a creek admiring rare birds and wondering why Bear Grylls is presenting it?

  Ian:

  Well, it was called that originally, Sue, but the title got changed. That was ages ago. We did say. Didn’t we? Please tell me someone told you.

  Suddenly it all made sense – the total lack of tourist traffic on the road, the locals shaking their heads as we chugged out of town. That lone woman crossing herself at the final junction in Fairbanks, the wooden crucifixes that sporadically lined our route. But mainly this – why would you travel on a road made solely of ice WHEN OTHER PERFECTLY SAFE AND SCENIC ROUTES ARE AVAILABLE?

  I got back in the car and ingested something that may or may not have been polar bear. Fast.

  Me:

  [yelling] Come on, Charlie. We’re off!

  I reach over and try to pop his seat belt on.

  Charlie has difficulty replying, as a clod of indiscriminate meat has attached itself to the roof of his mouth. He has to use the traction of a handful of crisps to dislodge it.

  Charlie:

  [mumbling] Hang on. Gimme a second …

  Me:

  WE DON’T HAVE A SECOND! [I scream, channelling Jason Statham again – before putting the car into the wrong gear and revving the engine to fuck]