Although not the most honest means of travel, it gets me there nonetheless

Our Director writes:

Diary of a Mature Student, Semester Two, Week Four

I've found myself developing some somewhat strange, somewhat comic behaviours over the past few weeks. Nothing too strange, but just different enough to make me wonder what's prompted them.

There's a moment of existential ennui, it would seem, upon returning to the Park and Ride on a daily basis. If you do something four days a week, every week, for fourteen to fifteen weeks in a row, your brain starts - it seems - to give up on remembering exactly where your car is when you return after a hard day's studenting.

So I stand there, for a few seconds, trying to remember which particular space I could find that morning. It doesn't matter, of course, because I have a relatively distinctive car anyway, but it's always a very confusing short space of time.

My car is distinctive for a number of reasons. For one, it's dinky. Of course, size apparently doesn't matter, but on a few occasions people have been slightly shocked when I unfold myself from the front seat. But another reason it's distinctive is that it has a very strange music system. Oh, it was beautiful and up-to-day in, let's say, 2001, but since then, it's been all downhill, baby. The radio, for instance, works out of both speakers - 90% of the time - but the cd player doesn't, something I wouldn't have personally thought possible.

Then again, the CD player only works 30% of the time anyway, so if you find a CD that actually works, hoo boy, that's the goddamn jackpot right there.

[Sidebar: for those keeping score, I do actually like my car. It drives well and it gets me where I'm going. But every car has it's quirks.]

One of the CDs that works, for instance, is the soundtrack to the 2006 version of Casino Royale. I discovered this on one of my first journeys, wherein I tried eight or nine different CDs - getting Error 3 or Error 6 depending on whether it couldn't or wouldn't play them, respectively - before finding that my car likes, for some reason, David Arnold.

This is one of those things that couldn't really be much more inappropriate if it tried. The only time my car would ever be in a Bond movie is if it were being rammed off the road by the villain. Oh, sure, it might fit in in a Bourne movie, but shit, whoever accused them of automobilic taste?

However, I find the disconnect really funny. More funny than I should.

The entrance to the Park and Ride is a side lane, alongside which runs three lanes of traffic, which will either be waiting for the lights or pulling away.

And so, I find it very funny to get into the side lane, and cruise past the traffic with the Bond theme playing at an audible volume. Slinking past succinctly, like a shark, you might say.

Of course, you might not...