Whaleboat Road

On Whaleboat Road which is always busy with traffic I often go to meditate and figure stuff out.
The traffic starts very early in the morning and goes on all day, an unquenchable tide, and doesn't let up even late into the night.
Down on Whaleboat Road... in mid-afternoon... There I stand, in T-shirt, trainers, jeans. I have with me my ghetto-blaster, clutched by the handle. Looking sleepy at the grey road.
I loiter beside a big gaudily-coloured petrol station, whose canopy offers a sense of concealment. At one side is a bulky carwash, stationed beside which is a bank of buttons, and also a power point.
On the other side is a dull BnB with a gravelled drive.
I surreptitiously plug in the ghetto-blaster at the carwash power-point. On that bank of switches, of grim industrial plastic. Set it down, you can safely leave it plugged in for a while, the thing won't be conspicuous on that busy road if you want to run an errand or summat.
Take a selection say three or four CD's. Flip open the hatch and press it in. Glittering rainbow colours. Freebie CD's from fanzines are good, old unwanted CD's your friends don't want, ones with nice designs on, in glaring red or aqua-blue, gleaming and neat.
After your given, allotted time, or when fancy takes you, decide to go home. You're a busy man. With the grim, concentrated air of a council workman, taking no nonsense, unplug the ghetto blaster, and hoist it up by its matt black handle. Have a chat with a passing neighbour. Pass pleasantries, exchange banalities. Make sure the power-point is de-activated.
To get home, I go behind the petrol station to a rutted path and through a fence of trees to a disused railway line, which I pick my way along toward the house in which I live, which lies on a softly rising bank beside the rail-line. Waiting in the kitchen in the afternoon for my friend Mack to arrive.
He'd come in anxious in the yellowish, fading light, ready for an adventure of some kind. The notorious Mack, turning up unapologetically late, for an expedition to the town-centre, for a bus-trip into the wilderness. Might he bring his family? We'll all go on a trip! His hugely fat mother, her black hair and immense upper arms. His thin, smiling, authoritative father, in carpet slippers, with jug ears, from Derry. His amusing brother Terry, his pretty and convivial little sister. All come to see me.
At the carwash on Whaleboat Road, or waiting at home, what shall we listen to on this here cheap ghetto-blaster? Let's have some a that "alternative rock". No need to blare it too loud, inoffensive volume but of a decent loudness. Pop-punk is good for waiting... Of a Green Day type but not Green Day... Have you heard this band the Jimmies? From I believe the Pacific Northwest? Pennywise but avoid Fat Wreck... Mr. T Experience.... Squirtgun... Dreyfus!... the obscurer the better... such n such from blah blah Ohio... put out a cheap split CD... wholly typical.