Petrol- Object writing July 29
admin July 28th, 2008
Reaching around the side of the seat, hand running over the hard plastic shell and terraforming over the seat release I find it,the petrol cap release. A tug makes a small clunk emit from the left hand side of the car. Opening the door to a surge of traffic noise from Punt road as cars are swishing by the lights. Feet click on desperate concrete as I approach the bowser, it’s sitting there sizing me up like a gunslinger from a wild west movie, but I move first. I tackle the pump in a Ju Jitsu hold and submit it to the cap which I need to twist off. Anti-clockwise turns which let a out a vaporous sigh at the end, the pressure equalising inside the tank, you know like when you put hot water in a plastic bottle and it sucks in the sides as the water cools, expansion and contraction just like high school science in rooms with elongated troughs down the middle where you look to the world outside, to the brilliant blue sky of freedom while the teacher drones on about things you don’t really want to know, but now wish you did.
Fingers grip the muted metal of the pump handle, still cold from the morning chill, the numbers begin to tickle the LCD screen and I watch in shock as my pay packet is gobbled by the adversary- maybe he is going to win this fight, 10, 20, 30 dollars is consumed in a minute! The bowser now looking like a fat penguin having consumed my hard earned. As the transfer is occurring I watch the rest of the world through a streaky haze as the vapours from the tank leak out, the world appears as a mirage until I reach my target number of dollars. I relinquish the pump……
