There is a scene in the 80s spoof movie Top Secret where Val Kilmer is busy painting the scene from a moving train. We later see the result of his work: a blur of green.
I was reminded of this as we made our regular short and longer drives around the Brittany countryside. We covered 1500 miles in just over a fortnight and the number of times that the trees yielded all their navigational secrets to me in our moving car were vastly outnumbered by sights of leaves and branches blurring into one. Sometimes the collective sight of trees leaning to the east from the wind, or the rare silhouette detectable through summer foliage gave an excellent snapshot. All too often however the green of summer made things trickier.
I reminded myself of the bleeding obvious one one occasion as I allowed my curiosity about a tree that appeared to lean in two directions simultaneously to distract me from the road. It was easier for this to happen in rural south Brittany as the number of cars was so few, but no less dangerous for it. I resolved, once again, to save scrutiny of the detail until I was a passenger or better still parked. I think the law forbidding use of holding mobile phones while driving is probably a good one, but it does open a can of worms. Should the holding of sandwiches also be banned and what about looking at trees? If we have learned anything about our politicians over the last years it is surely that we must not give them ideas about new ways to restrict our lives. So best keep this blog strictly hush, hush.
Tags: concentration, driving, navigational, top secret, tree
