The Man Who Drives in Circles

There once was a man who drove in circles. Not actual circles, that would be ridiculous. More like circuits. Which is also ridiculous, nevertheless.

He looks rather harmless. A man in his thirties who wears sporty clothes but never seems to do any sport. He drives a black ford somethingorother, and he drives it round and round the town, in big looping circuits. And we don't know why.

Sometimes, for example, he starts at the top of the High Street, drives to the end, circumnavigates the roundabout and doubles back on himself. Once at the top, he turns again and repeats, over and over. Up and down the High Street, past mums in black 4x4s and pupils scarpering from Sainsbury's, past charity shops and jewellery shops and shoe shops and restaurants. And again. And again.

Other times he does larger loops. We don't know where he goes, but he'll pass the same café on the same road from the same direction, over and over.

Why? Why? We want to know. We want to ask him. Sometimes Laura sees him, carless, and looks at her as though he knows she knows. And he looks away.

What possible reason could one have for circling, round and round the way he does? Wasting petrol, burning down his tyres, wearing down his breaks, for no reason we could fathom. What strange short-circuit is occurring in his brain? OCD? Schizophrenia? Or something altogether worse? Worse in that, in fact, there's nothing wrong at all. He just does it because he likes to. And that is worse because why, why, why would a normal person find joy in that? What is it about those big looping circuits that pleases him more than, say, taking a walk in the park, or watching Countdown? 


We won't know 'til we ask him. But we're a little frightened. There's something ever-so-slightly sinister about him. About the way he drives in circles.


 Like a shark circling in on his prey.