The Boonies

My friend Lori used to talk about the Boonies, you’d ask her where something was and she’d say, ‘oh, out in the Boon Docks,’ as though it were a real place. Well I’m here although I’m not convinced it’s real. The normal laws that govern human behaviour and …well, traffic signs for example, are simply changed, or absent. There are boonie people circling the car, I’m wondering whether I’ve driven so far that I’m near the Thunderdome, I’m pretty sure Mad Max has been past a couple of times in an old reverse-pimped-out pickup.

The people are like characters from Little Britain or French and Saunders. One, Jabba-like, has been sitting on a BC Hydro (electricity) box - it has a picture of a person falling back, a red zig-zag of lightning bisecting them. Another keeps striking a pose, carefully NOT looking at the car out of the corner of its eye(gender uncertain) and two more appear to be taking cats for walks. Beyond the frontiers of civilisation.

I'm happy to get out of Dodge, but wait! Getting out of the rabbit warren, where the houses are actually labelled 'Cluster X', I find that the road only goes in one direction! it's like a bad dream, it's like a story from Kafka. But as in some surreal film, I find a bizarrely placed Mexican restaurant, the restaurant almost at the end of the universe, and I can creatively use its car park to turn around in.

We stop half way back so that Laurence can call in at Krispy Kremes and I can go to the loo. In the Boonies, you probably have to trap your own doughnuts - but I didn't wait to find out.