Some mysteries always best left unexplained!

Dammit dammit dammit! I knew I should have gone to the loo before I left Sligo, but I didn’t, and now I’m driving along with certain muscles very clenched, waving my knees around in frustration.

There’s a car in front of me and a car behind me on this two-lane twisty road to Ballina. This night offers no moon, a thin veil of cloud obscuring stars, so beyond our tiny convoy of light the world is invisible, lost in a pit of utter blackness.

Nope. Not going to make it to Ballina. Have to stop.

MmmMMOOooerrr - soon!

Headlights behind, brake lights in front, no time to escape from the middle of this three-car train travelling at 60mph, impossible to pull over safely into the cavernous darkness, but I have to.

Ah, there’s a turning on the left.

Indicating, I pull out, hardly time to brake and - whoops! - too fast, swerve wildly across the side road, kicking dust, mud and gravel into the air as I brake hard.

Finally, at rest on the verge.

Nothing broken, no harm done, but as I turn off the engine and take a well-earned breath, I sense something in the air.

An atmosphere of pure menace mixes with the inexplicable feeling that I’ve behaved badly; interrupted something.

Stepping out of the car, the horizon starts a foot away and ends with dawn.

Stumbling blindly up the side road I - ahhhh … ohhh … whoof!

Relief!

Catching my breath, I freeze dead still. A few feet to my right, a toothy chomping noise is piercing the ethereal silence. Suddenly behind me and to the left of me, all around me out of the night come complaining guttural grunts and mutters.

Instantly I’m engulfed in pure terror, and sprint back to my car with even more urgency than I felt minutes ago.

Driving off, I talk out loud to myself about the madness of it all.

Must be the adrenalin from the swerve off the road. What else can it be? Sounded like voices though. Sounded like voices complaining that I’d interrupted something. I’d felt extremely unwelcome.

I know the sounds of cattle, sheep, foxes and the ear-splitting brays of donkeys, so it must’ve been the Little People.

Oh get a grip Adley! You’re a Londoner, for god’s sake!

For 12 years I kept that story pretty much to myself, until last week, when with Halloween in mind, I told it to the Snapper.

“Badgers!’” she immediately offered, at which I plunged into the internet and yes! Aha! At last a solution!

To read Charlie’s column in full, please see this week’s Galway City Tribune.