X=Bypass

The story of the Tunnel

They built a tunnel down to the port in 1999 and it's my favourite
third of a mile in the whole world. I can't recall ever loving anything
so obscure as a tunnel before. It is reached from a roundabout, the
road dips steeply down towards it, as captivating as any fairground
ride.

The entrance is definitely a triumph of wombish freudian architecture.
The round walls clutch my gaze with their poise and swallowing height,
meeting in a perfect arc. The car never feels so smooth as when it
colludes with this special band of tarmac that plunges into the tunnel.
In the first five seconds, the sodium lights bring an unearthly
industrial twilight to mind, and suffuse everything with acid,
obliterating all colours except its own.

This is a tunnel of the early two thousands. It has been built to the
highest standards of safety. No pedestrians, no agricultural vehicles,
no stopping, speed limit of thirty miles an hour. There are huge
double-ended fans mounted on the top of the roof, to suck or blow
potential fires in any direction they choose. Cameras grace every
hundred yards (metres). There are emergency stations all along the
tunnel containing emergency phones and fire extinguishers, staged like
kiosks of paranoia. It has double white lines to focus the truck
drivers just arrived from France. It has a pavement that is never
walked on, as if it were reserved for the second coming, or lost arctic
explorers. It is a perfectly controlled and controlling
environment.

The road within the tunnel has two curves and one straight, as
symmetrical as any Scalextric track. A curve to the left in, then the
straight and finally a curve to the right out. The straight is a kind
of spectacle, a subterranean industrial grand boulevard that I can
usually call my own. Because I know I can't stop, there is a scarcity
to my experience of the straight that heightens its effect. I am
compelled and forbidden and swallowed up as I drive onwards. I have
rarely seen another vehicle whilst I am in it.

I have taken photographs of the tunnel, taken as I drive. The quality
of these photographs always astounds me. Digital pictures of the tunnel
from the twenty first century, taken from the dashboard, without using
the viewfinder. These are the remote levels of enjoyment, meaning and
experience that this tunnel provides me with.

At the end of the tunnel, after the curve right, there is the sea.
Immediately. Then I am driving alongside the sea. It is an inverse
continuance of the alienation/belonging that the tunnel inspires in me.
Only the groin markers rise to break the sea's infinite and sudden
existence at the end of the tunnel. When I look at the photographs I am
always reminded of this story, of why I love driving down this tunnel
so much. This story is just a life summarised: Why I love driving down
this tunnel so much, is because at the end of the nocturnal theatre of
sodium lights, there is the beautiful verdant sea, engaged in whatever
dance it has fashioned from the weather.