60 mph. 26 degrees. Windows down. Hand out. Hair becoming a part of the breeze. The bass of the speakers determining my heart rate. The ordinary becoming extraordinary.
We look quite the spectacle, my sister and I. With the right camera angle we could be anywhere. Around us we are surrounded by summer-green fields and a heat that still allows us to feel comfortable in our own skin. The kind of setting a phone has no place in; only the eyes of youth can capture it.
The sky is a modest sunset that leaks cool blues and pinks into our eyes. As a passenger whose mind is allowed to drift from the dangers that fill a road, I wander to the thought of how if we were in a movie, we would be at the part where everything just clicks for our protagonist; the part before reality rips away the summer cliches. This is the night that would be documented through a song; a night ordinary people would envy and desire, and claim can never happen in real life.
Well… it did.
Picture this in slow motion in some sort of dream sequence, put a song to it if you like.
The car door slams and the music starts. The car begins to move, and as I stare out the window at the sun-kissed North of England, my window begins to descend. The crisp, clean air fills my lungs, and as we approach the 60 mph mark, out flies my hand as if I’m a bird keeping up with the force of metal defying air resistance. Up and down the bird moves till it flies away high into the sun.
The climax of the song is here, and as instruments and voice build up, so does the car’s speed. In perfect balance the song fires off life as I allow my hair to become part of the wind and my senses to become awake.
I am part of the wind- a bird whose flight happens because of the place that raised her.
The movies can paint a mirage of how this cliche is supposed to look, but you don’t need to be in a picturesque, Hollywood street. I found it in the very place I’d stopped looking, and can 100% say that as ordinary people we never believed it could happen, but in that moment we were extraordinary and flew in the breeze because birds fly high in the place they know best. Home.
Profoundly Northern 