Yesterday on the way to Norwich to see some friends, my girlfriend had been driving and we had had a minor spat about her confusion over which lane to get into as we left the service station for the Motorway. She felt my instructions were unclear and I worried that she was weaving around a little bit dangerously, when she just had to be in the nearside lane. So today when we stopped at the same service station on the way back home I wasn't going to make the same mistake. Although I was a bit surprised myself by how quickly the exit from the service station became the massive roundabout, I still manouevred myself with ease into the lane that my girlfriend had managed to make a meal of getting into yesterday. Ha ha. Richard Herring 1 His non-imaginary girlfriend 0.
It was only as I drove towards the exit that I realised my mistake. I had, of course, positioned myself perfectly for the carriageway heading north. The opposite direction to the one we wanted to be going in. And now there was no way to safely cut across back on to the motorway. I was committed. Bollocks. This was at the very least an equaliser for my girlfriend, but to be fair, more like my goal had been ruled out and she had scored a hatrick.
But it wouldn't be that much of a problem, would it? I would simply have to come off at the next exit and turnaround. It would only take ten minutes maximum. Right? Wrong. According to my sat nav it was over 12 miles to hte next junction. I had just added 25 miles to our long journey. And we had a gig to get to.
My girlfriend would have been within her rights to give me a hard time, but she took it very well indeed, not even taking a moment to crow or mock me. But inevitably the world was going to punish me for my mistake and my hubris, because although the south bound carriageway had been clear the first time we came down it, by the time we had returned for our second shot at it the traffic had got a lot worse and then to add insult to injury there had been an accident just beyond the services and the motorway was grid-locked. And whilst I could console myself with the possibility that my error had actually prevented us from being caught up in a massive pile-up and saved our lives, it was still pretty fucking annoying. We would have been almost home by now if I had chosen the correct lane, but now we were still an hour from our destination with no sign of things improving for us. I can't believe how restrained my girlfriend remained. Not even one smug aside. She just said it could have happened to anyone. What a girl!
We managed to escape the gridlock and get off at a junction, hoping my sat nav could guide us down the country roads and it did pretty well. We finally made it through, in time to get to the gig, but not to go home. As I was closing I had planned to drop my girlfriend off and then drive home and have a little rest to get over this nightmare day. But when I got to Kings Cross traffic was again at a standstill and so I escaped the madness and turned around and returned to Angel, where we were gigging. I am there now. I may never get home. It seems that is the way the Gods are wanting it to go today. Which is nothing else proves that the Egyptian Gods are the real ones. I slag them off on Friday and they fuck up my life by Sunday. Sorry fellas. I love your jackal heads and crazy backbone snakes. Please forgive me.
