Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
At least I think they're tears
This post was first published just for my paid subscribers but here’s a chance for everybody to catch up.
Bournemouth is about four hours from my house if you check on Google maps. That is because Google maps has never had to drive from my house to Bournemouth. I was up bright and early and I put my rucksack in the front passenger seat of the hire car; placed my suitcase in the boot; and hung my jacket, tie and spare suit which I needed for a meeting later in the week, on the hook behind the driver’s seat.
The journey did not start well. I had only gone about ten miles when I realised that I had somehow managed to use about an eighth of a tank of fuel. This wasn’t right and so I drove straight to the offices of the hire car company and told the young man behind the counter about the fuel gauge which was now sat at around the three-quarters full mark.
“I’ll make a note and you don’t need to fill it up before you bring it back.” He helpfully told me.
“No, you don’t quite understand, I have to drive to Bournemouth and then come back via London. At the rate things are going this morning I will have to fill it up five times just to get back.”
Pimply Youth
“What would you like, then?” The pimply youth asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, how about a car that works?”
This was clearly an outlandish request and it took some considerable time for this to sink in and then vast aeons for it to actually manifest itself in the form of another vehicle. I was now seriously late. I threw my case and rucksack into the boot and sped off. Well, sped as far as the A12.
Old Couple in a Nissan Micra
The A12 can often, particularly around Colchester, resemble nothing more than a four-lane car park. If there is an accident it is even worse and there is no use trying to take to the back roads to avoid it because everybody else has done that and there’s a Transit van with a puncture on the B1022 and an old couple in a red Nissan Micra have broken down on the junction to Smythe’s Green which takes you down to the Tiptree Jam Museum. So those roads are slower than the A12. Seeing that this could take some time, I stopped at the Shell garage to buy myself a Costa coffee from the vending machine.
I don’t mind the stationary traffic, really. You can’t control stationary traffic and there’s no point at all worrying about the things in life which you can’t control. I was clearly going to be late anyway, so I might as well just sit back and listen to Heart 80s. In case you don’t know it, it’s a radio station for old people so that they can pretend they’re back at a sixth form disco not wearily making their way down the A12 for the six thousand, seven hundred and fiftieth time in their lives. It should really be called Heart We Built This City on St. Elmo’s Fire Radio but you do, occasionally, get other songs.
Playing Scrabble with Midge Ure
Right now they’re playing Ultravox and Vienna, a record which was massively successful and won single of the year at the Brit Awards but never made it to number one, being kept off the top slot by Joe Dolce's Shaddap You Face, which tells you everything you might ever need to know if you were planning to build a time machine and travel back to 1981.
I’m not going to decisively say it was all down to me and that he owes me royalties or anything but I once played Scrabble with Midge Ure, we got down to the point where I had just four letters left and that’s when I said: “This means nothing to me: O, V, N, R.”
After queuing in traffic for about twenty minutes, I take a drink of my coffee and am surprised not to be actually getting any coffee through the little spout in the plastic top. Very soon my surprise turns to horror as I realise that the reason for this is that the lid isn’t on firmly and I’m pouring coffee down the front of my shirt. That’s okay, I can put my tie on and fasten my jacket and that will cover it. I push the lid down firmly and quickly drink the coffee. Soon we all start to pick up some speed because as we pass Marks Tey the traffic miraculously clears without there ever being an obvious reason for a dozen miles of queues. It’s then only about half an hour down to the M25 which seems to be running quite freely.
I Might Just Live
Okay, it runs freely until around about Gerrard’s Cross where it suddenly just stops. The coffee that I did manage to drink now starts to make itself known. I am twenty-six miles from the services at South Mimms and it is another thirty-one to Cobham services which is, at any rate, about ten miles past my turn-off onto the M3. I now seriously need a wee and the traffic is at a standstill. I am sat in lane three, nothing is moving, I look around the car and there is only the coffee cup. Even though I know all the liquid I’ve drunk since leaving home came from that cup, I don’t believe that all the liquid that might come from me now would fit back in it. I am just going to have to tough this out. Just about the moment that I am wondering if it is actually possible to die from needing a wee, the traffic starts to move. I might just live.
I nearly make it to the M3 junction but I know that I really can’t wait for Fleet Services, I am now crying a little bit and I don’t know whether it’s tears of pain or I am so full of wee that some of it is coming out of my eyes. I am going to have to pull off and find a toilet.
Dancing With Tears In My Eyes
The sign for the Tesco superstore is the sweetest thing I have ever seen. I park up and make my way in. I find the customer toilets and it’s obviously a popular place this morning because every urinal and cubicle is occupied. I am now humming another Ultravox hit to myself, Dancing With Tears In My Eyes.
Eventually I am relieved and head back to the car. I just want to check that my tie and jacket cover the stain on my shirt so I…hang on, my tie and my jacket, in the back of the hire car, the first hire car, the one that’s in Ipswich. Bugger. Not to be defeated, I go back into Tesco and buy a wrinkle free shirt and head back to the toilets to change into it. Which Tesco did I stop at? Staines. Where else? I eventually make it to Bournemouth and manage my afternoon without a tie or any more difficulties.
Diwali Party
I still had to go to that meeting I mentioned, though, and I still did not have a suit. That’s okay, I thought, there are plenty of supermarkets, I must be able to buy a suit that will do me for one day. I tried Tesco and they did have a nice jacket which fitted and was only fifty quid. They didn’t have any matching trousers, though. I found a Sainsbury’s but they didn’t have any suits at all. They had three aisles of items to help celebrate Diwali but nothing to wear to the Diwali party. Finally there was a huge Asda where I was in luck and discovered that you can actually buy a complete suit for thirty pounds. I found one that fitted and as long as I stayed well clear of naked flames and earthed myself every now and then to let the static dissipate, I believed I’d be okay.
I arrived at my hotel and booked in, ready for a meeting the next morning. The receptionist looked confused and I didn’t think it was just the suit. I’d had an interesting couple of days and was no longer questioning why things were going wrong, I had reached the point where I just accepted that, of course, they had gone wrong. So, I wasn’t too surprised when she told me that there was no meeting the next day. I rang the organiser of the meeting but only got voicemail. I managed to find his boss only to be told that the organiser had been rushed into hospital and was currently undergoing emergency surgery, the meeting had, of course, been cancelled and his predicament put mine into perspective.
Seneca’s Tuppenny Fuck
Perspective is one of the most important gifts that you can get but it is often hard won. Things like weather; delays; stupid things that people say and do; or not being able to find the right sock or ear-ring do not warrant more than about a nanosecond of a response. Often things seem far more important than they really are. There is a phrase used in the British armed forces which sums this up: “They can’t shoot you and they can’t make you pregnant and even if they could they couldn’t make you love the baby.” Therein lie the important things; birth, death and the things that you love. Pretty much everything else is a matter of preference and isn’t as important as you believe. Most things don’t matter a tuppenny fuck, as Seneca might have said.
The Earth formed over four billion years ago and modern man originated in Africa around 200,000 years ago and so mankind accounts for about 0.005% of the Earth so far. If you live into triple figures you will account for around 0.0005% of humanity or, to really put it in perspective, 0.0000025% of the planet’s history. How you like your coffee isn’t that important.