Sunday 24th March 2013
I’m travelling in the morning. I have to get up at 5:30am and I hate it. Getting a good night’s sleep is most important when you’ve got an early start with a three hour drive and a full day at work to follow. This is precisely why I can never get a good night’s sleep when I am travelling early in the morning.
Monday 25th March 2013
It’s 12:30am and I’ve woken up for the first time. So that’s an hour and a half (roughly speaking) of sleep that I’ve got. Now there is plenty of time to get enough kip in, if only I could stop thinking of how tired I’ll be if I can’t get back to sleep.
Fan-fucking-tastic, that’s done it now. Stressing about not getting enough sleep is exactly the reason I can’t get any sleep.
Now its 4:30am – I’ve woken up approximately every half hour since half-past midnight. This is going to be a long day. All is not lost though, if I can eat enough breakfast to force out a dump the day can still be salvaged.
Let’s face it, there’s little worse than having to stop at the motorway services for a dump, sat in a row of maybe twenty other commuter-dumpers. The smell is only marginally worse than the sound.
I arrive my customers offices at just before 9:30am. These guys are great to work with and are used to my grumpy ways. We have a pretty good day of it and by lunch time it looks as though I may be going home early.
At 3pm we hit a minor problem, bollocks! This minor problem takes two hours to resolve. Just as I am packing my bags into the car I get called back, somebody has found another quirk. Secretly I am fuming, on the surface I am cool, calm and collected. At least that’s what I hope.
5:05pm, I am on the road, heading for home. By now I am already feeling tired and there is a three hour drive ahead. It’ll be fine.
5:15pm I’ve just hit the M5, I am in the outside lane and suddenly there’s a strange sound and the car’s dashboard display tells me the gearbox has malfunctioned. I’m doing a touch over 70 (naughty!) in the fast lane and the car has lost all drive. Pressing the accelerator does nothing except rev the engine loudly. I’ve got to get over two lanes into the hard shoulder whilst the car gradually slows down. It’s the start of rush-hour traffic but somehow I make it without incident.
5:20pm I’m stood the other side of the barriers (safety first you know) but its bloody freezing cold. -2 according to the weather forecast (feels like -8! – I’ll be the judge of that!). I’m on the phone to the AA. Apparently they know exactly where I am, I’ve given them the motorway marker numbers from a little marker post near to me. 29/1 (I think it was). Turns out because of my location I am going to be seen as a priority. Within one hour. An hour in this will be bloody ages. Nobbling.
5:45pm Now I really need the toilet. I’ve been stood here at the top of a 30ft drop on a 2 and a half foot ledge for what feels like ages. The wind is howling and there’s snow all over the ground. This sucks. Time to get to the bottom of this drop and have a piss out of the view of hundreds of commuters. Bloody wind.
6:00pm They called, I can’t remember exactly what time, but they called. They wanted to let me know that someone would be in touch soon to say when the driver would be over to get me. More waiting. It’s getting really blooming cold now. Still, at least its not raining. Or snowing. But it is starting to get dark.
6:25pm I need the toilet again. I’ll wait, they’ll be here soon.
7:00pm That’s twice I’ve been down that bank now. The second time was just for entertainment. It’s dark now. The AA called again, they’ve told me that “due to extreme weather” there will be a delay, it could be an hour and a half before they get to me. I told her it was bloody freezing so would be nice if they could hurry up. She mentioned to me something about being at Tesco Car Park… I said, no, I am still stuck by the side of the M5. They’ve ballsed up here. I’m somewhere on the non-urgent list, meanwhile I am freezing my testes off. She sounded a bit panicked and said she’d call me back soon.
7:15pm I’ve had a few frantic calls from the lady at the AA, very apologetic, I’m back in the priority queue (thank feck!) and someone will be with me in about 30 mins. I wonder if its possible to freeze to death in 30 mins?
7:50pm He finally arrives. Jolly man that he was. Apparently all he’s going to do is take me to the next junction, to “get me somewhere safer” – yeh cheers like.
8:20pm I’m sat in McDonalds now awaiting another call. Apparently a 3rd party garage will be sending a mechanic out to see if my car is broken. It is broken. It told me. I don’t need a mechanic. If the car says the gearbox is faulty, I think its pretty certain the gearbox is faulty. Given that it won’t move, I’d say its a safe bet that the car knows best.
8:50pm The garage calls me to tell me the mechanic is looking for me. At Junction 5 of the M42. NO! I am at Junction 5 of the M5 and have been the whole time! She doesn’t think he’s going to come to me as he finishes work at 9pm. Oh well that’s just fine then isn’t it. Cheers y’all.
9:00pm He did come. Nice bloke too. Says that the car is clearly broken and the AA bloke could have seen that, what a waste of time. I check into the hotel. I’m feeling rough as a badgers bum hole now. I swear the last AA man said they’d sort me out to get to the local Audi garage as it was going to set me back over £300 to get towed home.
Tuesday 26th March
Dodgy sleep again – the room was bloody freezing, despite having the temperature turned right up. No heat was forthcoming. Swines!
7:30am – Called the AA, the robot on the phone says its going to cost me £130 to get taken to the local garage. I asked him if they could do anything about the price, given that they’d left me stranded for just shy of 3 hours in -2 degrees on the side of a motorway. He says… no, the price is the price. What a twunt.
8:10am – AA bloke turns up. A really great bloke, so friendly and helpful, he can’t do enough for me. His name was Nick. He was in to mountain biking. He took me and car to the garage, made some calls about getting a hire car and eventually dropped me off at the train station. I can’t praise this guy enough. He must have got some sex last night.
10:32am – The train from Worcester arrives. I get on. It’s an eerily quiet train that goes through the Malverns. The countryside is beautiful and hilly, covered in snow. It doesn’t feel like I am in the UK any more. It’s so quiet here. I don’t quite feel myself either. The train conductor goes by and completely misses me, but checks everybody else’s tickets. I wonder for a moment if I am actually on the train, maybe I’m elsewhere. I don’t believe in all that after-life bollocks, but bearing in mind what happened, and the way its portrayed in so many films and TV, maybe this is it, maybe I’m actually still at the roadside, a mere freeze-pop.
12:09pm – back in Wales now, just passed Abergavenny. I have myself a table seat on the train. My luck isn’t entirely out then. The journey is going to take another two and a half hours and I’ve got 96% of my battery left on this laptop 9 hours worth apparently I’ll believe that when I sees it. I best get some work done.
themiseryguts 