Nearly two hours of my Tuesday morning were spent following a custard yellow Suzuki Ignis down the, supposed ‘fast’ lane of our nations main motorway, the M1, at various speeds never exceeding ten miles and hour, and mostly comprising lengthy periods of dead stop.
I thought that the half-term holidays would give me a brilliant opportunity to cover the 120 miles from Huddersfield to Solihull to collect the replacement glass for our, as yet never lit stove, from FlameSurge UK. What should have been a leisurely two hour saunter south ended up as a three and a half hour purgatory, a numb bum, and an aching back.
Spot he difference;
As with ninety percent of UK traffic jams there was no explanation except ‘sheer volume of traffic’, words that strike fear into the heart of any motorist. The traffic is one of the aspects of UK life which will not be missed, and which I will quickly forget in the land where two cars at pedestrian crossing is considered a traffic jam, and where there is no direct translation for the phrase ‘road rage’.
My next challenge is getting the panel to the barn in Galicia in one piece.
It is too large for carry-on and won’t fit in EasyJet’s dreaded luggage measuring contraption. That means it is condemned to the hold and thrown to the mercy of baggage handlers, the ones who take great pleasure in playing football with anything marked ‘FRAGILE’.
At the moment I am trying to decide between a ‘pass the parcel’ arrangement of boxes and bubble wrap, a rigid suitcase and a large amount of ‘ghost poo’ (see picture right), or commissioning a custom wooden crate.
Am I just being paranoid?
