from A to B via some other letters.
Starting up.
7:30. Why always so early? Every time we go anywhere, the travel schedule always ends up with us having to make this stupid early start. I know for a fact I’ll have to spend most of the day strapped to a badly upholstered foam-rubber seat, so the least he could let me do would be to give me a few minutes to clear my head in the morning, before rushing us out of the door. No, we have to be up, showered, sated with gulps of coffee which is either scalding or tepid depending on the amount of milk, and out of the door before any decent person would be out of bed. He says he’s ‘playing safe’, but I know what this means. It means we’ll end up sitting in some bog-awful little café somewhere because we’re two hours early. It’s happened before. I still have memories of trying to find an open café on a mid-Glamorgan Sunday afternoon. He always does it. He never listens to me. Worse than this, we can’t even listen to ‘Today’, and at least have the joy of the reassuring tones of John Humphries or Rabbi Lionel Blue, because he says Radio 4 interferes with his driving. Instead I’m facing the prospect of 6 hours of the sickening-sweet pop that Radio 1 mistakenly thinks people want. Commercial stations are even worse, and I’ve put a ban on Radio 2 because listening to Steve Wright makes me want to kick babies. I drag my weary, don’t-want-to-be-here, what-the-hell-are-we-doing-going-to-Milton-Keynes body to the Corsa, put on my seatbelt and wish I was still in bed.
"Ready?"
"Yep, let’s go"
On-Ramp
Bloody rush hour! How is a rush hour even possible in Church Fenton? I sometimes think I’m the only person here who drives, but for some reason this morning every wheeled vehicle in West Yorkshire seems to be out for its constitutional at this exact moment. We’re going to be late. We’re going to be late and Alan Parfitt from the Swindon office will be so, so smug. I bet he got down there last night, the little bastard. Anything to get one up on me, any damn thing! He’d rather stump up 50 quid for a hotel room than let me look good. I said we should have set off earlier. We have to be there by 2:00, and I just knew we’d get caught in the rush hour. I specifically told her last night that we had to get there in plenty of time, but did she listen to a word? Does she ever listen to a word I say? Fat chance. It was twenty five to bloody eight before we got going. We could have been out of there by seven. If we were going then we certainly wouldn’t be stuck in bloody rush hour now. I can’t even do anything about it. I’m going to arrive late, have to go in there with my shirt creased from the journey, looking like a right idiot and it’s all her fault!
Inside Lane
He hasn’t said a word for half an hour. Doesn’t even look at me. I’ve got no idea what he’s so angry about, but every few minutes he snarls something under his breath. His lane changes are savage. I still don’t know what’s happened. OK, we were held up for 5 minutes outside Church Fenton, but that was nobody’s fault, and the traffic disappeared as soon as we got onto the motorway. Something’s put him in a foul mood, but I have no interest in finding out what it is. I don’t give a damn about him any more, he can drive like an idiot if he really wants to. God I hate this journey.
Junction 32
She isn’t saying anything. I’m beginning to feel a little bit bad for being in such a mood with her. I suppose I can be a bit of a moron at times like this, always blowing my top, but she knows what I’m like. She knows perfectly well that I like things to be just right. She’s known this all the time we’ve known each other. I admit it, I’m a perfectionist, is that such a crime all of a sudden? I wish she wouldn’t sulk like this, it makes me worry, and if I worry I don’t concentrate on my driving and we get later and later and CHRIST! I was nearly sidelined by a sodding great big huge truck, don’t those bastards keep an eye on the road? He could have killed me! Some trip this is turning out to be.
Little Chef
I
If he had his way, we’d have brought sandwiches. I think that’s how he sees me in the end, the little obedient wife/mother, making sure her darling little hubby’s packed off on time to work with a goodbye kiss. Barefoot and pregnant, that’s how he sees me. I could have done something like sandwiches if he didn’t insist on leaving at such godawful hours. Instead, we pull in to this place. Inside it’s simultaneously sterile and messy. The identical formica tabletops, smeared with just about identical plastic food from the last busy worker ants to trundle through. The waitress caring more about her reflection in the window that the pain au chocolat that I order. The old man sitting in the corner, sipping strong vile coffee, staring at the tits in the Sunday Sport. I want to leave the moment I get here, but I say nothing. We’ve stopped now, and anything I say will just make him angry because, as usual, all this is my fault. Cigarette fumes waft round the ‘no smoking’ signs, as ignored as reason in war. It’s all synthetic. Synthetic tables smeared with genetically modified grime, served by drones, eaten by clones. The thin grey line. I struggle the food down, all the time acting like I’m having a really good time and no, I don’t mind a bit that I accidentally sat in a smear of mashed potato. I grin like a stupid child - how he treats me, really - until we return to the car.
II
Now this really is the limit. I can handle the awful food, I can handle the secondhand smoke, but the coffee is unbearable. I set a lot of store by coffee, I’ve become somewhat of a connoisseur, in fact. I can tell the difference between a good coffee and a bad one. I bought a kilo of Jamaica Blue Mountain Peaberry last year, wonderful stuff. The rubbish they serve at this place is enough to put me off it for life. It’s strong to the point of nausea, reheated instant coffee which smells at least seven days old. No sugar, as the brainstem functions the waitress uses instead of thought haven’t told her to refill the sachet tray yet. The worst, though, is yet to come. I try to get milk. No milk. I try to get cream. No cream. Instead they produce these little cartons of a disgusting white liquid jokingly called ‘creamer’. I’m surprised I keep my composure throughout the meal. She seems happy enough. She always does.
Spaghetti Junction
I’ve just woken up from one of the most confusing dreams I’ve ever had. Like most dreams, it’s fading like fairy gold now, but the soft quicksilver lines it drew on me can still be seen from the corner of my mind’s eye. I can see him before me. Not as he always seems now, staid and pedestrian, but as he was then, way back when. I see the nervous accountancy student asking me to dance. I see how red his face is, and hear the slight stammer in his voice. I fell in love with that stammer, I always thought it was beautiful. It showed that underneath it all, he wasn’t the cocky facade he projected. There was a softness in him. A kindness. He was kind, still is, in his own way. Not so an outsider would notice, to them we’re this teflon coated couple, nothing sticks to our armour of respectability. It’s not done to show how one feels in public; cloying affection made you look like less of a go-getter. Not his fault, I suppose, just the way he was brought up. In spite of it all, I still love him.
Milton Keynes
The roads were clear most of the way down. A pleasure to drive, really. After we’d gone through Birmingham, I put the radio on. I think this cheered her up a lot. She’d been looking fairly down before, and when she was snoozing, I noticed a tear on her cheek. Probably just something in her eye, but I hate her to look unhappy. We’re nearly there now, and the roads are still good. If we have time, I’ll take her for lunch at Victoire’s to say thanks for being so great about today. I know she didn’t want to come, but everyone was bringing his wife, I could hardly say she wanted to stay home. We pull into the Conference Centre car-park ahead of time, the journey at an end.
"Everything OK?"
"Everything’s fine, let’s go."