Retirement and Motorway Madness?

I mean obviously I’m not losing my mind in retirement but I have to say I never realised a car needed an aerial to function but it is clearly the case because the day after losing the aerial in the car wash the same car broke down (I just can’t go on, it’s too hot, it said – without my aerial?) on the M1 after a visit to my mother. See photo with Archie circled. If you have read any of my ‘mother’ blogs you will know I didn’t deserve to find out this interesting fact on the return journey and in the manner that we did.

Picture the scene. After an hour of driving along at 15 mph or actually stopping – the signs, said ‘congestion’, then ‘incident’, then ‘delays’ (at another time it said ‘lane closed’ – it wasn’t but never mind it gave us something to think about while we were starting and stopping). This ‘driving’ experience happened going down as well when I was driving – we take it in turns – so we were doubly blessed. Large sections of the motorway between Leeds and Derby have a 50mph limit, 50?? Ha. Anyway I digress. Back to the scene, so after a very long time of minimal progress the traffic cleared for a while and Mrs Summerhouse always a little heavy in the right foot department was trying to make up for lost time – how foolish that would turn out to be. So there we were tootling along at about 75 or so in the ‘fast’ lane when she very calmly said, “We’ve lost power, it’s cut out.” She said it so calmly I thought she was simply making conversation. Turned out she wasn’t. “Hazard lights,” she said still calm. Rather as if she had said, what do you want for tea?

Anyway to cut this part of the story short, by good luck and good judgement, I wouldn’t know I had my eyes shut, we got to where the hard shoulder should have been, if you know the stretch you will know there isn’t one. We ‘coasted’, such a nice word, as far as we could and got to the slip road to Meadowhall. There, in as safe a spot as we could find – not a lot was on offer, we stopped on the chevrons. I cleverly moved one of the cones that happened to be lying around unused so we had our very own cordoned off area. Didn’t actually make us feel all that safe with massive juggernauts passing within a couple of yards at a hundred miles an hour but it was the best I could do. If you’re driving past Sheffield proceeding in a northerly direction as Dixon of Dock Green might have said, it’s still there, perhaps his ancestors still do for all I know, we don’t watch all those police interceptor programmes, if we did we’d know whether ‘suspect is proceeding in a northerly direct’ is still common parlance or this has been replaced with ‘the bastard’s going like shit towards Leeds’. I don’t know.

Anyway back to the hard shoulder or rather where the hard shoulder should have been. Traditional wisdom says get out of your car and climb the barrier and up the embankment. Problem was there wasn’t one of those either. There was a thick hedge right behind the barrier and then, as Mrs SH found out, a terrifying straight drop straight down to an industrial estate or some such. So even without two excited collies – this was beyond their normal M1 experience – getting out of the car didn’t seem like a great option. So we called the AA, time of first call was 3.30. Incidentally the 0800 number is not free from mobile phones, well, never mind I’m sure most people call the AA from their own homes. Complete and typically duplicitous and a hint of what was to come. Incidentally we got home to Leeds at 7.30. As the more mathematical among you will quickly calculate that is quite a long time for a journey that usually takes 30 minutes. Impossible you cry, that’s 4 hours, 8 times the normal journey time. How could that possibly be?

Well, briefly it went like this. The first 5 minutes were spent trying to tell this schoolboy on a work experience scheme, where we were. He said we will be with you in an hour. I said calmly, as the hundredth juggernaut shook the small Kia Piccanto, close enough to reach out and touch should we have wanted to, an hour!!??. You did get the part of the conversation that said we’re in a very dangerous place, didn’t you? Oh yes, sir, he said, you are a priority one call to the AA. That’s OK then. With little confidence we rang off and waited. 10 Minutes later we received a call back saying that because we were in a dangerous place – duh, right – a local garage, I thought that’s what he said but with the juggernauts (I’m tired of writing that word, I’ll just say traffic from now on) thundering by it was not an easy conversation. All I heard was somebody is coming soon. And they did, quite quickly really. Our hopes were high. I was wrong to be so optimistic as it turned out. This guy turned up with his big truck and winched the car, puppies included (they seemed to be enjoying it, at least Archie did, I tried to get a photo on the motorway but no space on one side and thundering ju – lorries on the other did not make for a great photo opp, Millie, much the brighter of the two hid under the seat, she may well have had her paws over her eyes, she does that sometimes) onto his truck. I did get a photo, you know, to illustrate the blog that was already forming in my head – might as well get a blog out of it, I thought.

So yes, this guy comes winches us up. Are you taking us back to Leeds I ask eyeing the car on the back of his truck? No, he says he, quick as a flash, “A akint spi capk medral”. Which turned out to be, “I’m taking you to the overspill car park at Meadowhall.” But surely my good fellow, that is a mere 500 yards over there, not even in the direction of Leeds. Anyway, turned out his only part in this unfolding drama was to take us to a place of safety. Then that was him done. He leaves. So that’s where we went, arriving only a few minutes before a second truck arrived also to take us to a place of safety. Blimey, I knew we were in a dangerous place but I hadn’t realised it was so dangerous that it needed two bloody great trucks to help us to safety. Archie loved it, nothing he likes more than a moving truck and man in a high viz jacket driving it. See Archie circled in photo above making sure truck man was doing it right.

“Are you the person that will take us to Leeds and home and food and drink and a little TV?” No, he said, but there’s a Sainsburys over there if you’re hungry.” “Oh, OK, then.” “I might be back if they can’t fix it.” “Can’t we just skip the bit where somebody else comes, maybe even the AA, and you take us. Oooh no, they have to sign it off. Turns out people had been abusing this ‘get you home’ (on the back of an AA lorry) and travelling for free all over the country. Yes, I find that difficult to understand as well. The things you learn while you’re waiting for the AA. Second truck driver leaves. 30 minutes later (about 4.15) we receive text from AA saying man will be there by 4.55 – get the idea of how the time is passing away. I’m giving the times a) because there’s little else to do in the overspill car park of Meadowhall and you notice the time and b) I want you to understand how it was we didn’t get home until 7.30.

Just to digress a little more in fact I am being unkind to Meadowhall overspill car park, if you look closely there are all sorts of things going off – from the possibly illegal – men moving boxes from one vehicle to another, the legal – men in high viz jackets driving dumper trucks, Archie loved these bits, and then, just outside the car park at Sainsburys garage where Mrs SH went looking for a toilet, two people, how can I put this politely, well never mind, having sexual intercourse (it was a very hot day custom-made for outdoor sex) against a wall round the back – of the garage I mean, although, never mind – when disturbed by Mrs SH the bloke pulled up his trousers, the woman her shorts, got in their sports car (so observant Mrs SH altho she didn’t get the make of sports car) and, as they drove past her, the bloke leaned out the window and shouted to a startled Mrs SH – “that was a freebie”. She was puzzled by this, what could it mean? And there was no toilet at the garage after all this.

So, yes, back to the main plot, a text saying a man would be there at 4.55. Man arrives at 5.20. He is in a van, there will be no free ride home with car on back and us and pups in cab with this guy. What happened to the idea of 4.55? I ask somewhat running out of a sense of humour by now. That wasn’t me, he replies, I just got this instruction – at 4.50. It’s a busy time of day, he says, it wasn’t this time of day when we broke down I point out a little grumpily. Have you any idea how frustrating it is to be having a conversation with somebody intellectually who you’re pretty sure you could wipe the floor with (yes, I know that sounds arrogant but I was getting a little fraught by now, this was not bringing out my better side) but you can’t, because YOU BLOODY NEED HIM.

He turns the ignition, the car starts first time and, unlike when we tried, it keeps running. I won’t be able to tell what’s wrong with it now, he says. Oh joy. I wonder aloud why he didn’t come straight away then. Can’t, that’s the responsibility of the towing company – both of them, I wonder? Hot tip, breaking down in the ‘free tow’ zone is not quite bonus it at first appears. Anyway back to the AA man. Well his gizmo does indeed reveal nothing, if that is not an oxymoron, says ‘it’s fine’ he tells me. So now what? I ask. And here it gets a little surreal. If you take the ‘back roads’ to Leeds I can follow you. The ‘back roads’? What does that mean? I ask, Oh you know – Rotherham, Barnsley, Wakefield, Nether Wallop, and many places I had never heard of. Hell no, I say I don’t know that way, I’m a motorway kind of guy. Why don’t we just go up the M1, I know that way. Can’t do it, sir, he says, if you break down in the road works (of which there are many still to go) I can’t stop. Well, we’re stuffed then aren’t we? Then he says, well you follow me then. Which was jolly decent of him, given all the evil, pin-sticking thoughts I’d been having about him. I was glad then I hadn’t voiced all my thoughts.

This blog is too long. So briefly, off we went and I can only say I’m glad I wasn’t leading, there are parts of South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire I never knew existed. The journey took an hour and a half (normal time 30 minutes. We arrived in Headingley, the AA man said, this used to be my stomping ground when growing up. That’s nice then. If I were cynical I might think he brought us home because he wanted to be reunited with his ‘old stomping ground’. But no, this whole experience had made me bitter and twisted. I ticked the smiley face on his sheet – that’s for you, not the rest of this farce, I said, still just a touch grumpy. Four hours all because the car didn’t have an aerial (no better explanation emerged, even he said he didn’t know what to put down on his sheet – his advice take it to the dealer they have more sophisticated equipment). So there we were. 7.30 and we still have the pups to take for a walk. They’ve been in the car for hours, and very good they were too, but now they are ready to party. And no, I’m not going mad in retirement, I’m just a bit weary.