Breakdown

This is how I spent one of my days of the holiday:






This particular day, I'd told my son I'd fetch him from his Dad's, an hour's drive away, to take him to the dentist nearer home. Then I was to return him to his dad's, and come back home.

Well, pick up was fine and dentist was fine, then, when we headed back to his dad's, and there was a build up of traffic.

There had been an overturned lorry on the motorway, and we'd just past an exit (M23) so there was no way of getting off the road for another mile or two. The traffic hardly moved at all, then came to a grinding halt. Up to this point took the grand total of two hours. As is my wont, I switched off the engine each time we stopped for any length of time.

We had now (finally) gone a few hundred metres and reached the slip road of the M23; and the traffic appeared to suddenly be moving faster, and I thought whatever had blocked the carriageway had been moved. I turned the ignition and...nothing. We were in the middle of three lanes of traffic moving round us, with a further two lanes coming on to the motorway just where we were, and the engine wouldn't start!!! Yikes!

At that point, my lovely son, all on his toes, decided to phone his stepmother to tell her we might be late!! Of all times. I could even hear her saying, "Are you off the motorway?" whilst I was shouting at him we needed to get off before the traffic really got going.

I needn't have worried. After that initial spurt, it all settled down into inertia again. Somehow, though, before it did, the two of us (of course nobody came to help.... they sat in their cars and watched the show! :-S) managed to push the car to the side through cars that were coming out towards us.

Anyhow, we made it to the hard shoulder of the slip road, so now had five lanes of traffic to our right. I had to phone my sister for my breakdown service number as I'd taken the card out a couple of days earlier to write down the number (dont' ask!) and forgot to put it back. And so started an afternoon of phone calls...to home, to the AA, to the ex, and all and sundry.

We left Tunbridge Wells at 1pm, and even though we were only a mile from our destination, when we were finally rescued at 7pm (apparently the soonest anyone could get to us, despite the accident having been cleared an hour earlier :-( ) we had the choice of going on and remaining there, or returning home. We chose home. We didn't get back until 9pm as there were jams everywhere that day. I'd left home at 9am, so it was nearly a full 12 hours on the road!!

The very worst thing was the lack of food or drinks - mostly drinks. All I wanted was a glass of water. Luckily we'd had a quick bite before we'd left T.W., but by 6pm, standing for over 4 hours in the pouring rain, on the side of a motorway with no barrier to sit on, with no food and no drink, I can tell you I could almost have eaten the wasp that crawled up my legs (twice!). I kept imagining what it would be like to have a pint cup of tea, and each time I spoke to the woman on the other end of the AA line, she said she'd see if whoever fetched us could bring us something, or take us somewhere after we got of the motorway. That never happened.

On the way home, though, it occurred to me I could do with a hot, spicy meal courtesy of the rather excellent Indian takeaway in the village (one of the few shops we have), and phoned my sister to ask her to order it. When we got home (9pm remember, soaking wet and knackered with all the phoning and hopping around to keep warm) the meal was ready. Yum!! Boy, was it good!

(Son had just opened window when engine died.
Couldn't shut it, so it rained in the
window for the next six hours!
Towel is to stop the electrics getting too wet...)

But, do you know what the very worst of it all was? Next morning, I went out to the car with another AA guy (it was too late to be fixing the car the night before, and besides which my son and I were exhausted!) I found my son's bag on the floor where he'd been sitting. Since the car was about to be towed to the nearest garage, I figured I'd better take it into the house. It kind of sloshed. I opened the bag up, and lo - a flask of coffee, a banana and a cereal bar!!! I just stared in amazement. We'd had no food or drink for 8 hours, and it would have made all the difference in the world...and here in my son's bag was sustenance!!

Of course, I went quickly back in the house, and shook my sleeping son awake (being a teenager... rarely up before mid-day in the holidays!) and asked him why he hadn't said anything about the goodies in the bag.

His answer? "I forgot."

GRrrrrr!!!