The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
RSS feeds: v0.91; v1.0 (RDF); v2.0; Atom.
Previous entry.
10:59am on Friday, 16th January, 2026:
Anecdote
Yesterday, my younger daughter's car was due a service so she drove it to the service centre. I agreed to pick her up from there and bring her to our house for the few hours the servicing would take.
We started off at the same time, with me following her. I'd normally have taken the A12 to get there, but my daughter turned right when the A12 was left, so I figured she was using the back roads. Unfortunately, I lost her when I had to give way to a skip lorry that was overtaking a line of parked cars (even though I had right of way), but no matter, I knew where I was going (unlike last time, when I went to the wrong service centre).
All went well, taking the usual back-road route, until I had to make a familiar right turn. The road was closed. It was only closed in the direction I wanted to go, but it was nevertheless closed.
OK, well that wasn't good. I drove on a bit, putting the destination into my car's satnav so it could find me a better route. It instructed me to turn right at an up-coming junction, so I did.
There are back roads and there are back-of-beyond roads.
The track it put me on was barely wider than my car. Furthermore, it was sunken, so there was no way I could have pulled to one side if a vehicle came the other way. I could perhaps have got past a pedestrian if they'd stood sideways, but I couldn't have got past a pedestrian pushing a wheelbarow.
Up ahead, I could see the red of a Post Office van. If it was coming the same way as me, I was doomed.
Fortunately, it was going the same direction as me, but I was still doomed. There was a tractor ahead of it with a tree-trimming attachment on the back. It was mincing the tops of the hedges down to an acceptable level. I can walk faster than it was going, although I wouldn't have wanted to, given the volume of wood chippings flying in random directions.
I stopped, texted my daughter to let her know I'd be late, then restarted and moved forwards the eight or ten metres I'd lost by stopping.
Eventually, the tractor pulled over into a field entrance so Postman Pat and I could get past. I followed the satnav, and in a wide circuit it brought me back to the road I'd originally come off. A three-point turn would have been so much quicker than a circular path along muddy lanes full of muddy puddles concealing muddy potholes.
When I got back onto the road, I followed the satnav and it told me to take the (now left) turn I hadn't been able to take the first time and still couldn't take. I had to drive on and find my own way to some location close enough that the satnav's recomputation didn't involve a U-turn.
I got to a set of traffic lights where the satnav was saying I was two minutes away. There were six cars ahead of me in the queue to turn left. The lights changed green. Three cars went through, then the lights went red again. I waited for five minutes before they changed back to green. Two cars went through, but the one immediately ahead of me was being driven by an overly-cautious driver and was slow to start. I was contemplating whether I could have sued him for this, but the lights held out for just long enough that I could get through before they were red again. Note that this doesn't mean they were green when I went through.
I was stuck behind this slow vehicle for the rest of the journey, which made it three minutes instead of two. It was on a very wide road with lots of room for overtaking, none of which was allowed because of a bus lane that's part of Colchester's rapid transit system (or will be, should they ever finish it).
I eventually arrived at the service centre twenty minutes late. My daughter had taken different back roads and so arrived on time.
Time passed, and after stiffing my daughter £104 for a new tyre over the phone, it was time to return her there so she could collect her car.
This time, I took the A12, which was fine. However, there were terrible queues of traffic to get back onto it. It was a solid line of cars over a mile long, all on the opposite side of the road, so there was little chance I'd be let in. The side I was on was clear, though. I therefore decided to go back home the way I'd come in the morning. After all, the problematic junction was only closed in one direction.
It all went swimmingly at first. There were some traffic lights on a bridge, but there usuallly are because the bridge has been periodically broken for three decades and any fix they make lasts at most six months before breaking again. Cars were coming the other way, so I figured that the junction was fully open now.
We got to the junction. It was fully closed. The drivers of the cars I'd seen coming the other direction had thought, like me, that the road was open. They'd turned around to try a different route. I was obliged to do the same.
My wife was with me this time, so she put our home address into the satnav and off we went.
Hmm, perhaps it would me more accurate to say way-off we went.. It took us through a village, which was fine, but then had us turn down a narrow country lane that was full of muck and scree from water washed off fields, a lot of which was still pooled there. The surface was uneven, missing edges where tractors had crumbled pieces off, and barely wide enough for two Fiat 500s to pass. We were the third car behind a delivery van that filled the whole road. So did the delivery van that was coming in the opposite direction. Eventually, the other one reversed into some kind of impact crater and we were able to get past. In time, we reached a road I recognised. It was the one I would have been on if the junction hadn't been closed.
The satnav didn't advise me to take this road, though. It advised me to take a different one.
The different one was a nightmare. By now, the sun was beneath the horizon and it was getting dark. Also, I was conscious that I really needed the toilet. An undulating, weaving, slip-slidy wet road at dusk is not the most ideal combination of driving conditions, but when you need the toilet it's somehow worse.
My wife was getting cross with our car's satnav by now, so found her phone (which is perpetually on low charge) and used that to find out where to go. It seemed we were stuck on this lane for the next few miles.
We were behind two other vehicles, but they turned off to go to a different forlorn villlage, so we were on our own for the next stretch. Other cars did appear, but they were obviously as wary of the road as we were so we were able to pass each other at only low panic levels.
Finally, the medieval lane we were on met a proper road, with white lines and everything. I knew this road. It was the main one through the village next to ours. Our satnav wanted us to go across it, though, continuing along the lane. I've been down that part of the lane on my bike. It's not a lane you want to go down on a bike, in case there's a car coming the other way: it's so narrow, you'd not be able to get past it. I don't go down it on my bike any more. I wasn't going to go down it in my car, either, especially with the growing urgency caused by my ever-filling bladder.
My wife's phone was saying to turn onto the proper road, too, so I did. The satnav offered repeated suggestions of where I could turn around to get back onto the dirt track, but reluctantly conceded defeat and recalculated a different route along a different narrow country lane I wasn't going to take because the last time I did I got a tree branch wedged under the car and had to lie in black slush to get it out. We ignored the satnav and I took the road I'd taken two hundred and fifty or more times before.
Toilet-wise, I was getting desperate now. The traffic was light, but it was being co-ordinated by the unseen hand of fate to slow me down. I had to turn right at a T-junction, onto a road that was empty but for one car, to which I had to give way. If it had apeared a second or two later I'd have been fine, but it didn't. It appeared at precisely the right moment to cause maximum delay. You have to admire the precision timing, but augh! That cost me twenty seconds!
I turned onto the road, followed my usual route in defiance of what the satnav was saying, until I reached the street before the one I live on. It's, quiet with hardly any traffic, and is easily wide enough for cars to pass with ease — unless someone has parked badly and is jutting out. Someone had indeed parked badly and was jutting out. I had to give way to the ONE CAR that chose to come the opposite direction at the EXACT TIME I needed it not to be there.
My now, my sphincter muscles were being stressed almost beyond endurance. It didn't help that my wife was laughing all the time at my predicament — and these weren't just chuckles, these were tears-down-the-cheeks howls. Augh! Augh!
I got to the house, pressed the remote for the garage, abandoned the car on thje drive, and raced for the downstairs lavatory.
Ah, sweet bledded relief! Another twenty seconds and I'd have needed to get the car seat replaced.
I've had fraughter car journeys, but not two fraughter ones for a local 15-minute drive in the same day.
Latest entries.
Archived entries.
About this blog.
Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).