I left home a little after half past seven this morning and nearly three hours later I've traveled sixteen miles. Apparently it's an overturned lorry in the road works between Sheffield and Chesterfield and the motorway is now shut whilst men in reflective jackets look at it and scratch their heads. Oh joy. I've no idea quite how you manage to turn a lorry over on a fine day in a forty mile an hour limit zone, let alone pick it up again.
Still, it is sunny, I've got air con and Tom Waites singing of a town with no cheer, which is morbidly appropriate at least. I've stopped at the services for a cheese sandwich and an iced mocha, and it occurs to me that I was stuck like this a year ago, and indeed blogged about it much as I am doing now. Is this another pattern of my life, as immutable and inevitable as the seasons of the year? Am I doomed to relive the same traffic jams like some sort of motorway based groundhog day? Perhaps the devil is in the details now? Twenty eight degrees and Tom is singing of a soldier's things as I queue to leave the services. I hear war stories of people who joined the queue at half past six and reports of slow traffic stretching back to Leeds.
Nearly twelve o'clock now and I think this jam edges out last year's, with a combination of heat and a complete lack of movement. Some drivers are sitting on the grass sunbathing, brickies with shirts off and businessmen with rolled sleeves and a cautiously loosened tie.
Nothing for it, but to turn back at junction 30 and head for home and I get there in around twenty minutes compared to the five hours or so of the outbound journey. Barmy, utterly barmy,
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