Forecourt Forage

I recall, more fondly than a Frenchman dunking a poncy biscuit into a weak, Gallic, beverage, childhood car trips up to Scotland to visit family.  This would involve a long drive from the Wild West Midlands through Birmingham, a stage of the journey that took us on a section of elevated motorway through a city of tower blocks, like Mega City One but without the glamour, and with Brummies instead of Muties,

The journey was broken by two pit stops, both at motorway service stations.  The first stop was at a motorway service station that was probably just north of Birmingham but could have been anywhere in England back then, a classic 1970s (oxymoron alert) boxy affair on each side of the motorway, linked with a bridge spanning the traffic.  Facilities were duplicated on both sides of the highway, an early example of cloning and so the bridge was either an unnecessary architectural flourish or a meeting place for intelligence officers, or both.  I couldn’t pick it out of a line up today but I could, I think, identify it by smell; classic leaded petrol, diesel fumes and warm tarmac.

I have no idea what the catering and dining facilities at this place were like, according to nostalgia sites on the inter web they were famously awful, because we always took a packed lunch.  This consisted of cheese sandwiches, cheddar on white bread, augmented if you were a child by adding salt and vinegar flavoured crisps on top of the cheese.  This early example of fusion cuisine tasted divine and to this day I think a cheese sandwich lacks something if it does not crunch when eaten.

This was paired with Thermos Tea.  Thermos Tea is distinct from tea from a Thermos.  Tea from a Thermos could be boiling water from one Thermos, tea bags added separately, milk added from another Thermos.  Thermos Tea is tea first brewed in a pot, then poured with milk into a single Thermos flask to provide a brew with that particular tang, especially if served from a Thermos that has been well seasoned.

The one facility patronised was the loo.

The next stop was in the Borders I think.  I don’t recall much about this service station, beyond it being surrounded by scenery that was so jaw droppingly spectacular that these days the hills would be crawling with location scouts for fantasy epics.  The hills, I recall, were always topped with mist, so presumably we were across the Scottish border by this point.  This is usually where more Tea was taken for the final push to Glasgow.  Tea which had now been maturing for some five hours and was probably the beverage equivalent of crack.  It was also here where the facilities were used, and I would usually be the beneficiary of the service station shop, a book bought to keep me quiet for the remainder of the journey.

We probably also used the loo here.

I should say that while service stations are all very well, I remain a devotee of the roadside cafe, a caravan located in a layby where a hungry trucker can get a bacon buttie, a cup of tea in a non-biodegradable cup, and a hand job from a tranny, and still have change from a fiver.

Garages, back in the day, used to sell three things; fuel, oil, porn.

Today, things have changed somewhat, although roadside cafes remain a bastion of tradition.

Motorway service stations have followed the airport terminal model and become, essentially, out of town shopping centres with a petrol pump attached, and you have to look bloody hard to find the petrol pumps, and when you do there’s probably a Costa outlet there as well.  As well as what is essentially a food court offering many varieties of fried snack, there are mini-supermarkets on site that would not disgrace an upmarket camp site.

Garages have changed too.  You can still by fuel and wine gums, but the porn has been replaced by ‘Hello’ and many garages now come with the obligatory mini-mart attached.  One near me has an M&S outlet.  That’s right, the poshest place to buy groceries near me is the local garage.

Postcard from the M25

Motorway service stations are like little villages. The village idiot is usually to be found behind the stainless steel counter of a fast food franchise, wearing a name badge that lies ‘happy to help’, a nylon baseball cap in corporate colours, an expression that would curdle the milk were it not UHT and a posture that suggests to the world that they are not at all happy with their current employment status, and that their ambitions are either to throw themselves into the next X Factor audition or under the next HGV that passes.

Actually, such motorway service station village residents are a dying breed, and not just because they are too busy sulking to reproduce. Rather, they have been replaced by young keen people who have worked out that, very much like the British during the Victorian era, a few years in some far flung corner of the corporate Empire will allow you to make mistakes without anyone noticing, indulge in a spot of gin-fuelled vice and then transfer back to civilization with experience far beyond your years, at least one interesting scar, many interesting stories, something of a reputation and a salary band at least three grades above your contempories.

Such a one was the young manager of Costa Coffee at Clackett Lane Services on the M25. Her name badge hinted at a Portuguese heritage, her accent hinted at Portuguese citizenship and her desire to flog coffee accessories hinted at a desire to be sitting behind a big desk in head office before the age of 30. Yes, we did want coffee, no, no biscotti, no, no sandwiches, no, no soft drinks, no, no extra shots…actually, yes, we have a motorway journey ahead of us and I want to be alert to the point of wired.

The barrista was no less enthused (I was wondering if the staff had been overdoing it with Colombia’s second most stimulating export, or whether they just cut to the chase and bang off a couple of lines of the most stimulating followed by a bucket of espresso to take the edge off before each shift), trying to convince us that chocolate sprinkles were an essential addition to any coffee experience.

Such enthusiasm was stimulating and refreshing, the bloody coffee was going to have to go some to compete.

Out on the car park, the media were prowling. The RAC had just today issued a press release, possibly written in crayon for all the sense it made, suggesting that it would be a good idea to raise the speed limit on motorways to 80mph. As we sat in heavy traffic, in roadworks and in tailbacks, it was remarked upon that it might be a good idea to raise the speed on motorways to 40mph before we contemplate any further increases.

As we had pulled into the car park, we had noticed a clean cut chap and a less clean cut cameraman rushing after a middle-aged motorist. Such was their enthusiasm that we tried to see if he was famous, a politician likely to be caught with his trousers down, or a rogue trader. He was none of these, instead he was a middle-aged demographic for their vox-pop. This is where the media had come to record the opinion of the nation about the proposed increase in speed limit.

They didn’t ask us, no matter how slowly we walked or how media-friendly we looked. And I even had my ‘I look intelligent and trustworthy, like a doctor before that bastard Shipman spoiled it for the whole profession’ spectacles on.

The presenter sported a classic look. A sharply pressed blue shirt, neat tie and close shave above the waist, faded jeans and disgraceful but comfortable shoes below. This meant he was either a teevee type or a Divorced Dad Dating Again. The cameraman was the giveaway, unless he’s the subject of a new Channel 5 reality train-crash ‘Divorced Dads’ Dating Disasters’. Also a giveaway was the lack of producer, researcher and sound guy. Five years ago a bloke with a microphone and a bloke with a camera alone would mean that they were doing a piece for the service station’s in-house video show ‘Channel Clackett’. Today and thanks to falling advertising revenue and lack of investment, this was probably ITV or local independent news. You could tell it wasn’t BBC because they didn’t have the normal news crew of half a dozen including guide and interpreter for journeys outside central London. And you could tell it wasn’t Sky, they would have had a helicopter thundering overhead.

Obviously though, I was not pop, or possibly not vox, enough to make up part of this particular vox pop. Possibly they already had the demographic I fitted, we had seen them covering startled pensioners (reaction: it’s far too fast, bring back boys with red flags) and they had probably already covered teenage louts (there’s a speed limit?) and businessmen in BMWs (80mph is far too low) and, given that they want some extreme views, probably had their bases covered. Or possibly, because this was ITV, they considered my lack of tattoos as likely to intimidate their audience.

Cultural Guides

I suppose that travel is what you make it. The problem is that so many people conspire to make it as unpleasant as possible, from Ringtone Joe on the train through Fastlane Fuckwit on the roads to, possibly more seriously, terrorists in the air (or malicious baggage handlers, they’re about on a par).

I was on the motorway this weekend, travelling to see my family and as usual my wife saw the opportunity of our being trapped together in a speeding metal box for two hours as an excellent opportunity to discuss our relationship in circumstances that make my trying to step out the door deeply inadvisable.

So that was time well used, but it’s not always the case. A lot of the time travel is limbo, you’re in hiatus as you travel from point to point. A good example were the airport cabs I saw, travelling from Gatwick to Heathrow, ferrying folk from one airport to another, presumably to make a connecting flight. The journey is about an hour, which is a short time in terms of air travel, but a long time to waste. Which got me thinking.

More and more cars these days have these in-car DVD players, to make sure that the kids get in-car DVT rather than getting exercise and entertainment through the traditional routes of squabbling, fighting and violent bouts of travel-sickness. Most travellers are curious about the country they are visiting or about to visit - so why not have a ‘cultural guide’ DVD in the car. No segment longer than two minutes, talking about all the things you really need to know about in a country; tipping, how to avoid being roped into folk-dancing, how to greet the chap standing at the urinal next to you, that sort of thing. You can use the DVD menu to navigate the various categories and geographical areas and, of course, you can listen to it in the language of your choice (note to manufacturer, always get the translation checked, you don’t want what you think is an Armenian translation of your piece about the canals of Birmingham to actually being a bloke saying: ‘visiting Birmingham? Then make sure to visit Jeff’s knocking shop, only two minutes from the station’).

Of course the real place for this sort of programme is on YouTube as a cultural guide channel. Every programme is a maximum of two minutes, talking about one feature of your town and the thing is, you can make stuff up! I’d love to see some proud local strolling through the pretty but unremarkable graveyard of his village church pointing out the burial places of Shakespeare, Dickens, JFK, Elvis and Frodo Baggins.

Everybody must have one feature of their home town they are proud of. I’d like to see somebody standing in front of a kebab van extolling the virtues of chilli sauce with the sort of brio you normally associate with a travel journalist doing a spot in front of the Taj Mahal. Or got an area where you want to advise visitors to avoid? How about a dispatch from Dog Shit Alley wearing a BBC approved flak-vest.

On the plus side, a balanced an honest view of the off-beat delights of an area may be refreshing, the only drawback is that after seeing a few cultural guides, the tourist may well ask to tell the cabbie to turn the car round and head for home.

Life (and death) in the fast lane

Travel in the modern world is, with a few exceptions, a pretty dreadful experience. Away from magazines whose pages have a glossy petrochemical sheen that makes you doubt their recyclability (unless its into other glossy magazines) and who link travel with first class air tickets or expensive cars, your average journey is usually just the dull bit between setting out and getting there.

Even the most luxurious modes of travel try hard to convince you that you are not actually travelling. Seats on aeroplanes now fold into beds to fool you that you are in a very small dorm room and allow you to studiously ignore the couple having sex in the next bunk, while cruise liners do their very best to pretend they are not ships at all but merely hotels with hulls. Why else would a ship have a pool? You’re in the ocean! The ‘this way to swimming’ signs should be pointing over the side.

Even if you’ve got an incredibly posh car, it’s unlikely that you’ve got a private motorway and so you are likely, at some point, to be stuck in roadworks, counting cones and watching the family in the car in front squabble. Luxury cars are not designed to make driving a pleasure, they are designed to make driving that bit more bearable.

The only way to really enjoy travelling is to be on a boating holiday where the whole objective is to get from A to B as slowly as possible, punctuated by many visits to waterside pubs, or get a push bike. The bicycle is the best travelling device ever - something that allows you to move swiftly from location to location while feeling gratified that you are getting their under your own steam. It also means that, unlike car drivers, you can have a flexible attitude to the interpretation of the Highway Code with especial reference to mounting pavements, haring across green spaces and being able to go up and down stairs.

The mode of transport I’ve never been able to understand is the motorbike. The motorbike seems to combine all that is worst about a bike - exposure to the elements, lack of a glove compartment, vulnerability in traffic - with all that is crap about a car - can only go on roads, costs lots to run. As I see it, the only reasons for owning a bike are: you have a beard and need an excuse for it, you are a man over 40 and as such the only leather you are now allowed to wear is a biker outfit or a gimp mask; or you have just turned 40 period.

Bikers have always annoyed the hell out of me - either as couriers in town or, worse of all, the way in which they thread between slow or stationary traffic on motorways. Maybe there was a time when a bike could do that and not be a nuisance but today, with bikes roughly the same size as an overstuffed sofa, it means that you have to move your car to let them through.

I recently learned the secret of surviving traffic - snacks! The last time I was in a traffic jam I had a cool box stuffed with crisps, chocolate and cold drinks. 45 minutes sitting in the fast lane? No problem, just listened to some tunes on the iPod and consumed about 40,000 calories. If I had not been thus occupied and, it’s true, reduced to a dazed state by all the fat and flavourings I was getting down my throat, I would probably have been able to register annoyance at the behaviour of the occasional biker shooting left and right of me.

This then, is the most probable explanation for the murder of a biker on the M40 last weekend. A biker was shot and the whole motorway was closed for a few hours. Inconvenient for those in the traffic, very inconvenient for the biker. Police think he may have been shot as the result of a biker feud after attending a biker rally. Me, I think that the guy spent a weekend with his biker mates and, on a high and considering himself king of the road, undertook and overtook and pulled all sorts of cheeky manoeuvres on the way down the motorway until he pulled that shit on somebody with a short temper and a long barrel on their illegal firearm.

Police intend to spend the summer visiting biker rallies and will probably complete the investigation short of suspects but with plenty of new gear for the cycle cops. As a line of enquiry it’s a pretty good one, certainly better than working on who has a grudge against bikers - they can start with pretty much the entire DVLA database. Me, I’d look for the car with the sticker on the side in the shape of a silhouette of a biker’s helmet.