Tuesday 27 November 2012

I am absolutely not paranoid delusional

The Highways Agency is gaslighting me.

Tonight they closed the A5, then denied it.

But I have them sussed. They are messing with my mind, trying to drive me to madness by preventing me from driving myself home.

More precisely, at 8.30pm from the Woodcraft Folk, not driving myself home, nor Shark, nor Shark's chum Tigger, sat behind me in the car innocently blathering away about throbbing glow-in-the-dark Santa hats. Well, she was doing that, until I had a minor temper thanks to closure of the A5.

Did I pass any warning Road Ahead Closed sign? Pah. It was more fun to let me waste yet more fuel and another 15 minutes before leading me to the shut-off Flying Fox roundabout. At which point, I could see no way out of this predicament without a U-turn, an extended tour of Leighton Buzzard, two more road diversions, the closure of the A146 and another hour and a half until I could be spat from the back-end of Bletchley in a fuming boil because the chippy shuts at 9pm.

Stupidly, I tried to make light of how another tenner in fuel costs and another two hours was added to my evening drive time, plus we were all going to bed starving. Ahem. I humorously suggested to my young passengers that the entirety of Milton Keynes was now sealed off in emergency lock-down due to a poison gas cloud, escaped mutant virus, rampaging pyschotic lunatic, or maybe flood, so now all the citizens were evacuated to Aylesbury. Let's go and spend the night there! It's easier to get into.

My attempt at humour didn't go down well. Like a lead balloon, in fact. Thus I faced the prospect of having to explain to Tigger's mama how I had not only hurtled her daughter about the Bucks countryside for two hours late into the night, starved her half to death without any supper, I also now had to explain why the next 15 years will be spent in trauma counselling.

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