I may comically exaggerate my dislike of certain things at times, but for the most part these are nothing but exaggerations for (possible) comedic effect. There are very few things in this life that I genuinely hate.
But the motorway that runs along the south coast, connecting, among other places, the town where I live (Southampton) and the town where I work (Havant, just beyond Portsmouth), is one of those things I do hate. Oh, M27, how I loathe and detest you so. How I wish you weren’t so awful. How I wish I wasn’t obliged to drive on you every day since, despite your shittiness, you are the most efficient means for me to get from my home to my work.
The M27 isn’t an especially poorly maintained road or anything — although the patch around Southampton has a somewhat bumpy surface that serves as a convenient “you’re nearly home!” landmark for my return journey — but it clearly isn’t suitable for its purpose. It’s heavily used by commuters every morning and evening rush hour, and it clogs up pretty much every day for well over an hour in either direction. You can set your watch by the traffic reports on local radio saying day after day that the M27 is busy between Fareham and Southampton Airport, since it is literally every single (working) day.
It’s one of those roads that clogs up for seemingly no reason. “QUEUE AHEAD,” the overhead signs will warn, offering a somewhat optimistic recommended speed of first 60mph and then 40mph (which can be translated to 40 and 15-20 in real terms respectively) as the sea of brake lights illuminates ahead and the flow of traffic slows to a crawl. Everyone will proceed like this for a while, and then just as suddenly as it started, it will clear up and start moving again.
There is one part of this dreadful road where it’s possible to see how jams form; I think I mentioned it a few days ago, but while I’m complaining it bears mentioning again. For the most part, the M27 is a typical three-lane motorway in either direction, but for one single solitary mile just beyond Portsmouth, there’s a fourth lane added on the “fast” side, dubbed a “climbing lane”. This is inevitably used by BMW drivers to pull out aggressively, charge past everyone else and then get stuck when, just under a mile later, the lane disappears again, merging back into what was before (and immediately afterwards is again) the “fast” lane. Jams form as those screaming up the climbing lane shove back in to the main flow of traffic, with other cars moving aside in an attempt to get out of the way of these aggressive drivers. Everyone ends up squished against one another and a jam forms; it’s no coincidence that immediately after the end of the climbing lane, the flow of traffic gets back to normal.
The reason I’m whingeing about the M27 this evening is because it decided to be particularly annoying for my journey home. I was tired, I was hungry and I just wanted to get home and relax. But the M27 had other ideas, first throwing a broken-down lorry in the middle lane in the path of everyone, followed by not one, not two, not three but four separate accidents in the space of about five miles. The weather wasn’t even particularly bad; there were just four separate but nearby incidents of disastrous driving; one car with all its windows smashed in the central reservation; another that had obviously skidded off where the motorway and a slip road parted ways at a junction; another where one car had seemingly hit the back of another so hard that the front of the former was practically fused with the latter; and another that I didn’t see just ahead of where I pulled off to actually get home, gnashing my teeth by this point.
I haven’t yet figured out the optimum time to do the commute to and from work. I’m beginning to think it might actually be in the interests of my own sanity to get up ridiculously early and drive in before the rest of the horde hits the roads; that way, I’ll get to come home before the rest of the horde hits the roads on the way back. I’m tempted to try that tomorrow, but it does involve getting up horrendously early, something which I struggle with at the best of times; perhaps it will be worth it, though. We’ll see!
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As the Grinch says – “Hate – hate – double hate – loathe entirely!!!!” 😀
Of course you could take the back roads. Mind you my friend did that last night on her way home late last night. She ducked out to the coast road to bypass a police convoy, but misjudged her return to the main road, got cut off by a motor cycle cop, then had to wait while not only the rotting whale carcase lorry – with whale tail flapping over the back – plus entourage passed her, but also the long tail of cars she’d escaped also passed by. They then crawled almost to her turn-off before turning into the garbage dump to bury the whale. Rotten luck i call it! 😀
PS: are you getting my comments now? Can you drop a quick reply to let me know. I hope you were able to go back over my earlier ones – as there were quite a few questions I asked you. Or maybe they have all been deleted by the Spam police. I guess because I often comment they thought I was being a pest.:(
Yes, you’re coming through loud and clear now! I don’t know how or why that happened, but at least you can smack the spam filter on the nose with a virtual newspaper and tell it not to do it again.