1761: Sensitised

If you buy in to the popular perception that various forms of media — particularly movies, TV and video games — desensitise people to horrific and violent things, then you are an idiot.

Okay, that might be a bit strong, even if it’s what I believe. But the experience I went through this morning certainly drove home the fact that reality is reality, and fantasy is fantasy.

It was something I’d seen many times in the virtual world. Something I’d deliberately caused to happen many times in the virtual world. And yet seeing it in reality — even for just the fleeting moment that I did — was horrifying and disturbing.

I was driving to work as I normally do, along the M27, which regular readers will know is a road I despise for numerous reasons, not least of which is the fact that it gets very busy and seems to have more than its fair share of “incidents” and “accidents”, according to the overhead electronic signs. (I’m not actually sure what the difference between the two is, but I know that they both cause enormous delays on a nearly daily basis.)

It was early in the morning. The sun was just starting to rise, bathing the Eastern sky, which I was driving towards, in a pretty peachy-orange glow peeking out from behind the clouds. The day was dawning, and it was just about becoming possible to see things without the assistance of artificial lighting, though the streetlamps were still illuminated and most drivers still had their headlamps on.

The traffic wasn’t heavy — as I’ve noted recently, I’ve started leaving for work a lot earlier in the morning than I had done, as this allows me to miss the rush hour jams on the way to work, though I usually get caught in the beginnings of them on the way back when I leave. There was a steady flow of cars in both directions, though; people were on their way to work, though not yet in the numbers that would swarm onto the devil road just an hour or so later.

In other words, it was a perfectly normal morning. I was driving along, minding my own business, listening to some Emerson, Lake and Palmer and trying to make up my mind whether I was enjoying it or not, when suddenly it happened.

Over on the other side of the motorway, a small white van spun out of control then flipped over in what I can only describe as a movie-style crash. I was passing it by in the other direction as it happened, so I didn’t see the aftermath, but what I did see was enough to etch itself onto my memory for the rest of the day.

It didn’t look as if the van had actually hit anything; it looked like a loss of control. I wouldn’t have expected a simple loss of control to result in the vehicle leaping in the air and corkscrewing, however, but that’s what it did; it was a crash of the ilk you’d see in a video game like Burnout, only it was really happening. There was someone inside that van; there were people in the streams of cars that were speeding towards it, unaware that disaster had just struck a few hundred yards ahead of them. As I say, I didn’t see any of the aftermath, but I would be very surprised if there weren’t at least a couple of other cars involved after the fact — and I’d be even more surprised if anyone managed to get out of that without at least a few injuries.

It was a strange thing to witness; I felt surreal and disconnected, but at the same time painfully aware that it had really happened just a few metres away from me. It occupied my thoughts for the remainder of my journey to work, particularly as I saw the traffic starting to build up in the opposite direction and, with admirable response time, the emergency services start to make their way down the road to deal with the situation.

I don’t know how it happened or indeed what happened next; I hope that anyone involved in what looked like a horrific accident is as all right as it’s possible to be when something like that happens.

And if you’re heading out onto the roads in these wet and windy winter months, particularly first thing in the morning? Do please be careful.

1753: Shifter

It’s quite surprising what a relatively minor shift in your routine can do for you.

I said yesterday that I was going to try doing my commute a bit earlier than usual and see if that made a difference to my daily journey. Specifically, I woke up at 5:30am, snoozed the alarm for half an hour and got up at 6. Previously, I’ve been waking up at 6:30am, snoozing the alarm for as close to half an hour as I think I can get away with, getting dressed, having a quick breakfast and shooting out of the door as close to 7am as I can manage. Today, I managed to be out of the house well before 6:30am, which meant that it was still dark and cold — although at this time of year it’s still dark and cold at 7am, too — and well on my way to work considerably ahead of my normal schedule.

Surprisingly, I felt pretty alert. Sure, the espresso I had necked before leaving the house probably helped, but I often have one of those on “normal” days, too; this felt somewhat different, like I had somehow hit on the correct biorhythm and synced up my body with what the universe felt I should be doing and when.

I grit my teeth and clenched my buttocks as I approached the accursed M27 and prepared for the worst — and longest — part of my daily journey. I merged onto the main carriageway, accelerated, accelerated, accelerated… and before long, I was cruising at what I’d consider to be a normal motorway speed without being dragged to a grinding halt by overhead flashing lights declaring the recommended speed to be “40” and a sea of tail-lights indicating that no, I’m not going anywhere for a good while yet.

In other words, my journey was smooth, quick, uneventful and, most importantly, completely stress-free. I arrived at my destination in ample time to find a convenient parking space that didn’t involve a mile-long walk to the office; I walked the route to work still feeling fairly chipper and positive, and it put me in a good frame of mind for most of the day: compared to a lot of other days I’ve been working at that place, today was extremely busy and could well have been quite stressful had I arrived in a negative frame of mind. However, due to that good start to the day — all because I went through my morning routine an hour earlier than usual — it didn’t; rather than stressful, it was productive, and I managed to get a whole lot done on a big project that I’ve been working on, which was good.

Shame I had to go and ruin all that with my journey home, then; I noticed rather too late — i.e. once I was on the motorway and approaching a buildup of traffic — that I was low on fuel, and sure enough, a moment later the warning light came on. I pulled off the motorway to go in search of a petrol station, but made the mistake of driving into the black hole of despair that is Fareham, traffic capital of the South Coast, and ended up turning what should have been a 45-minute journey into one that took two hours. In stark contrast to how the smooth run this morning put me in a positive frame of mind, this appalling journey home was stressful, unpleasant and put me in a bad mood — albeit a fleeting one which has dissipated after some food and funny TV.

Just goes to show how little changes can make a big impact on the way your day goes and how you feel. I’m going to see if I can continue the routine of getting up at that earlier time and enjoying a smooth run in to the office of a morning; starting the day right is very important, and I experienced firsthand today what a big difference ensuring that start was a positive one made. So hopefully I will be able to keep it up.

I give it a week before I’m back to rolling out of bed five minutes before I absolutely, positively have to leave the house otherwise I’ll be late. But it’s nice to be (vaguely) ambitious.

1720: Jam

I’ve had a decent-length commute to work on several occasions throughout my life to date, and every time, I’ve found myself wondering how on Earth some of the road layouts I have to drive through got approved.

Take my daily journey to my current place of employment. The majority of this involves driving along a motorway that is a major route along the south coast. For starters, the road itself is in appalling condition — it’s something of a bumpy ride as I leave Southampton, then smooths out a bit later, though is still a bit of a pothole-ridden mess in a few places.

It’s some strange things it does with its layout that are the most baffling, though. My “favourite” — and I use this term loosely — is a short section of less than half a mile in length where the previously three-lane motorway turns into four lanes — the rightmost lane splits in two, with the new fourth lane becoming what it calls a “climbing lane”. I am unsure of the exact purpose of this fourth lane, because 1) the road there isn’t particularly hilly (either upwards in one direction or downwards in the other) and thus I question the need for a “climbing lane” if indeed it is for “climbing” a hill and 2) all it seems to get used for anyway is for BMW, Mercedes and Audi drivers to aggressively pull out into and then overtake the people they think are going too slowly. (Which, as I’m sure you know, can be summed up as “everyone”.)

Splitting into four lanes isn’t a terrible idea as it spreads the traffic out somewhat, and that particular stretch of the road tends to get very busy around rush hour. Which is why it’s utterly bewildering that said four-lane stretch lasts for, as I mentioned above, less than half a mile, at which point the new fourth lane then merges back into the third, almost inevitably causing a traffic jam every single day.

Predictable traffic jams are a pain in the arse, but you can at least plan your journey around them if you know that it’s 95% likely you will get stuck for at least 10 minutes in one particular spot. On my commute for another job much further back, the traffic jams around Winchester were so predictable — and so stationary — that I had the time to create a Gowalla (Foursquare precursor) check-in spot called Winchester Traffic Jam and write a description on my phone before anything moved again… then check into it every single day, because it was always in the exact same spot.

I guess the explanation for these dodgy stretches of road is simply that the amount of traffic has increased over the years, while the road capacity hasn’t. But there are places where it’s a clear and obvious problem; all you have to do is listen to the local radio’s traffic report each day to hear exactly the same places coming up time and time again. (And the traffic report lady demonstrating her slightly annoying habit of saying “Your queue…” instead of “There is a queue…”, as if queues are something desirable being handed out to everyone.)

Since you can’t just shut a major road off completely — particularly while people are commuting on it — it’s difficult to know how these situations could be resolved. I guess we just have to resign ourselves to the fact that yes, we are going to waste a considerable portion of our life creeping forwards at 10mph wondering if we should phone ahead to work and tell them that the traffic is, once again, quite bad.

At least it’s quality time to listen to some music or podcasts — something which I missed while I was working at home.

1459: What the Person in That Car is Trying to Say

During particularly long and boring drives — down a particularly tedious stretch of motorway, for example — I often find my mind wandering in various ways, pondering various subjects.

One of the things that occasionally pops into my head is a sort of “what if?” scenario about how communication between vehicles could work. If you’ve ever played a ’90s or ’00s space sim, you’ll know that it’s implied that most spacecraft have an always-open communication channel allowing them to be hailed by other pilots and installations, and it always feels fairly natural.

Were we to have an equivalent for our roadgoing vehicles today, the results would be anything but natural, since it would provide those with road rage with the ability to directly yell at people without having to stop and get out of their car, and it would also open the real world up to griefing and trolling. Of course, it might also facilitate helpful communication, but, well, the Internet has taught me to be something of a pessimist when it comes to forms of communication.

But if we consider the way that people in cars communicate with each other now, it’s clear that there’s something of a problem. Allow me to elaborate.

What is happening: The brake lights on the car in front of you are flickering.
What it means: The car in front is being driven by an old person.
Or: The car in front is suffering from a loose connection to its brake lights.
Or: The driver of the car in front isn’t quite comfortable with exactly how hard you need to press the brake pedal to keep it under control.
Or: The driver of the car in front is trying to send you some sort of message using Morse code.

What is happening: The car in front is continuing to drive forwards, but it has put its hazard warning flashers on.
What it means: There is a hazard.
Or: The car in front has broken down and is coasting to a smooth stop.
Or: “Thank you.”
Or: “Fuck you.”
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this also means “I am parking here,” regardless of whether parking is permitted here.

What is happening: The car in front is approaching a junction and its indicators are not flashing.
What it means: The car in front is going straight on.
Or: If the car in front is of German origin and costs more than £10,000, this may mean “I am turning left” or “I am turning right”.

What is happening: The car behind you is flashing its headlights.
What it means: “Hello!”
Or: “You’re going too slowly.”
Or: “You’re going too fast.”
Or: “Thank you.”
Or: “Fuck you.”
Or: “Look at my headlights, I bought them at Halfords, aren’t they bright?”
Or: “You should probably turn on your headlights, it is dark after all and I nearly ran into the back of you, you cretin.”

What is happening: The driver of the car in front is making a gesture that looks like he is tenderly stroking two invisible, curved penises.
What it means: I have no fucking idea, but I saw this once and it’s haunted me ever since.

1143: Kilo-Commuter

My brother posted a link on Facebook earlier about “mega-commuters” — a relatively small number of Americans (about 600,000) who travel more than 50 miles each way to get to work each day. He’s one of them.

Sounds hellish, doesn’t it? But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that bad.

I can’t make a claim to be a “mega-commuter” as the longest commute I’ve done on a daily basis was about 35 miles each way — I guess that makes me a kilo-commuter? — but that was plenty to potentially drive me insane. As it happened, it was the job itself I was doing at the time that did a much better job of driving me insane, but I digress; my distaste for the teaching profession and reluctance to return to it ever again is well-documented elsewhere on this blog. (In fact, it was my growing sense of discomfort at an ill-advised return to the profession that spurred me on to start writing on this ‘ere site every day in the first place, so I guess I can’t complain too much.)

No, believe it or not that’s actually sort of relevant, because my daily 70 mile round trip to get to and from work actually became something of a haven of calm amid the chaos of my professional existence. While I was in my car, no-one could “get” me. (Well, technically, I suppose they could; someone could have crashed into me and injured or killed me. But… oh, shush.) It was some time I had to myself to spend as I pleased… sort of, anyway — I mean, obviously I still had to do the driving bit.

Consequently, I found myself spending my commute doing things that I don’t really do any more as a “work from home” person. I listened to the radio. I listened to podcasts. I listened to a lot of music. I sometimes phoned people. (Hands-free, obviously.) I phoned people. Jesus Christ, I never do that now, largely because the telephone tends to fill me with an uncommonly-large amount of dread, but nope, the sheer tedium of driving down the M3 (or sometimes, for variety, the A31) every day was occasionally mitigated by actually talking to someone other than myself. But more often than not it was mitigated by listening to the radio or podcasts. I attribute the fact that I can tolerate (and even enjoy) Chris Moyles’ brand of comedy — something that it appears to be fashionable to hate — to the fact he accompanied me to work and made me laugh every morning through what turned out to be a very difficult period of my life. I’m not sure I would have stuck out a job that eventually pretty much gave me a nervous breakdown had I not had something like that to help me mentally prepare myself each morning. (Obviously ultimately it didn’t really work, but still.)

While it was nice to spend that zombified period of time driving in a straight line for about 50 minutes, the prospect of doing so every day isn’t really the sort of thing that makes you want to get out of bed each morning. You have to really like your job to be able to stick it out for longer than a few months. I somehow managed to convince myself to do it for a total of two and a bit years altogether — eventually I moved closer to the job that eventually saw me escaping the teaching profession, which is probably something I should have done sooner — but that commute was probably one of the contributing factors that made me come over all queer, as a grandmother might say.

Despite that, though, I do sort of miss it. I don’t have my own car at all any more — Andie and I share one, as I have no real need for my own now — and so long drives accompanied by the radio or podcasts are now an increasingly-distant, wistful memory for the most part.

Then I remember that I don’t have to get up before 6am any more and I don’t miss it nearly as much.

#oneaday Day 597: An Open Letter to That Guy Driving Up My Arse with His Lights on Full

Dear Sir,

I have not bothered to address this post “Dear Sir/Madam” because you and I both know that if there’s someone on the road driving like a dicktwat, it’s inevitably a person of the penis-sporting bloke persuasion, and often sporting a small penis at that. (I have no actual empirical or scientific evidence for this, but it is a fact.)

I write with regard to your driving this evening, when you drove up our arse (not literally) with your lights on full (literally) in an attempt to overtake by any means necessary. I can only assume that you were either on some sort of secret mission and being pursued by Polish mobsters or that you were Polish mobsters pursuing someone on a secret mission. Otherwise I can’t possibly imagine what would require you to get past quite so urgently on a relatively quiet Wiltshire road at about 7.30 in the evening.

I do hope you didn’t find the fact that we were driving relatively slowly to be too much of an inconvenience. Obviously being in our own car we were unable to hear what you were saying, but doubtless you were encouraging us to drive faster. However, as you undoubtedly discovered when you did eventually get past, we were ourselves driving behind a large milk lorry which felt the need to brake for every slight corner, however shallow it might have been.

I trust that nothing in your car’s interior or about your person was on fire at the time of you requiring to get past with such urgency. As I have already intimated, I am somewhat at a loss as to exactly why you would need to be in front of us quite so urgently. Perhaps your scrotum was being eaten by a flesh-eating bacteria and you were on the way to receive treatment at a hospital. However, if this was indeed the case and you find yourself the unfortunate victim of scrotal flesh-eating bacteria again in the near future, I would encourage you to call for an ambulance rather than attempting to drive there yourself. Having your scrotum eaten by flesh-eating bacteria is doubtless somewhat painful, or at the least somewhat irritating, which would take your attention off the road to an arguably dangerous degree. While it may be embarrassing to explain to the nice ladies and gentlemen on the 999 line that your scrotum is being slowly ingested by said flesh-eating bacteria, you’ll only have to explain yourself in person when you eventually arrive at the hospital clutching your ballsack to yourself like a bag of marbles with a hole in it.

Perhaps I have misjudged you. Perhaps you were, in fact, on a humanitarian mission to deliver food to poverty-stricken families in a Third World country. If this was indeed the case, however, you are a long way from the nearest airport, being in deepest darkest Wiltshire as you were. And although there are plenty of hills here, I doubt very much that parking atop one of them and throwing the food off would carry it far enough to reach its intended recipients.

Or perhaps I was correct in my initial snap judgement of you in that I believe you are a bellend. The fact you overtook first us and then the milk lorry on a dark road with little regard for whether or not anything was coming the other way suggests something of a devil-may-care attitude towards life which some people may find laudable but others may find to be the mark of a tit-faced wanksplat. I am, as you may have guessed, in the latter category.

I remain, sir,

Yours,

Pete Davison

#oneaday Day 586: The 4AM Club

There’s a marked difference between those who drive late at night and those in the early morning. The night is filled with Mercedes drivers and chavs who believe they are the only ones with the right to be on the road, and that anyone driving slower than them is scum; conversely, those out driving at some ungodly hour in the morning are somehow brought together by a sense of camaraderie — we’re all doing this because we HAVE to, not because we want to.

Such as it was this morning when I had to rise from my slumber in the darkness of 4AM and drive my empty van 150 miles back to return it, only to later load up my car with the last few bits of crap and drive back that same 150 miles for hopefully the last time for a little while.

It’s not all bad driving at stupid o’clock though. Driving through the sunrise is pretty cool. And the fact that the 4AM Club is a fairly exclusive club means that roads are quiet and traffic is minimal.

Despite all that, though, I’m looking forward to the mother of all lie ins tomorrow.

#oneaday Day 563: A55 H013

I drive relatively normally. That is, I’m inclined to go a bit faster than you’re supposed to on motorways, but I generally keep to the speed limit in built up areas. My pulse quickens when I see a policeman, and I get out of the way when there’s any kind of blue flashing lights nearby. I don’t drive like an old man who consistently drives 8mph below the national speed limit, but neither do I drive like a boy racer (largely due to the fact the car I drive is incapable of acting like a boy racer’s car).

Tonight on a long journey, I encountered possibly the biggest asshole I’ve ever had the misfortune to share a piece of road with. I was driving along a stretch of dual carriageway and was in the right hand lane as I’d just overtaken a truck that was going about 40mph.

Screaming up behind me came some git with his headlamps on full beam going at least 90, probably more. He obviously wasn’t going to stop so I had to get out of his way quickly. I flashed my lights at him in disapproval as he passed, which prompted him to pull over into the lane in front of me and start driving at the speed limit. I didn’t have a problem with this and didn’t see any need to overtake him again, as he was obviously driving like a bell-end.

He obviously wanted me to try and overtake him again, though, as he pulled out into the right-hand lane and slowed down to let me pass on the “wrong” side. I did so as I saw no sense in playing his stupid games. He promptly pulled in behind me and put his headlamps on full again. After a few minutes, he gave up and just settled in behind me.

I’m not entirely sure what he was trying to prove or achieve, but whatever it was he didn’t succeed in anything other than making himself look like a complete cunt. Perhaps he thought that driving in such a “daredevil” manner made his penis sprout an extra few inches. Perhaps he had someone in the car with him that he was trying to impress. Perhaps he really thought he had more of a right to be on the road than me.

Either way, he was a complete and utter cheesy knob-end and I hope he skids off the road into a ditch somewhere. Not so he dies, but so that his precious car is wrecked and he is uninjured, so that he has to pay a ridiculous amount of money and have to deal with The Lords of All Cuntishness, insurance brokers.

Yes. That would be nice. Sadly, he probably won’t end up in a ditch and right now he’s probably harassing some other poor motorist having to drive out late for whatever reason.

But he’s still a festering bellend.

#oneaday Day 72: Jam on Toast

The tail-lights of the cars in front of you brighten as they apply the brakes. Your collective speed drops. There seem to be an awful lot more cars around than there were a moment ago, and a few trucks, too. Your heart sinks.

Yes, you’re entering a traffic jam.

At this point, you will do one (or more) of several things. You may suddenly wonder if you have enough music to cover the entire period this eventuality may cover. You may consider phoning someone at your destination to let them know you’re likely to be late. You may decide that no, this jam couldn’t possibly last for very long because it appeared out of nowhere, so there’s no need to phone ahead, because you left the house with plenty of time to spare just in case this happened. You may emit a string of incredibly loud and offensive swearwords—this is considerably more likely if you’re in the car by yourself and/or are an extrovert/sufferer of Tourette’s.

Then you see the electronic signs warning you of the “recommended” speeds (or, if you’re on the M25, the actual variable speed limit which you can be pulled over and/or caught on speed camera for.) You see it and you figure that hey, 40 mph may not be quick, but at least it’s moving, right?

Wrong. What they don’t tell you is that the “recommended” speeds are actually a cunningly disguised secret code. Fortunately, I have cracked it.

20mph – You ain’t going anywhere for at least an hour and probably more like three hours, plus.
40mph – You will move, but very slowly. You will be lucky to break 20mph.
60mph – You will move at a relatively comfortable speed but will be lucky to break 40mph and will often have to brake suddenly for no apparent reason.
End of speed limit – Theoretically, you are allowed to drive at full speed now, but the volume of traffic coming out of the jam means that this will be very difficult to achieve for at least another half an hour.

People have developed various coping mechanisms in order to deal with the stress and frustration of traffic jams. You could shout and swear some more. You could turn your music up. If you’re a Mercedes driver, you could weave in and out of lanes in an attempt to get as far forward as possible. And if you’re an asshole, you could use the hard shoulder and/or filter lanes for junctions to “jump the queue” and get as far forward as possible by barging in. But if you do this, you deserve to be scooped up by a gigantic super-powerful electromagnet (which picks your car up, obviously, not you, unless you’re a robot) and fed to an ant-eater which has been inflated to unnatural proportions via the ethically questionable misuse of SCIENCE! and which has developed a taste for cars—so much so that the giant form of the ant-eater has in fact been re-dubbed the car-eater.

So yeah. Don’t do that. Sit and wait patiently. Because ultimately, no amount of screaming, shouting, swearing, lane-weaving or driving like a dick is going to affect the fact that there are hundreds of cars stuck in place, just like you. And until the day when all cars have a button that allows them to take off and fly away like the DeLorean in Back to the Future (when, if you think about it, we won’t really need roads at all any more) there’s nothing you can do about it.

So sit. Wait. Suffer with the rest of us.

#oneaday, Day 284: M25? More Like… Hell… 25?

There are many famous roads in the world. The Champs Elysees in Paris (or however you spell it… I have no idea where the accents go and also have no idea how to type accents on my netbook). That really dangerous road they drove along in Top Gear. Yungas Road. I knew that and totally didn’t Google it.

But there’s one road you won’t find in the tourist guides, but it’s a well-known road to British motorists. It’s a name which strikes fear into the heart of motorists from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

It is the M25, the Devil’s Road, also known as the London Orbital. For the uninitiated (or American) amongst you, this is a motorway (freeway) which runs around the perimeter of London (capital of England) and goes round and round and round and round. In theory, this sounds like fun. Who doesn’t like driving laps around things?

Unfortunately, the M25 is the single most frustrating road in all of Britain to drive on, largely due to the fact that despite it being (sometimes) one of the widest roads in Britain it is also one of the fullest. Particularly if they’re digging it up. Which they always are.

Couple this with the inexplicable “variable speed limit” section (“You must drive at 60! Now 50! Now 40! Now 60 again! Now 70! Go wild! Oh! 50! Got you! SPEED CAMERA.”) and you have a road which is infuriating, frustrating and capable of producing some of the most creative expletives on the planet.

Particularly if you drive on it at rush hour, as I did tonight. And Rush Hour on the M25 lasts for approximately six hundred years and features a time distortion allowing six hundred years to take place in the space of a single day. You could read War and Peace in the time it takes you to get from Heathrow Airport to Staines at rush hour.

So fuck the M25. Fuck it right in its stupid ass (somewhere around the Dartford Tunnel) and find another route. Seriously. If you need to go from somewhere north of London to somewhere that is in a different compass direction from London, then for God’s sake avoid the hell out of London. Because for all its good points, London and its surrounding suburbs hate cars. HATE them. They want them to die. And they think that everyone who drives a car should die too, or at least pay considerable amounts of money for the privilege of driving a car.

Which is probably for the best, given that without the various tolls and “congestion charges” in place, London would be more backed-up than an old, constipated man’s bowels. I mean, more than it is already.

This has been a Public Service Announcement on behalf of the Highways Agency, who also think you should fuck the M25 in its stupid ass, which is why they keep smacking it with hammers and diggers. In, you know, an attempt to, like, get at its ass. Or something.

I don’t know. A 2.5 hour journey took me nearly 6 hours tonight. So my brain is addled. I think it’s time to drink Cherry Coke and scrounge a satay chicken skewer. Good night!