I am at the end of the world.
Really I think probably I am. It feels like a million miles away from Cambridge, which almost it is, I suppose. It is snowing.
It is dark. I am in bed in a quite astonishingly modern place called a Travelodge. I have heard of these before but never stayed in one, and it is all a bit odd and full of strip lights.
Of course it is perfectly all right, really. It is fairly clean and mostly quiet, unless anybody moves or speaks anywhere in the place, and everybody is being polite, albeit in the Scottish sort of way that you know secretly means Buzz Off Back To England. The bedroom I am in has got almost exactly the same things as my little room in Cambridge, but somehow it is not nearly as peacefully reassuring.
I think perhaps I am feeling a bit pessimistic because I have just had dinner. Really I should have been suspicious when the menu said in large letters that it was two courses for fourteen quid, and I think there was even an exclamation mark, so it is entirely my own fault for being a cheapskate.
I did not eat two courses, because the first one was so determinedly greasy that I couldn’t face another. I looked at the menu for ages, and eventually decided that something called Mighty Burger, or similar, might be edible, which in hindsight was unduly optimistic. It was a pre-chewed squirt of chicken which had been fried in batter, and would have come in remarkable handy if you wished to restore some squeaky door hinges you happened to have brought with you. There was a tin dish full of chips, which managed to have the right sort of texture but no taste at all, even with almost the whole of the saltpot tipped over them. Actually the best part was the glass of water, which was much, much nicer than any water in Cambridge.
I am uncomfortably aware that I am being very ungrateful. I ignored the actual eating bit anyway, because I had got a good book to read, so that was all right, and in any case I have got some home-made fudge in a tub should I feel the need for some comfort-eating. I am warm and fed, and I dissolved away the leftover grease in my mouth when I got back to my bedroom, with some single malt brought from home and tipped into a toothmug, so in fact my spirits are high. Also the shower was hot, and wonderfully powerful, so despite everything it is a good night.
All the same, it has been a fairly difficult journey, and tomorrow might also have its problems.
It was all right when I set off. I flapped about for ages, as I always do before adventures, but finally set off with everything neatly packed into the car, and some blankets and a pillow for Oliver to sleep all the way home or in case we get stuck in a snowdrift for a fortnight and have to eke the fudge out at the rate of a quarter of a piece every other day.
It is three hundred and fifty miles to school, and after about two hundred miles the heater stopped working.
It was the fan. It would not blow hot air into the car.
I tried to call Mark who had left his telephone somewhere else and was ignoring it.
It was one of those brilliantly clear Scottish afternoons. There has been a lot of rain here, all of the fields were flooded. By the time I was getting to the final hundred miles or so, they were not just flooded. They had frozen, hard, with a white frosting of snow everywhere.
The last rays of sunshine that had been warming the car were fading, and I was beginning to feel chilled.
Fortunately I had got a blanket.
Mark called and when I told him, he explained that the problem was probably a thing called a Relay. By great good fortune, he said, he had put a spare one in the glove box, and I could just fit it myself, it goes underneath the dashboard.
I was getting very cold by then, because the sun had sunk away and the night was black, star-studded dark. I did not at all like the idea of stopping, and maybe having to open the doors, and shivering, and trying to find out how to take the dashboard apart with icy fingers.
I increased my speed instead.
It started to snow.
I was profoundly relieved to reach Elgin, even if dinner was not going to win any Michelin stars. It took me ages to warm up, but I am warm now, and my fingers feel a bit fat, and dry, and numb, the way they do after you have been cold for ages.
I have brought one of Mark’s boiler suits with me.
In the morning I am going to put it on and install the new relay.
That is tomorrow. For now I am going to bed. I think today has gone on quite long enough.
All the same, I am having an adventure.
