The Written Podcast: Long Car Journeys

There aren’t many things that I can never get bored doing, and driving is one of them. Whether it be a car or a van, there’s something about being behind the wheel which makes every trip, whether short or long, enjoyable.

What makes every journey unique is the traffic; you can take the same route to work every day and never be able to predict what’s going to happen next. Someone slowing down, attempting to pull out when they’re not supposed to, tailgating so close you can’t even read their number plate, and massive HGVs in a long line with one optimistic lorry attempting to overtake them all, causing a massive tailback of cars.

The closest analogy I can create to represent driving is playing a game of chess, except the board is as big as the gap between your house and your destination, and there are no limits to how many players can participate, and to make things even more interesting, you have no idea how many players are involved. In a game of chess, it’s safe to say, every game is different. There are rules you must obey when moving pieces about the board, and there may be similar strategies and patterns beginning to get noticed with the more games you play, but ultimately, every single game you’ll ever play will be different. When out on the road, there are rules you must obey when moving your car, and the patterns you’ll develop will be in the form of changing gears, looking out of your mirrors, and braking when necessary. Other than that, no two journeys will ever be the same.

I used to be a driver for a living, picking up and delivering cars to a garage and back to the customer’s home five days a week, and I did mainly in the town of Colchester, with many customers living further beyond. Colchester is notorious for having insane traffic jams throughout the town. No matter where you go, slow moving traffic will always greet you, whilst attempting to navigate around an endless sea of roundabouts and constantly stopping and starting at traffic lights; the only predictive thing about journeys in Colchester were when the traffic would be at its worst and best. I used to average about 200 miles a day.

But wait, if I’ve just stated that driving is one of only a few things I can never get bored with, why did I write the previous paragraph in the past tense? If I love driving so much, why have I stopped? Well, that’s a rather long story with many elements unrelated to driving and explaining the full story would probably take so long it’ll naturally turn into an autobiography.

Even though I compared driving to the game of chess, I’d like to point out that I actually don’t know how to play the game, but I do understand it requires a lot of strategic thinking and planning to checkmate your opponent. I picked chess because it’s usually played with a calm demeanour, with polite manners with a few unexpected moves from either player which would make even the strongest player sweat. But in reality, this game of chess is being played online, and every single online game ever played has people screaming at each other for something the other player has done wrong, or they believe someone is acting as if they own the board, or there’s a constant debate going on between two players on whether one of them performed an illegal move, whilst many players actually do successfully perform an illegal move and gets away with it because the administrators are too busy giving penalties to those who don’t deserve them. I may have gotten a bit satirical there, but I’m sure you have understood the point I’m trying to make, whilst also conveying that driving is such a unique venture every time you leave the house that it cannot ever get boring.

I love long journeys for many reasons, a couple of which I’m sure you’ll think I’m sad for suggesting it as for why I love driving. Watching the scenery change drastically multiple times as you bypass or drive straight through towns and cities, using driving as a reason to break away from the madness of everything and be with your own thoughts, the uniqueness of every journey, especially the long ones as I don’t get the chance to sink my teeth into a really long journey that often, and many other reasons which I could list in this article but you probably would get bored and rather go out driving yourself.

To finish off this article, I’d like to say that I now drive 350 miles a week backwards and forwards to work, with 99.9 percent of it being the A12, and that’s a duel carriageway that is infamous for being blocked with traffic from one end to the other. With it being the main road to London, lorries and commuters who understands it’s cheaper to run a car than it is to fork out a season ticket for the trains, my journeys used to be slow, with a few areas where I was able to reach the speed limit and remain there for a mile or so before having to slow down again as a tractor just merged, causing everyone to bottleneck into the overtaking lane and slow everyone behind down. And whilst traffic can be irritating even for someone who loves driving, the acknowledgement that what your experiencing on the road that day is unique for that journey and will never be replicated again. So appreciate and embrace the uniqueness, because it won’t happen again.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)