The Highway's Jammed With Broken Heroes (21/6/13)

Okay so here's how yesterday's actual blog would have started if things had gone to plan;

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold" - no, hold on, strike that, that's Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas. What I meant to say was;

"We were somewhere around Stafford in a miserable queue on the M6 when the Caramel Bites became too melty and icky to eat any longer.

Not the greatest start to a blog ever (I don't think I'm ever going to top 'so, erm.......I killed a dog') but it amused me while I was driving. Or rather while I was standing still in a stupidly, unbearably hot car with the prospect of a supposed two hour drive turning into a four hour slog.

My intention was to blog it from a spot on Coventry City's pitch while we waited for Bruce Springsteen to hit the stage.

And here's why I didn't;

Picked Tom up from college at 3.15pm, straight from letting out. I was on a half day (going in for half a day in the middle of my holidays finally paying off) Asda butties in the car for the tea that we wouldn't have time to pick up anywhere, J's Sat Nav to guide us. Roughly jotted notes from AA route planner just in case. Sat Nav said expected arrival time of 5.18pm. Spot on. Having that. Factor in a fifteen minute walk from whatever car park we hit and we're in the Ricoh stadium somewhere before six. Plenty of time to pick a good spot and settle in for the long haul.

Except the long haul was going to be on the road wasn't it. Radio 2 had reported a crane having fallen over and blocking two lanes somewhere between junctions 16 and 14. No idea where that was but I knew we had to hit junction 3. Still, it was half one when I heard that report. It'd be fine by the time we got there wouldn't it?

No. No it bloody wouldn't.

We hit Stafford and we crawled. And we crawled. And we kept crawling. And we did that thing where one minute you're stationary and the next you're all going at 50 and nobody has any idea why. And we didnt even get to see the crane that had apparently fallen over so an inconvenience and a disappointment in the sheer comedy value of a dead crane.

And then two junctions down it happened again. Now, the Sat Nav had been saying 'low battery' for a while and then the inevitable happened. It died and we were using paper. 20th century navigation. Could I use the toll road and bypass Birmingham? Did the toll road bypass Coventry? I didn't know because, and I can't state this often enough, I don't know these kind of things. So we crawled toward Coventry and watched the clock hurtle forward as we edged inch by inch.

All the parking turned out to be for pre booking. Except for car park C which was, according to a nice big electric sign 'this way'. Except when we got there it wasn't. It was 'that way' and when we got 'that way' the guy looked at us as if we were idiots because we asked if it was cash parking "No mate, that's back that way" "But they've just sent me here" "Yeah, everyone's saying that"

So we drove round. And round. And down side streets. And finally found a bloke in an orange vest who reacted positively to the word cash. Then we ran. We ran to the stadium. We ran for the ticket office to pick up the tickets and we only missed one song and then the night went ballistic.

But this is all day 171. I can't tell you about the gig here because it doesn't happen until after I've written this blog which I'm supposed to write on the pitch rather than in the front room shaking slightly after getting in at half two and only having five hours sleep which is no good for a man of my age and getting home via deciding that a somewhat illegal manoeuvre on a roundabout in order to head down toward London rather than up to Liverpool would be quicker than repeating the whole queuing thing yet again and fuelling the drive home with chocolate, Lucozade and Caramel Latte made the whole experience a whole lot quicker but not resorting to the Pro Plus I had with me just in case.....

So lets pretend that I'm standing on the pitch at the Ricoh rather than living in the future and none of this has happened yet, and I'll see you on day 172.