Holiday In The Midlands (July 2021) : An Inauspicious Start! By Mr Alfred N.Muggins

5/7/21 (5/4/23)

    They left home after a morning and afternoon of packing, which Alfred always found stressful! As usual time almost immediately started to run out, and he was unable to catch it up! An unplanned request from Mrs Muggins to go shopping for something, or more specifically to drive her somewhere in the car, and wait in the car park for her to return from the shop, inevitably resulted in him clicking his heels unprofitably for quite a time, when he could have been at home, putting the final finishes to his own packing! The stress of ensuring that sufficient and essential mobile phone chargers were brought on the holiday, and the right notebooks (for himself – such as the one he wrote this in) for writing his many different projects!

    The weather did not want them to go! As if the Dark Lord had seen these puny holidaymakers packing their car, and was displeased for some reason, he threw a vicious downpour of thunder, lightning and torrential rain at anyone who dared to step out of the front door with any items of final packing for the car! Alfred had only just put these fresh jeans on that morning, the first time wearing jeans for some months, as he had been working quite a lot in recent times, and had been wearing his black trousers for as long as he could remember. Suddenly in one short leap to the car from the front door, carrying some bags, his pristine jeans were already half wet! He would be driving south on the motorway in wet clothes if this carried on!

    Mrs Muggins’ son, who lived with them, and Alfred himself, waited at the front door for the downpour to ease before their next dash to the car, making their departure even later than it would have been. Now they worried whether the boat owner, their friend, would still be there to greet them and show them the ropes, so to speak, on the boat they were hiring from him for the week. Finally they departed on their great adventure for this year, which had to be in Britain again this year, as a pending foreign holiday in Turkey could still not go ahead for the second year, due to the continuing Covid precautions. This year it was going to have to be Britain again! But none of them, and particularly not Alfred, were at all downhearted by this second choice forced upon them. Indeed Alfred believed it was their fate to discover Britain more fully, and to discover, more specifically far more about their collective English Heritage. They were going to the real heart of England, and of Britain too, an area known as the Midlands, so often passed over by travelers to exotic coastal towns and holiday camps, or to the romantic mountains of Wales and the glens and castles of Scotland, and the cultural excitements of London. They were going to discover the real innards of England, a place they had probably passed closely by a thousand times in their erstwhile haste to go north or south on the Great Connecting Road which never slept, the M1, that famous Motorway number 1, presumably the first one built in Britain (not counting the Roman motorways, before the age of the car, when they were really ‘marchingways’ for soldiers as well as tradesmen (and women?) to get around!).

     The rain was still pelting down as they left their erstwhile abode, as if their home was to be ransacked by Ringwraiths and Servants of the Dark Lord if they didn’t get out NOW! They fled through the streets of Hecklehacklesfieldville until they came onto the main road through the local Magic Wood Bottom. Here the low road was starting to flood badly in places. Alfred put the windscreen wipers onto fast and negotiated the growing surface floods carefully without panicking, like the experienced intrepid car ranger he was. After all they were in the Tank! Nothing could stop them as long as he kept driving skillfully. He fully believed that even if they did get caught in a flood the Tank would be able to float and he even imagined if called upon it might even fly (like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! – one of Alfred’s favourite childhood films)

     Alfred was soon past the Magic Wood Bottom, and onto the viaduct road where the roundabout to get onto the Great Connecting Road which never sleeps, the M1 Motorway number one, and it seemed they were being successful in escaping their home city. All being well this road would take them all the way to their destination, a little village called Crick, where their canal boat awaited them, not far from the famous place called Watford, which was the famous point at which North and South meet in the middle of the country! You couldn’t get much more Midlands than that could you?

    But their trials and tribulations were not yet over. If they thought the Motorway would be their salvation and take them quickly away from the thunderstorm which the Dark Lord threw at them, they were quickly proved incorrect. The rain pelted down so strongly that Alfred was forced to slow down and take care to see through the windows. It came down so heavily he could barely see through the car (Tank!) windows at one point, and there were other cars on the Motorway too! Thankfully they were inside the relative safety of the tank and perfectly dry, apart from the damp from being caught in the storm when packing the car.

    The hobbits (as Alfred had started to think of themselves) were desperately trying to get out of the Shire and get on their river cruise down the long River Anduin! But agents of the Dark Lord were everywhere, throwing bolts of cold wet rainfall at them whenever they showed their faces anywhere!

    Finally they arrived at their destination, a narrowboat at the marina, and their friends were ready to show them the things they needed to know, to toilet, to cook for themselves, to lock the doors of the boat, and so on. Liberated from the jaws of panic and fear they were ready and eager to start their holiday in the Midlands.