Keep Straight On Ahead

Keep Straight On Ahead

It was a balmy midsummer evening and we were heading for Dover with the aim of catching a ferry to the continent.  I was driving in one car and my friends in another.  When we reached Watford Gap services an information screen indicated that both the Dartford and Blackwall tunnels were experiencing huge delays for one reason or another.  I said “let’s just drive into central London and when we reach the Thames simply find a bridge to cross!”

The sky was cloudless and the Sun gave us a perfect compass setting by which we would be guided.  I say ‘we’ when really I mean ‘I’ as I insisted the other car follow me.  After all I thought I knew London and after having worked there for five years, considered myself a veteran who could learn little from its crowded streets.

As is often the case with me I omit at least one vital factor in any calculation and this simple journey that involved moving forward in one direction was flawed to say the least.  Remember the children’s game of Blind Man’s Bluff’?  Well, the disorientation of losing the fixing point of the evening Sun was a similar experience.  I could see the bright blue sky above, but the tall buildings and endless twists and turns made me realise exactly by what I was being guided.

I must have passed every Central London landmark at least twice. In desperation I followed a car with a GB sticker on and once again was confounded as they turned up a residential street and parked!  Eventually by doing the opposite of the previous circuit we found Westminster bridge and the A2 on the other side.

Going straight had not been an option. I really ought to christen the journey ‘The Oroboros experience’ as one circle became another and another…