It’s a police conspiracy I tell you….

We went away last weekend to see my best friend who has been poorly. It was great to see her and to catch up although, as usual, our time together was much too short. I mean, how can you say what you want to (which would take at least a fortnight) in just a couple of days…anyway, she’s going to be having some time off work so we have promised each other some great girly days out and a weekend away in a foreign city trying to pick up some hunky continentals (honest hubbies, we’re only joking!). I bet you’re wondering now where the police conspiracy comes in – are the police conspiring to get us together, or to keep us apart even (which would make much more sense, given the way we behave when we’re together) – nope none of that, it just had to do with our journey home….

We (foolishly) picked a bank holiday weekend to get together – it all made perfect sense when we planned it – hubby with time off, me apparently recovering well from my op and things just slotting into place reasonably neatly around hospital appointments and the like. We decided not to travel on Friday night (too much bank holiday traffic we thought) so headed off on Saturday morning. The first interesting (hah!) thing happened on the one stop we had to make. I needed to pick up an invoice from a shop but we managed to arrive 5 minutes after the most irritating man in the world. He wasn’t just annoying, he was worse than me on getting off the point and managed to occupy 2 shop assistants and the manager whilst he whittered and rabbitted for a whole hour about stuff that I found increasingly annoying. (An hour on a hard chair does that to you if you have a bad back and need to be somewhere else AND all you came in for is a piece of paper!) Eventually I got my invoice and we got in the car and headed for England in lovely May sunshine and light traffic (actually, I’m lying here on both counts – it was heavy traffic and driving rain but the world always seems much nicer when you’re off to visit a friend!). I was highly amused at car full after car full of parents with small children in the back, several bikes (often one pink with stringy bits hanging limply off the handlebars in the rain) perched over the rear windows and either towing a caravan or with roof racks piled high with (now very soggy) stuff for their lovely weekend away (in the rain) by the seaside. Oh gosh, I remember weekends like that from when I was a kid, wet car, wet dog, wet tent and plenty of joy and good cheer to go round! (Sarcasm fully intended here).

But, back to the police – on the journey home. Sorry to disappoint you – but there were no police on the way there – just speed cameras (and hubby slowed down for every one – good man!)! We headed back late Sunday (to avoid bank holiday Monday traffic) and about halfway home saw the big information signs saying that the motorway was closed at Junction 17 with queues after 16. That was it – out with the map and we left the motorway at 16 taking an A road that runs parallel to the motorway though a small town. We headed into the town to discover temporary traffic lights at the high street with a “road closed no entry ahead” – a diversion indicated turning right – which we did. We followed the road round only to discover that we were in Sainsbury’s car park (a dead end) and that 4 cars, 2 MPV’s, a Range-rover and a large coach full of holidaymakers had followed us! (Foolish people – didn’t they know we were lost?) So, we turned around (as did our convoyGB) and went back the way we came heading back towards the motorway as there were only 2 roads in town (the one that was shut and the one to Sainsbury’s car park). Now we were heading in this direction, we could see diversion signs and – guess what – they took us to the motorway. Aaaargh! We decided to get back onto the motorway (fresh out of other choices) and take our chances. Luckily it was plain sailing all the way to J17 where we headed for the exit. Others were not so sensible and J17 had turned into a scene from hell – the air was full of the smell of burning rubber and the sounds of squealing brakes and loud bangs as all those people who couldn’t read*¹ hurtled down the outside lane and stopped within inches (or not – hence the bangs) of the car in front. Interestingly (for them) and hilarious (for us) they were just yards past the junction and therefore STUCK! Serves ‘em right for not paying attention! Gawd knows why the police didn’t cone off the motorway to stop that happening, but they didn’t, and it was ‘total gridlock mon’ *² as far as the eye could see. Well, we got off the motorway without incident and decided to ignore the direction the diversion signs pointed as that looked gridlocked too. Some other people (hopefully) with maps headed off in the same direction as us (including part of our earlier convoy I think) and we crawled up the road away from the motorway in a long queue of traffic until I had a flash of inspiration (could have been impatience actually as I was getting quite cheesed and painful by this time
) and decided to chance the country lanes. It was all going really well, when we came across a sign- it said - “road closed no entry ahead” and (deja vue here) a diversion indicated turning right! Thankfully we were out in the country so they hadn’t managed to cut off our escape route by building Sainsbury’s car park and we managed (despite running out of diversion signs) to negotiate our way through the lanes and back to the motorway past the section that was closed.

I fell to wondering (as I do) on the remainder of the journey - how did all that happen – a Bank Holiday on half term with the heaviest traffic of the year and there were more road closed signs and diversions than I’ve ever seen n my life. Well, I think I know the answer – it’s definitely a police conspiracy. I think, sometime around last Thursday, a bunch of policemen had an evening out on the pop^*3 and hatched a plan for closing as many routes as they could with road closed signs between the east and west of the country. They then drove around planting as many diversion signs as they could lay their hands on and used a series of random dice rolls to decide which junctions they would go on and in which direction they would point. They could then send up their ‘eye in the sky’ to transmit telly pictures back to their sports and social club for weeks and weeks worth of entertainment. Of course, I have no proof yet, but it’s only a matter of time until I unearth the plans somewhere on the Internet…..

^*1 Of course, I am just assuming they can’t read – they may of course be blind and their seeing eye dog (please give generously) is doing the steering and he can’t read, or maybe they’re aliens who are just trying to blend in by driving cars (and can only read Vogon^*4 or something)…..anyway you get the idea ….
^*2 is that one of the best ads ever??
^*3 Beer
^*4 Great Poetry – you should try it….here