jam | Words on the Street

As Manchester City season ticket holders, we drive north-westwards from the town in the New Forest where we live for every home game. We have experienced more than our fair share of adverse traffic conditions during the last four years or so of these sojourns and I have penned previous accounts of them elsewhere, most of them shamelessly – but deservedly, in my opinion – vitriolic. Recently, we have availed ourselves of the services of Virgin Trains and/or CrossCountry depending on the cost, and this is fast becoming a preferred means of travel, barring further landslides.

I don’t think the despair, frustration and, yes, hatred, engendered by some of the journeys comes close to that suffered on one Saturday just after Christmas. The traffic queue stretched from the A31 in Ringwood – less than a mile from our house – to Junction 19 (Knutsford) of the M6 – approximately 223.5 miles from our house. Naturally, this was unexpected and contrary to the – as it turned out, somewhat naïve and pitifully unfounded – theory that most people would have been at home languishing in a kind of sedentary post-Boxing Day haze.

Normally, it should take just over 4 hours, which includes a half-hour stop for food and coffee at Warwick Services; well, there was even a bastard great queue to get in there. As a consequence of all the vehicular challenges we encountered, it took a little longer this time: we had left home at noon and arrived at the Premier Inn at Bucklow Hill on the A556 at Mere, near Knutsford (a regular resting place of ours), at 8.00pm.

Needless to say, even with the obligatory halt at Cherwell Valley Services on the way back – Gregg’s: two regular lattes, steak bake, ham and cheese baguette, cream scone and a yum-yum, oh, don’t forget stamps on the coffee reward card – it took just under 4 hours on eerily deserted roads.

I can’t see it getting any better. *sigh*

After due deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that I am a jam magnet. Before you run away with the idea that, in some strange way, I attract fruit spread, let me disavow you of this misapprehension with the following relevant definitions for ‘jam’ from Dictionary.com: to fill or block up by crowding; pack or obstruct; to make (something) unworkable by causing parts to become stuck, blocked, caught, displaced; and – probably the most relevant – a mass of objects, vehicles, etc., packed together or otherwise unable to move except slowly.

You may or may not have read the sad account of one of my many journeys north-westward when the M6 jumped out from behind a clear road and blocked itself to buggery, forcing us to take four hours to travel 20 miles. Well, I am now proud to announce that I was once a participant in the greatest M60 Manchester Ring Road snarl-up in living memory. According to the traffic lady on a local radio station, the whole circular route had been a massive car park for most of the afternoon. I would therefore dispute the ‘move slowly’ bit of the last part of the dictionary entry above as it engenders an entirely false impression that movement was a regular feature of the affair.

I had driven from Manchester (where we were spending a few days away from Hants with relatives) to Merseyside for a meeting with a work colleague, and this vehicular melée was the culmination of a wonderful day on rain-sodden roads (one stretch of the M56 was far better suited for water-skiing) that included a stop-start excursion through the centre of Liverpool (where, incidentally, I had never been before) and a surreal episode with my satnav in the Wallasey Tunnel. I was understandably surprised to see my journey under the River Mersey depicted on its screen all the way through (quite often it goes blank when I drive under a tree) and I assumed that there must have been some sort of signal boosting equipment installed in it (see? – more damned electrickery, you can’t get away from it). I did wonder why, though, as soon as I emerged into the open from the tunnel towards the toll booths, it lost the satellite signal.

Pretty much par for the course that day.