Men and Motors

'Found a job yet Doddo?' The Kid asked, as he slung his ninety nine pound suit jacket over a chair in the lounge.
'Let's just say that people in glass bedrooms should always wear underwear.' I replied.
'And that means?'
'Just think about it Andrew', 'just think about it.' I paused, looked him in the eye and grabbed him a beer from the fridge.

We passed the rest of the evening watching MTV, playing guess the charred black thing from the barbecue and drinking copious amounts of beer. Dave shared a few more worldly stories from his worldly life. God he's worldly.

The next morning was bright, but I was not. I looked for a loophole that would allow me to stay in bed until lunchtime. It wasn't to be.

Coffee made no real indentation on a hangover that you could see. A shower provided me with an, albeit brief respite from the pain, before I was made to pack my bags and the suffering returned.

The Kid and Tut were poking around Jaffa in a very manly fashion. Kicking the tyres and looking under the bonnet, lifting things out of the engine, polishing them and replacing them. Just the kinda things men do before taking on a road trip. I felt very inadequate in this area. I tried my hardest to look knowledgeable. I even had a rag. I looked for a spanner that I could put in my back pocket but couldn't find one. I polished things at random between sips of my second cup of coffee, making tutting noises and occasionally shaking my head in disbelief as I went along.

'Doddo?'
'Yes Tut'
'Why are you polishing the horn?'
'It looks a bit manky. Thought it could do with a bit of a cleanup. I noticed the other day it was a note or two off.'

Great! So it was the horn and not some part of the car that made it go faster. I'd been found out. I slunk away and started placing our collection of audio tapes in alphabetical order. I'm good at placing things in alphabetical order.

After a round of undefinable chicken portions from the local Favourite Chicken shop we finally hit the road. (The name of the chain was Favourite, the jury was still out as to whether this was actually my personal favourite chicken shop.)

And so it was with spirits marginally higher than they were an hour ago, that we pressed onward through the London outskirts towards a highway called the M something. All big roads are called the M something over here. Little ones are called A something. Something is always a number.

We were heading vaguely west, towards Wales. We had an imprecise plan to see a castle, then find a pub with a nice B&B in some small Welsh village that served cold beer and was owned by some freak with a neck lump or basic facial disfigurement. I was flexible on the castle thing.