Before you scroll down looking for the bad news: there is none
This Is Not An Emergency
You once drove four hours for me and did not ask a single question until junction 28 on the way back. Nobody builds a website about that, so I have, badly, instead of doing anything useful with a Sunday.
My excuse, filed in advance
Nothing is wrong. Put the phone down.
People find out they matter at weddings, at funerals, or roughly three hours into a crisis. All catastrophic venues. Everyone is crying, the acoustics are terrible, and the one useful sentence gets lost somewhere between the parking arrangements and the sandwiches.
So instead: an ordinary Tuesday, nothing on fire, and you reading this with your face doing the thing it does.
It will be conducted in the usual style — badly, with detours, and at least one unresolved argument about the M6 toll running underneath. There is exactly one paragraph where I stop messing about. It is near the end. You may skip it. I will know that you skipped it, and I will bring it up for years.
Character reference. Unrequested. Largely unflattering.
You turn up. Sheffield, eleven at night, four hours each way, and not one question on the way there. Radio on, two undrinkable coffees at Trowell services, and you held out until junction 28 on the way home before asking anything.
Most people arrive with a plan, a theory, and a strong sense of their own helpfulness. You arrived with a full tank, no opinions and a Ginsters.
You also remember the throwaway thing somebody said in March and produce it in September as though it has only just occurred to you, which is either thoughtful or deeply sinister. You are the first call for good news and the only call for bad. Two people are on that list. The other is my mother, and she has an unfair advantage.
You are going to have to click for these.
We do not do sincerity out loud, so I am smuggling it in one card at a time. Do not make it weird.
Selected incidents, most of them your fault
- Eleven years ago
The four hours to Sheffield
Eleven at night, no questions on the way there, and Radio 4 the whole way because you said a music station would make it a big thing. You waited until junction 28 on the way back to ask what had actually happened. You have never mentioned the drive since. I have never stopped thinking about it.
- That summer
The trip with one map
A 1998 road atlas of the wrong county, no itinerary, and a level of confidence that would be criminal in most other contexts. Eleven miles in the wrong direction before either of us would admit it. You called it the scenic route right up until we could see the car again.
- Every year since
The M6 toll
Eleven times we have had this argument. Neither of us has conceded a single mile. You bring the same three points in the same order and I have started to find that comforting, which is the most worrying sentence on this page.
- Last month
Nothing whatsoever
Two hours in the garden centre car park because neither of us could be bothered to go in. That is the entire memory. It is in my top five.
The archive, curated for damage
Deliberately the bad ones. The atlas is in three of them.
You have ruined this one for me
The one you sang at rather than to
On at junction 28, the exact moment you gave up asking. Two more hours of you singing at it rather than to it. I have never asked you to stop, which is the nicest thing on this page.
Break glass. Contents mildly abusive.
Ring me. I will not have advice, a plan, or a theory. I will have a full tank and no opinions, and I will not ask you anything until we are most of the way home. That appears to be the only trick either of us knows, and you are the one who taught it to me.
You drove four hours without asking why. You have done the equivalent about nine times since, for people who did not thank you properly, and you have never once brought it up. You treat that as nothing. It is not nothing.
Nothing has changed at this end. It never does with us. Open with an insult, as usual, and we will be back to normal inside a minute.
Fine. You were right about the sandwich place and right about the parking at your sister’s. You remain wrong about the M6 toll and always will be. The twelfth time is coming.
Eleven times. The M6 toll.
Not one mile conceded by either party.
Genuinely the most reliable thing
I have got going.
I am standing up. Everyone sit down.
To you, and to eleven years of nonsense.
- To four hours each way, and to asking nothing until junction 28.
- To a 1998 road atlas of the wrong county, and eleven miles in the wrong direction.
- To the M6 toll, unresolved, and to the ten more times we will do it.
- To turning up with a full tank and no opinions.
- And to the next eleven years of exactly this, plus one map.
One more thing
I have booked the wrong county again.
We have said we would do that trip properly every year since, usually somewhere around the third pint, and neither of us has ever put a date on it.
I have put a date on it. I have also bought the same road atlas off eBay, because doing it properly would be a betrayal of the original.
This is the bit. Brace yourself.
Right. Junction 28, then.
We do not say things like this out loud. The entire friendship runs on insults, unresolved driving disputes and a road atlas older than my car, and frankly it works, and I would rather not ruin a functioning system.
But it does mean something quite important has gone unsaid for eleven years, so: you drove four hours without asking why, and then did the significantly harder thing and waited until junction 28. You have done the equivalent about nine times since, for people who did not thank you properly, and you have never once mentioned it. I am a materially better person for having had you standing next to me while I worked out how to be one. There is no punchline. I have looked for one.
Right. That is the sincerity spent for another eleven years. You remain wrong about the M6 toll and I will be taking it in October.
— regrettably sincere, briefly
No wedding.
No funeral.
Nothing on fire, for once.
Just a Tuesday,
an atlas from 1998,
and one paragraph
we are never discussing again.
That is quite enough of that.
Normal service resumes immediately. Abuse from tomorrow, atlas in October, and you remain wrong about the toll road in a way history will not forgive.
made instead of doing anything useful