Teddy has already asked if we’re nearly there yet about ten times, which I always thought was something grown-ups pretend that kids ask, but no, it turns out it’s true. The first time he asks we aren’t even off our street.
When we finally drive the few miles to Penzance, I start to notice something weird. There are big queues of people on the high street. They’re all standing outside the banks and they don’t look happy at all. What if it’s because no one can do internet banking at the moment? So they’re having to crack open their piggy banks, and that’s always a bit sad. Or maybe there’s a sale on somewhere and they all need to get their money out pronto? I remember once at Claire’s Accessories they did a sale on bangles and four people got arrested.
I notice a bit of shoving and pushing. And when Mum and Dad see the lines of people they give each other a Look and raise their eyebrows. I feel like there’s something they’re not telling me and suddenly this adventure makes me feel a bit worried in my tummy rather than excited.
Dad pulls up outside his office and runs into work. A few minutes later, he comes out again with a piece of paper he hands to Mum. Boring Paul waves us off from the window, smiling. He’s told Dad exactly how to get to Rendlesham.
‘A30, A303, M3, M25, A12, A1152,’ reads Mum. ‘Well, that seems simple enough.’
Everyone is being super quiet in the car.
We’ve been going about an hour and it’s raining heavily and the novelty of this adventure is definitely wearing off. Teddy is bored and in a grump and is punishing us by not speaking. But he doesn’t know that him being quiet is actually a bit of a reward, and no one wants to break the spell. So we just listen to the wipers squeaking and the raindrops battering the roof.
Dad is gripping the steering wheel tightly and staring straight in front of him. He can’t relax because he doesn’t want to make any mistakes. He hates not having the GPS. He says he’s been scared of maps ever since he was a Boy Scout and he had to find his way out of the local forest using only a map. But it took him about six hours because he didn’t realize someone had played a trick on him and swapped his map of Rendlesham for one of Russia.
Right now, we don’t even have a map of Russia, but at least Mum has the piece of paper with the directions in her hand. You can tell she’s bored because she suddenly starts making clicking noises with her cheeks. It’s like having a dolphin in the car.
‘Let’s play a game!’ she says.
We don’t normally play games unless they’re like Words with Friends or Candy Crush or whatnot.
‘You mean a real-life one?’ I say.
Teddy immediately cheers up and says, ‘Hide-and-seek?’
‘That might be a little tricky in a car, Ted,’ says Mum.
‘Or a little easy,’ says Dad.
‘Can we play Tag then?’ says Teddy.
But Dad doesn’t want to play a game. He’s become concerned because there’s lots of traffic going the same way we are.
‘Dad, can we stop at the park?’ I say.
I’ve always wanted to go to Dartmoor National Park. I don’t know if it’s on the way, but it must be because when I’ve looked on Google I’ve noticed that it’s on the way to everywhere. Mousehole is squashed right down in the bottom-left corner of the country, so if you want to go to Scotland? You go past Dartmoor National Park. You want to go to France? You go past Dartmoor National Park. I know nothing else about Dartmoor National Park except that every word in its name makes it sound exciting.
‘No,’ says Dad. ‘We’re just going straight to Grandma’s.’
I frown so he can see me frown in the mirror. So we’re just going to sit here for hours and hours and not have a pee break or anything? Welcome to Broken Britain!
Dad seems really nervous and quiet. He gets worried every time he sees more cars joining our road because he doesn’t have a screen to tell him how to get away from them. And every time the car makes a weird sound he gets jumpy because he doesn’t know if there’s something wrong with it or not.
‘I mean, we’ll have to stop somewhere,’ says Mum. ‘To eat our lunch and so on?’
Dad sighs.
‘If we happen to go past it and it’s the right time, then maybe.’
I look out of the window again. Maybe I don’t usually notice other cars because I’m watching something, but there seem to be a lot of broken-down cars stopped by the side of the road today. I’ve seen two red cars, a silver one and a black one. And each time the driver has just been standing outside in the rain, holding a broken phone, looking like they have absolutely no idea what to do.
Dad has gone even quieter, if that’s possible. We’ve had to leave the main road and drive down a small country lane because there’d been an accident. He is not happy about it and is driving reeeeeaaaaallllly slowly.
There’s no numbers I can look at to tell me, but I would estimate we are now going at 21.5 miles an hour, which has just increased our journey time by about 18.3 hours. That said, I have no idea what I’m talking about.
At least it’s stopped raining, though now the lane is full of big puddles.
Dad keeps looking out for signs to tell him how to get back on to the road he needs, but instead all we see are signs for little places we don’t need to go to. He seems annoyed that
