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9:35am on Monday, 22nd February, 2010:

Long-Distance Driving

Anecdote

I'm driving up to Middlesbrough today, for a viva voce I'm external examiner for tomorrow. It's about 250 miles, and should take me around 5 hours. Except, as it's raining and sleety and I'll be half-way up the A1 during rush hour, it'll probably be more like 6 hours. Still, I can be optimistic: I'm setting off straight after my lecture finishes at 3pm, so hopefully will show up at the hotel at around 8pm (maybe a little later if I stop to eat something instead of eating there). I checked the train times and that would take 5 hours, too. The difference is that by train it would cost £150 to get there and £50 to get back (no, I don't pretend to understand how they can justify a factor of 3 difference, either).

Whenever I'm going on a long drive on my own, I check the car first to make sure it's OK for oil and water and has air in the tyres (no need this time as it passed its MOT last week) and then arrange the passenger seat for my Stuff. My Stuff consists of:

• Sweets. My biggest concern when driving a long way is that I may nod off, but if I have something to munch then I won't. This time round it's family packs of Maltesers, Minstrels and Wine Gums.
• Water. All that eating makes me thirsty!
• Maps. The SatNav may lie.
• IPlayer. Something to listen to when there's nothing on the radio. I play the iPlayer through the radio, though, so can easily switch over for the news or whatever.

So, I'm all set.

Gawd, 5 hours...

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Copyright © 2010 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).