I don't really like driving that much. I travel to Birmingham to see my old mum pretty often.

I hate the M6, hate standing still. My friend thinks it's a linear storage unit for cones.

The 120 or so miles usually takes 2 and a half to 3 hours. Last week was different. THE gales!

Set off to return to Lancashire just before 5pm. Radio on TA (Traffic Announcement?).

Quite quickly travelled four, perhaps, five miles. Radio advising me that M42 closed, M1, M69, M6. Toll?

"Please don't travel unless you must". "No high sided vehicles, caravans, motorbikes". The first five miles only took an hour!

The next two miles took two hours. Stop/start but mainly stop, engine off, lights dimmed.

This was patience and temper fraying and eventually bladder-challenging too.

A446 at a compete log jammed standstill. Thank goodness for my Scout First Class hike route circa 1968.

I leave the M and A roads behind:- Coleshill, Shustoke, Nether Whitacre.

I'm now hitting third and sometimes fourth gear: Atherstone, Sheepy Magma, Twycross, Swadlincote, Burton. Draycott in the Clay? I'm now seriously lost!

Eventually I find a dual carriageway. A50, M6 and home. A full 6 harrowing hours and an inexplicable additional 30+ miles later.

During my junior school years of the late 50's/early 60's we used to travel, 300 miles, Birmingham to Edinburgh in a Ford Prefect: no motorways, three gears, one windscreen wiper, no heater.

What our children wouldn't believe was no multi-speakered CD playing, cassette playing device Not even a radio fitted.

The journey took 10 hours usually. We'd nearly always break down around Hawick or Galashiels.

We got pretty pally with the AA man for around there!

So there I was 45 years on and not really much better placed.

Such is progress.