Sometimes something happens, perhaps like a beach ball being propelled from a spring. All is well in the world. I'm not gambler, I'm not a betting man; but perhaps that is what it feels like. I'd been chasing a customer for some time for payment on a project and the money came into the account. I like to think that I'm not a mercenary person; but I was away from home in London, and that money would make my life a little easier.
But beyond that it felt like a personal victory. The issue had been going back and forward with this troublesome lot, and now we had been paid. Perhaps any beer or pies procured with this cash might seem more tasty; a little more pleasant. I felt jubilant.
Shortly after, that I foolishly missed a coach that would take me from London to my brother's place in Coventry; that was annoying, and a waste of money; but it didn't really matter, I could just hop on a train instead. This payment had changed the equation a little bit. I no longer travel by car all that much; but my brother has a car in Coventry that I have access to; so I embarked on some trips around Central and Southern England, to see some friends and perhaps to try and drum up some business.
There is a lot to be said - I think - for those that try to minimise the adverse environmental aspects of their travel by travelling by public transport, and cycling, etc. But when one is unused to having access to a motor car, and then suddenly one does; it seems to me that life gets a little easier. That morning all felt well in the world. I'd had a nice fried breakfast, and I was planning a road trip that was both familiar - and hence straightforward navigationally - and that evoked positive memories.
In the late nineties during my apprenticeship I made a semi-regular journey from Bedford in Southern England to Swanick, near Southamption and the South Coast of England. And it brings back memories of those happy trips.
Great weather too. It must have been warm, because I had the air conditioning on in the car. The start of my trip simply follows the A46 trunk road; which is, itself I believe a route that still largely follows the Roman Road, Fosse Way; which was built back then to link Exeter with Lincoln. There is then a short bolt down the M40 motorway until turning off to head South on the A34. It's a main trunk road which links the port of Southampton with the Midlands.
I was heading for a friend who lives in Basingstoke, in Hampshire so my route crossed the M4 motorway and then took me past Newbury. When the Newbury bypass section of this trunk road was built in the mid-nineties it was perhaps one of the most controversial of sections of road built in the eighties and nineties. Many environmentalists felt that the proposed route would lead to the destruction of some beautiful woodlands. According to Wikipedia, around £35 000 000 was spent by the government on policing and private security companies to try to nullify the protests.
The protest was unsuccessful, in the end. Although it may have helped re-frame the debate around road building. The incoming Blair government in 1997 took a much more sparing attitude to expanding the road network in the UK. They really only acted to alleviate bottlenecks.
But none of that was really on my mind, as I whizzed down the A34 following a Porsche Panamera in my brother's eleven year old Vauxhall. Soon after Newbury, I drove past Greenham Common the site of a protest against nuclear weapons in the mid-eighties.
Basingstoke is often sniffed at by a certain type of person. But I think the views from the A339 road from Newbury to Basingstoke through rolling hills and pretty villages; are some of the prettiest in Southern England. I was a little late for my friend; but he was very relaxed about that. Boy it's great to be alive when you've just hit the jackpot.
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