150 minutes

Instead of the usual 25 minutes, it took me two and a half hours to get home last night. It was one of those "Doh!" moments. I always look up at the motorway as I approach the junction, just to check the traffic is actually moving.

Last night, I could see it was stationary, so I had the option of seeking another route home, but I chose instead to trust to luck. It'll clear up soon enough, I thought to myself, it'll mean 10 or 12 minutes instead of 5 or 6.

But no.

It's not the sitting in traffic. We can do that. You listen to the radio, you put on some CDs, you sing along to Joy Lynn White.

We're gonna party
Till the sun comes up
I'll ride you in my hot pink pickup truck

Is it me, or does that sound dirty? Why hasn't she got a record label? It's a crazy world.

No, it's not the sitting in traffic, but the beastliness of other people. People in cars don't act like human beings. They are mean, aggressive, selfish, nasty. I had to swap into the outside lane, not because I'm an inveterate lane swapper, but because the truck drivers were aggressively closing gaps too fast and too close, in order to prevent people from moving around. The outside lane wasn't faster, but at least you could see more than the back of a truck in front and the front of a truck looming in back.

And then, after two hours sitting in traffic, average speed 5 miles per hour, people started driving up the hard shoulder to get to the junction. You see, they were special people. The whole motorway was closed at the junction, so everyone had to leave there. And everyone had been sitting in the queue, relatively, for the same length of time. But there were some special people further back who had to get off first. It must be such a burden, being both special, and remembering to be completely selfish and oblivious at the same time. There's a word for that, isn't there? Oh, yes: shitbird.