I had foolishly accepted a gig in Gainsborough a few months ago. Foolish because I had no idea where it was and didn't take into account that I would be in the middle of another script crisis, with TWTTIN just days away and only one script almost written.
I thought Gainsborough would maybe be a couple of hours drive from home, and it was only when I went on AA Routefinder that I discovered it was at least three and a half hours away. I was either going to have to drive home afterwards, getting back in the early hours of the morning, or stay overnight and thus miss most of the morning driving back. Either way it was going to be a tiring excursion.
I decided to stay over and as I wasn't being paid much I got the cheapest hotel I could find - a worryingly low £33 for bed and breakfast.
I arrived at about 8.30 and had a bath in the tiny bath and looked at the uncomfortable looking bed and the door with a lock that could easily be kicked in and the disaffected men walking down the corridors and wondered if I'd made a mistake.
As it happened the gig was over by 10, and there was nothing to do in Gainsborough and I was wide awake from the adrenalin, so I decided I would head home anyway. With luck I'd be back home by 1.30am. So I left behind my unslept in and paid for bed, having paid £33 to use a bath (and for that kind of money I would expect a bath made of gold with Katie Melua soaping me down and singing one of her irritating songs to me (the singing would bring the cost down to the £33 mark).
Anyway it was a long drive back and just as I was starting to make good progress there was a lengthy diversion off the A1, but I still got home by 1.30, though of course couldn't sleep for a couple of hours anyway.
I was slightly worried I was going to run out of petrol as all the garages seemed to be closed, but just in time I found an operating one, where a litre of unleaded petrol cost me over 101 pence. This seems ridiculously high, at least to begin with and it is the most I have ever spent on petrol, but then again thinking about it, on the way up I had spent £2 buying two half litre bottles of diet coke (and even that was a special offer) so my petrol was litre for litre pretty much half the cost of my diet coke. Admittedly even I am unlikely to consume 50 litres of diet coke in a day, but it's difficult to believe that diet coke is more expensive than petrol. Oil takes an awfully long time to manufacture, then it has to be extracted, usually from some war zone, refined and shipped to the petrol station. I don't know how they make diet coke, but can't imagine it's anywhere near as complicated or takes as much time and effort as the creation, extraction and refinement of crude oil. Also oil is made out of all natural ingredients, like dead animals, whereas I can't imagine there's much natural goodness in coca cola. It just seems weird that we should complain about paying so much for petrol and not be upset about paying so much for probably 0.1pence worth of fizzy drink. Even a litre of water in a petrol station will cost more than petrol. I am not trying to say the petrol people should charge us more (if anything I am saying that drink manufacturers are massive rip off artists and they don't even have to contend with wars over their produce).
At least it will stop me ever trying to see if my car will run on Sprite.
