Arrogant tour manager Simon Streeting was ten minutes late to pick me up for the drive to Brecon, even though he had arrogantly claimed he would be early. That ten minute delay was going to cost us dearly, but then I'm guessing that Streeting knew this, and this was all part of his vain plan to make himself appear more important than he actually is.
In the car we were listening to a T-Rex CD and I was considering how sad it was that Marc Bolan had died so young. The band made some great songs (and some pretty bad ones, even on this "best of" compilation), but you have to love him, if nothing else for the way he pronounces "dance". Though funnily enough, when Chris de Burgh does almost exactly the same thing, he sounds like a fucking tosser, so there must be more to it than that.
Poor old Marc died crashing his car into a tree and I remembered the times a few years back when me and Stew would occasionally drive by the tragic spot. Even then, twenty years after his death, the tree was decorated with messages and drawings done by his devoted fans. Not sure if that is the case anymore. I haven't noticed it recently. It got me thinking about how quickly our lives can be snuffed out, without any warning, and as hail and rain pelted down on the car I was feeling nervous. Simon Streeting didn't help, by arrogantly asserting, "There's bound to be an accident in this."
But the storm passed and we stopped at a service station. I wasted a few minutes playing a fruit machine (winning £2.90 - who says gambling doesn't pay. I could have bought nearly 3 service station tomatoes with that). Simon Streeting was waiting for me in the car, slightly pissed off that I had delayed our progress. Which was rich coming from him, after being a whole ten minutes late to begin with. But he is blinded by his own self importance.
Within a couple of miles traffic rather abruptly came to a halt. I wasn't too concerned to begin with, but then I noticed that there was no traffic coming in the other direction either. There had obviously been an accident (nothing to do with the weather as it was now fine and clear), and one so bad that it had possibly closed both sides of the motorway.
We waited for some time, but nothing was moving, except for several emergency vehicles rushing up the hard shoulder. People started to get out of their cars and walk around. Simon stepped out to get a paper from the boot and to smoke a cigarette. He confirmed there had been an accident up ahead, as he could see the fire engines stopped a few hundred yards further on. He took this to be good news: it meant we wouldn't have to wait long once the debris had been cleared.
We carried on waiting. After about 45 minutes, some uncouth fellows even climbing the bank at the side in order to urinate behind a bush. All right, I admit it, I was the first; even though I'd just gone at the service station. I always drink too much diet coke and coffee on these road trips.
As I stretched my legs afterwards, considering how surreal it was to be walking around on the motorway, the woman in the car in front said that she'd heard on the radio that the delay was likely to be three or four hours. This was even more annoying for her as she also needed to go to the toilet, but said she wasn't prepared to climb the bank as I had done. "I saw you," she told me. She'd obviously been trying to get a look at me; it was obvious she fancied me. Perhaps in an hour or so she would invite me into her car to "pass the time". Given the possibility that death and mayhem lay just a few metres up the road, it would be fitting for us to create a new life together. It has often struck me that some people must owe their existence to their parents being thrown together by tragic circumstances. Out of random chaos comes both annihilation and creation.
I made a face that suggested that I was interested in procreating with her on the back seat of her Audi, but she chose to pretend she hadn't seen it. She was playing hard to get, but we both knew that she would be impregnated before this traffic jam was over. She said she'd noticed that the other side of the motorway had been empty for some time before we'd come to a stop and speculated that there must have been two crashes, one on the other side, followed by another on our's, presumably caused by people looking at the first accident and not paying attention to their driving.
I got back in the car and told Simon about the delay and my plans for parenthood with a stranger. He seemed dismissive of the obvious facts of the woman's attraction to me, and was instead rather worried that we might not make it to the gig in time. "Well if you had been early, like you said, we'd have been ahead of this disaster," I told him.
"And if you hadn't insisted on playing on the fruit machines we would have missed it as well." That's just typical of him. Trying to blame others for what is clearly his own fault.
But I too had seen how close the flashing lights of the ambulances and fire engines were. We were probably only about thirty seconds away from being in the thick of whatever it was that had happened up there. And whatever it was was bad enough to close an entire motorway for at least three or four hours. It didn't bear thinking about.
Which was what was slightly strange about all this. Here we all were, moments from death and serious injury and we were all walking around, conversing with each other, discussing how long the delay was likely to be, and although we all must have been thinking about it, none of us were mentioning the fact that in all likelihood people just like us, but thirty seconds up the road, had had their lives changed forever. There was no point in getting angry about being delayed, but all that anyone seemed concerned about was what time we would get moving again. "It might be as late as 7.30, I've heard," said a middle-aged man two cars back from me, "Certainly not before five."
We were about two hours away from Brecon and it looked increasingly likely that we wouldn't make it in time.
I wandered up the road to take a closer look at the mayhem. Partly to get an idea of how close things were to moving again and partly out of the same ghoulish curiousity that had probably caused the accident on our side in the first place.
As I got closer I was struck by how quiet things were, again eerily weird for a motorway, but also started noticing how the cars nearer the front had clearly had to swerve and brake to avoid making the accident even worse. Those drivers must have had an uncomfortable few moments as they struggled to stop. Luckily it seemed that everyone behind the immediate crash had avoided a collision.
I didn't want to get too close and hung back and looked up the carriageway. A medium sized van, was on its side and lying across the two outside lanes. There was more activity further up the road. There didn't seem to be any lifting equipment. I couldn't really see us moving for a good while yet. Once again I considered my mortality, but like everyone else, chose to mainly repress these feelings and worry about whether I would get to my destination on time.
I went back, and as I approached the woman in front of us's car, I pulled a sort of "I don't know how long things are going to be" kinda of face, which naturally had a slight undercurrent of "so how are we going to pass the next couple of hours, because I have an idea that will possibly account for maybe ten minutes of it" (I was talking myself up, but she wasn't to know that).
She was getting reports on her radio anyway and was the first to express concern for the victims of the crash. She'd heard we wouldn't be moving until gone six and was now feeling hungry. "I've got some grapes in my car," I offered gallantly, assuming that she would offer something in reciprocation, but she didn't even seem mildly interested in my grapes.
She thought she still had plenty of time to make her move, but if things cleared up by five she was going to miss out and look pretty stupid. I felt sorry not for myself, but our unborn child. This woman only had a small window of opportunity, she would never see me again. Was she really prepared to damn our baby to never existing for the sake of appearing proper and lady-like? The selfishness of some people is beyond belief.
It was now about 4.30 and we'd been at a standstill for over two hours. I considered walking to Chippenham and getting a train. After all the show must go on. But we decided that that would probably take much longer than waiting here. Partly because there is no train station in Brecon.
We were getting pretty close to having to consider cancelling, which would have been really annoying. Though probably not as annoying as getting crippled in a car crash. But we had been a whole thirty seconds away from that.
Suddenly, just before five, there was movement ahead of us. Some cars started pulling into the fast lane. We moved forward a few feet. The woman in front must have known this was the last chance to get her hands on my gametes (and I was admit to her that this would only require a few seconds of her time), but her slavishness to the laws of polite behaviour prevented her from making the choice that everyone in the traffic jam knew she wanted to make. She just stared ahead, not even looking in her rear view mirror. She knew that she was effectively murdering a baby by this decision, but she was going to try and pretend that nothing had happened.
As things began moving more quickly, we passed the accident on the other side of the carriageway. A car lay on its roof, crushed and battered. For the first time it truly came home to us what had happened and despite our frivolity what might have been lost on the M4 today. My stomach lurched. So did Simon's, in all probability, as he let out a gasp and swerved slightly, almost causing a third crash.
We then progressed slowly by the accident on our side of the motorway. The van had been carrying Ginster's pies, which I've always found a rather funny food product, so for a moment I almost laughed, but then I saw the wreckage of two other cars and most disturbingly several suitcases lined up on the hard shoulder. It seemed inevitable that someone had died.
I was thankful that I'd put a final 10p in the fruit machine, not only because it accounted for £1.90 of my winnings, but because it had delayed us by long enough to avoid it being my car that was crushed on the hard shoulder, our suitcases strewn on the verge, our bodies being carried away in ambulances.
We were only the victims of random chaos in so much that we arrived in Brecon a bit later than we had intended, but in plenty of time to get ready for the gig. Life goes on and history is written by the living.
The gig was fine, and in lieu of sandwiches we got a rather nice meal in the tapas bar that's in the theatre complex. It came second only to the legendary Tron in Glasgow, giving Brecon a sandwich rating of 8.5.
But tonight, after our nearly close call, I'd even have been grateful for a horrible egg mayonnaise sandwich.
Life goes on. For the moment.
And my legs miraculously remain unbroken.
