Driving back from Warwick in the early hours of this morning and leaving the light of the street lamps behind, it suddenly struck me that my headlights weren't very bright. They were most definitely turned on, but not creating any kind of practical light. Which was slightly worrying.
Plus I had to get Francesca Martinez home in one piece (two pieces maximum and only then if one of the pieces was quite small) and she was already probably wondering what the unusual smell in the car was. I had told her it was probably a farm we were passing or that maybe we were near to Bridg(e)water, but she hadn't seem convinced.
The side-lights seemed to be working and with them on full beam I could see where I was going, but it was slightly weird to have had sudden and simultaneous headlight failure. Maybe all the electrics were about to go down, like in Star Trek or something. Or a power cut. Or mostly like a car whose electrics have gone wrong.
We stopped at the next garage so I could look at the situation. Only one of my back lights was working and both headlights were out. I managed to fiddle around with the bulb for the back light and it started working again. Almost like I am a proper man who knows what he is doing, but I was at a loss to explain what had happened to the front lights that had served me so well for four years. Maybe the bulbs had simultaneously blown, or maybe a fuse had gone or... who am I kidding? I don't know anything about cars. I don't care about them, beyond them being convenient vessels to get me from one place to another.
This was all adding time to the journey and I was tired enough already. So we ploughed onwards through the dark with our inefficient dark-plough.
Sometimes on a long drive, the road seems so never-ending that I begin to wonder (and forgive me if I have mentioned this before) if I have already fallen asleep and crashed and died and now I am a ghost doomed to traverse the dark roads of Britain for all eternity, never reaching my destination. That would be a truly punishing Hell. So far I have always arrived at my destination, but one of these days the journey is going to continue for alway like a nightmare, I know.
I didn't mention any of this to Francesca as I was having to explain to her that I thought a small otter might have burrowed its way into the car somehow and then died and that explained the strange odours.
We got home OK, but I had had to have a coffee to keep me going, which meant I wasn't going to be able to sleep for a while. So it was an early morning poker session, where I proved that I had learned nothing from rubbing shoulders with the greats.
