We are off to sunny Antigua for a few days. Our first holiday with little Lakshmi, if you don’t count the weekend away in the Cotswolds a few weeks ago.
We left home in plenty of time. A few minutes into the journey and the traffic slows down. Soon we find out the reason. An accident on the opposite side of the motorway and the lanes are all blocked. Traffic on this side of the road slows down to see what’s happening causing miles of tailback. It’s a foggy morning, but visibility is not bad enough to cause such an accident. Soon the traffic clears and we are on our way again. Not long after, we see fire engines, police cars and ambulances rushing past and once again traffic comes to a halt. Will we get to the airport in time? A stressful start to a holiday which is meant to destress us.
According to google the last four miles of the trip is now going to take almost an hour. My mind rewinds to about twenty years ago when I used to do this trip regularly. I was a senior registrar at Brighton in those days. One of my best rotation jobs. In those days trainees were given hospital accommodation and mine was walking distance from the beach.
I used to drive a Nissan Micra then. Each time a big lorry drove past me on the motorway, I could feel the vibrations and somehow I didn’t like the feeling and sometimes felt that I didn’t have control of my car. Once I took my car straight back to the garage from where I bought it from and asked them to take it back. They checked it out and told me that there was nothing wrong with the car. The journey was only 80 miles, but I stayed at Brighton during the week and only went home weekends as I didn’t enjoy the drive, especially over the QE II bridge.
Soon we find the reason for our delay, someone is having CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) by the roadside. It doesn’t look like it was an accident, but likely he had some sort of cardiac event while driving.
We arrive at the airport two hours before departure. Others are not so lucky. Looks like a lot of people just made it by the skin of their teeth. On the flight the pilot announces that they had to find replacement crew as some of our flight crew couldn’t get to the airport on time because of these road delays.
So finally Antigua, here we come. Apparently there are 365 beaches there, one for each day of the week. We are not there for that long, but we will make the most of what we get.
