Boss Radio

Coming into Stow on the Wold from the Gloucester direction there's a steep hill. So that faster moving vehicles aren't held up by other struggling old rattletraps the uphill lane splits into two. Jolly good idea that.

I don't go that way very often, and when I do it's always because I've been visiting somewhere for the sheer pleasure of it and mum wants to visit Adlestrop on the way home. She likes Adlestrop, she likes to look at it then to go to the top of the hill and buy an icecream from the shop. Then she likes to go the site of Adlestrop station in the hope of seeing a train pass through where it once stood. Actually she'd like to see a train stop there, but I think she knows that's not going to happen.

The station thing's a bit annoying, coming, as it does, after the visit to the village, because it means I have to backtrack a bit, but hey, I've been out to enjoy myself and I'm pretty laid back by this time.

This laidbackness explains why, when I reach the place where the uphill lane splits in two (Remember that bit?) I stay in the slow lane and let those in a bit of a hurry fly on past me. Well, until yesterday anyway.

Yesterday I was caught behind a very slow little lorry belching out diesel and I couldn't take it a moment longer, I floored the pedal and shot past it. I was now in the fast lane.

Since I was now going fast I stayed in the fast lane and soon I reached the top of the hill where I found two arrows telling me to get back into the other lane. Now to me that means it's time to perform the zipper manouver. It's easy, and just in case there's anyone in the entire world out there, other than those who drive through Stow on the Wold, who don't know how it works, it's like this. One car from the left hand lane goes through, one car from the right hand lane goes through, another car from the left lane goes through, another car from the right lane goes through, yet another car from the left lane goes through... I'm guessing that everyone on the planet (Except maybe for certain drivers passing through Stow on the Wold) is now aware of how the zipper manouver works.

The drivers in the left hand lane seemed to think it was cheating.

They bunched together, determined to keep me out at all costs. After letting 3 cars go through I decided it was time to just go for it and I latched on to the tail of the next car and started crawling. This really annoyed the next car in the queue who squeezed up alongside us and banged on the side of our car until I let him through. I'm afraid for some reason I found this reaction amusing, which might go some way to explaining the look of absolute fury on the driver's face as he squoze past. Wow. My first experience of road rage. How long is a car? About 10 feet? How can anyone get angry about that much ground? Why don't these motorists realise that the idea of having two lanes is to use them? Questions, questions.

I think we should be told.

Look, I'm not trying to upset anyone but, she did die didn't she? About a decade ago. Lady Diana F. Spencer, previously also Princess of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall? I remember it well, the nation shut down for a fortnight. So why is she even now getting more publicity than Jordan, Posh & Becks, and that Docherty bloke's girl friend put together?

It wasn't a nice death, I wouldn't wish it on anyone, but a girl a couple of villages away from here died in an almost identical accident on the same night and it didn't even make the local press. A week later Mother Theresa died and it only earned about an inch of news columnage. The papers were still full of Diana. I was starting to really resent her. Radio stations were playing crap in recognition of the gravity of the event, except for our local yoof station, which for some reason started playing Steely Dan and soft rock, and TV programmes were getting cancelled or moved without a word of warning as events developed. Where did they find these developments? Two weeks later and she was still dead. It wasn't exactly news. It still isn't.

If we really want to remember Diana how's about doing something positive like banning drunk drivers from driving for life or developing cars that can't break the speed limit no matter how much the driver wants to? Just those two things would have kept both Diana and our local girl alive that night.

Then maybe Mother Teresa would finally have gotten the recognition she still deserves.