MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR PART 2

Lyn and I travelled down to London last Wednesday to see The Sound Of Music which Matt and Jonny had arranged for our anniversary and Lyns birthday.The deal was a night in The Strand Palace,pre Theatre meal and of course the show.We arranged our own transport down which was with National Express at £10.00 each return,bargain!!!!.All went well with our trip down.The Hotel was great as was the meal, and the show was awesome truly awesome.LesleyGarrett brought the house down and was for my money the star of the show,although Connie Fisher was not far behind.
The next morning dawned wet and extremely windy as had been forecast and it was quite a breezy trip to Victoria coach station for our 2hour 10min ride back to Thetford.At precisely 1.00pm our coach set off with 13 other souls and our driver John.Lyn and I settled back for the journey.Within a few minutes things started to go wrong as the Embankment was closed which resulted in a lengthy delay to get us back on track.I really didnt expect to see Big Ben twice in such a short period of time.We were now over an hour late.Approaching the M11 we could see the warning signs,and hoped they were referring to the M25 but no such luck the M11 was closed between junctions 6 and 10 so the driver decided to go on the M25 to take the A12,guess what that was closed,so back we come past the M11 to take the A10,guess what the slip road was closed,so we carry on to come off on the next exit to come back and approach the A10 from another angle ,via Enfield!!!!! .It is now 6.00pm and we are only about 12miles from where we started.After crawling through Enfield(NICE TOWN!!!!)we approach the A10 along with all the traffic in the South of England,guess what thats also closed.Now I have a pretty good sense of direction but I have no idea where we are.John our driver has during this time been trying to reach his office to tell them to send out a relief coach with driver as he is out of hours,guess what, no they are not closed but all he gets is a recorded message.He is now really pissed off especially as he was only driving for a favour to cover a driver off sick, and he is supposed to be taking his wife out to dinner,and now she has to get a take away instead.This mobile phone banter was quite interesting and we were all giving him advice as to handle the domestic situation which was developing.
Anyway back to the driving.We were somewhere near a place called Hertford near the A10 crawling along at a snails pace when John had a sudden rush of blood to the head and decided to turn round,now whether he had seen other drivers do this I have no idea,anyway he proceeded to cross the grass central reservation and promptly got stuck axle deep in mud straddling 4 lanes of road leaving only grass strips on each side for traffic to get round.Now I have never seen a 40foot 10wheeler stuck in such a position,but my reaction to his efforts would have brought the same reaction as that of a number of motorists "YOU F.......... WANKER"..All John said was I'm going to get nicked for this.Then he hatched a cunning plan for all us passengers to say that he had to swerve to avoid a reckless driver when the boys in blue turned up.Well it wasn't long before they arrived and I do believe he managed to convince them as to how he managed to avoid a nasty accident save the lives of all his passengers and prevent the coach from being written off.All the time this was going on the boys in blue were trying to keep the traffic moving,until they directed a huge artic to pass us,and yes that got stuck, so now we had one road down to a crawl and the other completely blocked,and by the way the police car had also broken down,his blue flashing lights were no more.But before long another had arrived and proceeded to organise a tow truck.We weren't allowed off as it was deemed too dangerous so we sat there continuing to watch the unfolding cabaret.Passing motorists from the other side were continuing to abuse anybody they could and offer advice to both police and John like" try pushing it you assholes"Have you ever tried pushing a 10ton monster axle deep in mud.Mind you I would have probably offered the same advice.Anyway to cut a long story short as this is becoming as long to write as our journey home took, the tow truck arrived and within minutes a team of highly skilled men soon had us all on our way.John had arranged a relief coach to come and pick us up, as he was by now definitely out of hours.It never turned up and after waiting for about 15 mins he decided to complete the journey himself.The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at Thetford at 10..pm some 9 hours after starting out.John didn't get a tip and I don't care if he even got his takeaway.I have written to National Express, but not in such detail,and I don't expect to get a reply.
Thanks to Jonny Matt Kate and H for a super couple of days and to Lyn for keeping me warm at the back of the bus.