Postcards Home

Now our family holidays have never exactly 'gone to plan' and rather than send something which reads - wish you were here - instead of me! - I report events in a light-hearted, 'it would only happen to us' kind of way.


The year in which my friend suggested I take up writing, we had gone to Weston-Super-Mare. My husband had fixed a roof rack on the car and tied the luggage on top of that. I packed our 3 kids in the back aged 12, 4 and 6 months and we drove onto the M20 London-bound to the chorus of "are we nearly there yet?" I should also mention that it was drizzling.

So far so good. Before we arrived at junction 8; there was an almighty thud at the back of the car; myself and the kids looked through the back window and saw our roof rack travelling down the middle lane in the wrong direction. Fortunately it did not cause an accident, but we were unable to stop there and then, so drove on until we found a roadside emergency phone box. My husband walked back along the hard shoulder to see if he could retrieve the roof rack and its cargo while I reported the incident to an operator who advised the police of the situation.

Traffic was buzzing by while I was on the phone and I did not hear the man, wrapped in a waterproof coat, who approached me from behind. He tapped me on the shoulder and I nearly died of fright. The Marie Wilks murder some eight years earlier was in my mind. The man had seen the roof rack come off the car and had pulled over to tell me it had come off. I was very frightened and extremely irritated with myself for not double checking the roof rack before we set off.

Well the fun and games did not stop there. My husband returned from his dangerous walk along the hard shoulder and advised me that the rack was too heavy for him to lift and we would have to go up to junction 7 to turn around and go back to junction 9 and do the same.

Resigned to the fact that our journey to Weston was going to take even longer than planned, we were about to get in the car when the police arrived. It was raining solidly now. My husband spoke to them and told them how we were going to handle this situation. They left us and I felt we were lucky that nobody had been injured or killed as it was a heavy weight travelling in the wrong direction at some speed.

We got back into the car and headed towards junction 7 where we turned around and travelled back the way we'd come. We passed the phone box where I'd made the call and we were looking at the other side of the road to see if we could see where the roof rack was. There was a dark-coloured van parked on the hard shoulder and two men were in ditch alongside the hard shoulder standing over our belongings. Having pulled off the plastic sheeting which protected the cases, they were now taking our cases off our roof rack and opening them up to see what was inside!

My husband stopped the car and called across the busy traffic for them to leave it alone; then he tried to cross the motorway but it was too busy and he had to abandon that idea. I was mortified. I had just bought 6 pairs of M&S knickers for our holiday and was about to lose them. I also remembered that my hair dryer was in one of the cases and that would be lost too.

The men decided it wasn't worth their while and threw everything back in the ditch, got in their van and left the scene. My husband got back in the car and drove as fast as he could to the next junction to turn around again.

We eventually found our cases and their now soggy contents lying in the ditch and began our recovery of them. The same police officers we’d spoken to earlier arrived and told us they’d been advised of abandoned luggage and assumed it was an insurance job. Happy that we were the owners, they left us for their next job. We just threw everything back in the cases; secured and double checked the roof rack this time; and then continued our journey.

By now, however, the kids were upset and the baby needed feeding so I suggested we go to my mother's home which was near junction 7 where we had previously turned around and were once again heading. When we arrived, my husband called the police to report the attempted theft and moaned that the officers who had turned up had not really helped. He was asked if he had been done for having a dangerous load; when he replied "No", he was told to consider himself lucky. I think he was also annoyed at himself for not double checking the fitting.

With the kids fed and watered we set off for Weston, arriving in pouring rain some 4 hours later than planned. We had rented a small cottage for the week on a farm. There was a laundry room on site but for some reason it was closed all week so I had to wash as much as I could by hand and dry it inside on a small airer as it rained every day of that week. Although, thankfully, not all day!

So rather than be defeated by this experience, I sent postcards home describing, in an entertaining way, our tortuous holiday journey and weather conditions. I can’t remember exactly what I wrote, but it obviously amused my friend.

Anyway, I digress. I have started this blog to record my journey, now that I have started to write. I hope to inspire you. If nothing else, I hope I make you smile.