and then home

on the way home from Alderley I made an unscheduled and unwanted detour...I was so relaxed on the M6 toll, I completely forgot that you really have to read all the signs at the other end if you want to get on the right motorway. So ended up crossly zigging along M6 to the M1 and then having to zag back again to find the M40.
Rats!
And after reaching the M40, stationary traffic. All the way to the next junction and then all the way to Oxford. A mere 1&1/2 hours of chilly, smelly, stop and start. Grrrr. It occurred to me as the queue crawled up the A34 exit ramp that anyone who tried to join it at the last minute was going to be in trouble. Promptly someone did and a lorry on the M40 squealed a bit and stopped. Other people stopped. Lorry (god bless the driver's little cotton socks) was just about level with my car so I had a very interesting few minutes wondering if there was about to be a pile up next to my ringside seat. Wondered whether to get out and offer tickets. Deeply satisfactory anticlimax. No crash.
There was a nice moon. I howled at it once or twice. There were other creeping drivers. I grimaced at them a few times. I listened to Nancy Kerr and James Fagin and rolled more than enough cigs. Listened to the traffic news several times so I could get the all the information for all the motorway queues exactly right for once. Had fun looking at the map to see if there was any possibility of setting off into the countryside and getting lost again (unfortunately all roads in that particular bit of countryside go the wrong way) I turned the heating on and then off again when I thought I had enough extra carbon monoxide in the car. Opened the window and ditto closed it. Pulled over on a laybye on the A34 to let Barney know that I wasn't just a mile or two away from home but in fact was going to be at least another hour or more. He sounded quite cheerful as it seemed dinner also wasn't going to be ready in a few minutes. Excellent. Couldn't tell him how pleased I was about that. Made lots of plans for how to compress all the stuff I had intended to do when I got back, into the following day, and then forgot them. Ran out of philosophical thoughts and allowed the brain to go into underdrive.
Ah well.