relax, look at the stars and turn right

When people book holidays they tend to search for the cheapest flights.  And those same people - particularly if their spatial awareness of UK airports is somewhat lacking - will often find their bargains located at airports which are the most awkward to get to, with flights at the most unsocial of times.  Which may explain why they are the cheapest.  

And also explains why yet again we find ourselves rising at 4.00am to get Dan and Kelly to Stanstead Airport.

Stansted is east of MK.  It’s about 40 miles in a straight line.  But there is no straight line between these two places.  There are two choices - head north, then east to Cambridge and finally south - or head south down the M1, turn east on the M25 and then north up the M11.  

Both routes are about the same distance - some 80 miles - twice what a crow, who apparently always seem to travel in straight lines, might fly. The difference between them is that one is clockwise, the other, anticlockwise.

Which is not insignificant.

I read an article the other day about ageing and driving.  As people get older, three things happen with respect to their driving. They become nervous, they stop driving after dark and finally …. they avoid turning right. 

So the first thing I do on waking is to have a coffee, then stand outside and look up at the stars and relax about driving to an inconvenient airport.  Tick.

It’s still dark when we set off.  Tick.  

Going south is anticlockwise - which means all left turns - so I head north with all the right turns that this entails.  Tick.  

I’m a little bit sensitive about age at the moment.  An item in the paper referred to someone as ‘an elderly man in is early 60s’.  Although a commentator yesterday, described Jeremy Corbyn (66) as ‘middle-aged’.  I’ll settle for that. Tick.