Cars don’t break down any more. People do, but cars, over the last 40 years, have become so much more reliable and dependable. There was a time when you wouldn’t leave home on a road trip without AA cover, a pair of tights (in case the fanbelt ‘went’, which they often did), a large vessel of water, for when one of the radiator hoses ‘went’) and the recital of a long and complicated prayer which involved brakes and clutch fluid, steering bushes and spare tyres. They’ve managed, over the time, to stop the bits falling off and are now making parts that don’t keep on packing up with ware. In fact they’ve probably overcooked it with computerisation so now when your car does break down they don’t send a mechanic so much as an IT consultant who plugs the car in and reads out what’s gone wrong.

But if you do want to see broken down cars, the M3 to Bournemouth is definitely the place. Its not a long journey, though it is an awkward one with lots of horrible roads, like the M25 involved, and yet every 3 miles Waze (without whom we NEVER leave home) informed us of ‘WARNING: car stopped on road ahead!’ which inevitably it was. But this happened, on our combined journeys, about 12 times. I mean WTF?? Are people from ‘the South’ driving older cars? Can you not get a car serviced once you go below Streatham?

Fortunately we didn’t break down. Though did return home with brake fluid warning light coming on rather annoyingly which I may have to smash to reduce its annoyance. And we had a day and a half in Bournemouth with our friends who live down there. Some of the time. You wouldn’t want to live there all the time because its not London.

I hadn’t been to Bournemouth for years, lots of years. And had virtually no recollection of it. Thinking it to be ‘just another English seaside town’ with a thin strip of crowded, stoney beach packed with 22,000 tattooed northerners drinking beer from cans at 11 in the morning. Kiss-me-quick hats, fish’n’chip shops, buckets and spades, greasy spoon cafes and filthy little ‘hotels’ which have managed to circumvent all and any nod to ‘health, safety and hygenic’.

Of course they have got all that, but the thing with ‘Bournemouth’ is that it is a vast area. Of absolutely amazing coastline. Soft golden sands, wonderful cliffs, all sorts of amazingly geographical wonderment. And it has real restaurants. And lovely (looking) hotels and it is very classy. And there’s Bournemouth and Poole and Sandbanks (so affluent that Harry Rednap lives there) and Christchurch and all sorts of fab towns and places in between. Its a snob’s paradise of an English seaside town, so Mel loved it. And, if I’m being honest and removing my champagne socialist, Corbynite hat for just a moment, so did I.

We did one… probably 3 mile walk along a fantastic beach. Cliffs one side, soft sand and virtually empty the whole way from Mudeford to… the car. Not good at geography, I just like it. The sun even shone. We’re going back.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx