Home life
Motorway madness
Alice Thomas Ellis
The magpies have been behaving strangely recently. Our local ones, who I thought were divorced, appeared together on the morning of the daughter's party, arranging themselves prettily in the tree outside the dining-room window and put- ting on a great show of mutual regard. Then we had to go all the way to Wales so that I could interview a man about his work. Every two or three miles a magpie would fly across the road — invariably from left to right. Not one chose to fly from right to left. On the way home exactly the same thing happened. I can only think they were the same magpies, had gone left to do whatever it is they do (carrion-eating most- ly, I believe) and we caught them on their return journey. We passed one that had been run over and Janet said she wouldn't care to be the person who had squashed it. On the other hand, it was fairly unlucky for the magpie. Looking for somewhere to spend the night, our eye lit on a handsome black-and- white hotel standing alone in the middle of some roads. It was 6.30 p.m. and we hadn't had anything to eat since scrambled eggs in Moreton-in-the-Marsh early in the morn- ing so we headed for the door with confident anticipation. It was locked and not a light was to be seen anywhere in the not inconsiderable edifice. Thwarted, we prowled restlessly around, looking for signs of life as the evening drew on. Eventually Janet peered through the win- dow of the proprietor's annexe. The pro- prietor was sitting in an easy chair, a glass clutched in her hand, her eyes glued to the television set, and nothing was going to shift her — certainly not two boring old would-be guests.
The common attitude of English hote- liers is quite remarkable. I get the impress- ion that most of them detest the human race and would prefer to be mortuary attendants and have a bit of peace. We drove on to the next town and looked at a few tariffs. Not being greatly taken by the prospect of steak, chips and peas, or gammon, chips and peas, or cod, peas and chips we settled for a more up-market establishment of the prawns Marie Rose, duck a l'orange and Black Forest gateau type. Not ideal but minimally preferable. Seated at dinner, our attention was caught, inevitably, by the conversation at an adjacent table. Two ladies and a man were discussing their plans for the next day. From what we could gather he was going to spend the night in the car; he had brought his own cereal and said he needed only to add to it hot water from the tap in order to make it palatable. The elder lady revealed her intention of buying some lamp chops and making cauliflower cheese, and gave an account of her travels round the coast of Australia. The younger lady didn't say anything much. Janet and I, light-headed from hunger, couldn't hear between the lines. We could not for the life of us figure out the relationship between these people, or think why the man was sleeping in the car. It was extremely frustrating and served us right for eavesdropping. Lost in surmise, we grew hysterical with reprehensible mirth, dropped our napkins and swallowed our pudding the wrong way. We must have appeared completely mad, since we said scarcely anything to each other, merely giving occasional vent to hoots of maniacal laughter.
This being the case, I got a considerable surprise when we had retired to the bar and a perfect stranger — an American gentle- man — observed from the corner where he was sitting that we should write a weekly satirical column for a magazine. My mouth dropped open. Satirical may not be the mot juste, but it is weekly after all. Did he have second sight? Is rudeness in a restaurant sufficient justification for hanging out one's shingle as a satirist? Then he said his favourite book was Beryl's Bottle Factory Outing and it seemed like a small world.
Our American friend also told us that he had been carried off an aeroplane some days before, hyperventilating, and I con- cluded that it's travelling that drives people mad. I'm going to stay in Camden Town for a while with my head in a paper bag. On the whole the magpies behave more rationally when they keep off the roads.
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