The Great Escape… part three

Firstly I must apologise about the time delay; I’ve been so busy (*ahem*) that I haven’t had the inclination to actually finishing writing this up. I thought that it was best to wait till I felt, in myself, ready to complete such noble a piece of writing. Unfortunately I got bored of waiting and therefore this will have to make do I’m afraid. Let us pick up where we left off…

3:00pm

With audible squeals of delight we finally reached a big blue sign saying “M62”. Eventually we had made it out of Liverpool; it had only taken us just over an hour.

Flooring the beast Aslan informs me that he hadn’t actually had time for breakfast, as he was too busy packing (more like sleeping), so after a short piece of contemplation, we decided to stop off at the first services; being men we know that it is foolhardy to do simply anything on an empty stomach, and to this day I maintain this is the reason we got, well misdirected (men never get lost).

Anyways, as we pulled up to the Merseyside service station, just off of the M62 (I fondly call them the “the wigwam’s” – if you’ve been there you’ll understand), I asked my esteemed colleague what he wanted to devour. Predictably he replied,

“mmm Chicken”

This was when we discussed our imminent journey. Due to our slight diversion, we hadn’t actually had time to discuss our route home, diversions, if any, and, most importantly, who was going to explain why it had taken us so long to get home (as you will see, it took us far longer than planned!) Deciding that we really should try and make up a bit of time (a futile effort because of course we were sticking to EVERY speed limit… honest) we thought that it was in our best interests to go straight home. This tough meant that the journey itself was going to be really boring, and if you know Aslan and myself, even a little, you would know that this wouldn’t do. This is when it came to me (yes I’m afraid I have to take the responsibility to what happened next, something I am not proud of in the slightest.)

The stupid fool: - “Aslan, I wonder how many service stations there are on the way home?”
The slightly more sane lion: - “I dunno mate, quite a few I think”
The stupid fool: - “Well I was thinking (never a good idea), why don’t we stop off at each one and count them?”
The slightly more sane lion: - “Yeah sure, why not? How many do you reckon they’ll be?”
The stupid fool: - “Oh at least five more at least, what do you think?”
The slightly more sane lion: - “only five more, I reckon there’s gonna be seven in total”
The stupid fool: - “you’re on! I’m pretty good at these things- there’s definitely not going to be more than six in total”.
The slight more sane lion: - “you’re on!”

Needless to say, I was wrong! What happens next is actually not that interesting to read; if you’re on a short time allowance, skip the next couple of paragraphs (or in fact you can stop reading all together, after all I’m extremely impressed you got this far).

Journeying to the service stations

To save time, and your sanity, I’ve condensed these into bullet points, each representing a service station. Everything below is actually true, though I have spied it up ever so slightly to stop you falling asleep whilst reading. So sit back relax and enjoy.

1. Obviously you know about this one; this is where we (or I) came up with this hair-brained scheme (can someone please explain to me the meaning of this insult) to go visiting the world of the motorway service station;

2. As we pulled off, Aslan decided that he needed to test the laws of physics, namely the law of centripetal force; so conjunctly, we want round he roundabout a couple of times, and yes I was nearly sick;

3. Now this one had a very confusing car park, and we decided that we needed to see every part of it, so we went round it a couple of times. Unfortunately, Aslan was enjoying himself a bit too much and didn’t see the car reversing out of a space 50 yards in front of us. What followed was:

Me screaming “STOP!!!” at the top of my voice;

The beast skidding whilst Aslan performed an emergency stop, and to top it all off;

The didgeridoo catapulted from the back of the car (note I did say that it shouldn’t have been placed behind me) right into the back of my head.

Needless to say we left this one rather quickly.

4. Due to the commotion at the last station, we decided to show this one the respect it duly deserved; after all the stations are there for our convenience (the fact they charge extortionate prices is neither here nor there). So, very docilely, we waved our greetings to passers by. This was met by a mixture of responses. Some, very generously smiled and waved back to us, whilst others, who were less munificent (what a cool word- no idea what it means – was on Word thesaurus so thought I’d stick it in to look clever) gave us a filthy look- or even ignored us! When this happened, we turned round and went to greet them again, to make sure they weren’t left out; after all, Aslan is an inclusive kind of guy- no one needs to miss out, that’s just not nice.

5. As we pulled into this one, we had just heard, to our delight, that Wayne Rooney would indeed be back for England’s World cup campaign (this was before all the shenanigans against the Portuguese had happened). So, being truly patriotic people, we screamed at the tops of our voice “ROONEY!!” to the innocent onlookers. This didn’t go down to well, so we quickly clarified our position by adding “Yes he’s back!” to the end of our chorus’.

6. Now, this one was very special. We pulled up in a reverent silence. This station was special; it was the place where the hallowed game of JOGA would be performed. This, to all you heathens is a new style of football. The style we had chosen was one with involved man-against-man, where all of an individual’s skill and temperament would be tested. The car park acted as an ideal setting. Slowly I knelt down visualising what was about to happen. Picking up some dirt off of the ground, I rubbed it between my fingers drying the sweat on my palms. This was it; the defining moment in my life. Yeah, I'll stop there. There’s poetic licence and just pain stupid. Needless to say I destroyed Aslan and we went on our merry way.

7. By this point we had reached the M6 Toll road. Now what a posh road this is! Even the service station was posh- and the prices matched. I bought two drinks here, (Aslan the one) and it cost me the best part of £5. The worst thing was that neither of our thirsts were quenched. Fortunately, this being a posh service station, the answer to our dehydrated was gifted to us. Outside, as an alimental feature, there were those cool shooting fountains which fire out of holes in the ground n sequence. Seeing these, there was only one thing the lion and myself could do. Rushing outside, we approached the furthest holes and bent down over them, our faces directly above the holes. Nothing happened. “Why aren’t they work…“- Aslan was cut-off mid speech by a jet of water hitting him clean in the face. This I found hilarious as mine hadn’t fired, feeling very pleased with myself I turned towards Aslan and said “ner-ner-ne-ner-ner”, only to be hit seconds later with a jet of water. Unfortunately, mine hadn’t hit me in the face, because I had moved to laugh at Aslan. So, predictably, I was drenched from the head down. This was the cue for Aslan to go into hysterics.

8. Unfortunately, this is the final service station. I’m sure you agree with me though that eight services for one journey is more than enough. For this one we had pretty much run out of novel ideas, so we had “JOGA, the re-match”. Aslan’s forfeit for losing the last round was to wear his massive England hat whilst playing. To cut a long story short, Aslan had his revenge and (quite literally) ran circles around me.

At last, we pulled back into the centre of the universe, my house. The journey had taken us the best part of 5 ½ hours to get home. Getting out of “the beast” I knelt down and kissed the ground; it was good to be home.

Thank you for reliving our epic journey, I only hope I have done it justice in this tale. That day will live long in my memory. And a special thank you to Aslan, the mighty lion; you are a hero.

Take care

Daniel