Monday 20 December 2010

Driving Home For Christmas - The PhD Ends















So, I suppose I should change the description of this blog. As I am no longer doing any experimental work. I have left Bristol behind to spend Christmas with my parents before I set out into the wide world and start writing up the shambolic collection of misadventures known as "My PhD".

Regardless, Bristol is around a three hour drive from where my parents live, but it was a little bit snowy, so I made sure to pack a banana, two miniature Melton Mowbray (accept no imitations) pork pies, a bag of Malteasers, two oranges and a couple of bottles of water. All in all I was expecting it to take maybe four or five hours, as it can when the traffic is truly awful.

How wrong I was. So very wrong. I set off a little after noon having compressed my worldly belongings into my tiny car and escaping the fair city with its few centimetres of festive snow. I arrived at the house of my parents at around half one in the morning.

An extra ten hours. Ten hours where I covered perhaps nine miles trapped between junctions four and five on the M5 (major motorway going between Bristol and Birmingham). I nearly went insane. I attempted to wee in a bottle but couldn't find an angle. I got out of the more or less stationary car to do my business upon the central reservation but feared that the temperatures being so far below zero could cause irreparable damage to one of the favourite parts of my anatomy. And then I drove past a this little snowman at around hour eight of my journey. It made me smile. Luckily, I had plenty of time to snap a photograph.

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