Do his fairies keep him sober for the day?

Yesterday was our only opportunity to deliver presents to the Sussex family contingent, so Ned walked the dogs early and off we set. Motorways in the fog make for tense driving, but it wasn't too bad, and the journey down only took about an extra quarter of an hour. We had a nice lunch with Ned's mum, then at a quarter to three we left for home. Although the fog was thicker we hoped the traffic on the clockwise M25 would have cleared a little, but the Traffic Totty informed us otherwise - nose-to-tail traffic from junction 9 till junction 17. We wanted to get on at 9 and off at 16, so decided to go our old route across country, that we used before the motorway was built.

Surprisingly we could remember the way, recognising landmarks where we needed to turn and only had to do one revolution of a new roundabout. Of course single carriageway roads through towns are much slower than motorways so we knew our journey time was going to be somewhat extended, but at least we were moving. Then it started getting dark. Dark and foggy. But we successfully bypassed the M25, dithered about whether to carry on on minor roads or to drop onto the M40 for the last bit ... and plumped for the motorway. We dropped on to it at junction 6, hoping for a clearish run till we come off at j12. We were in the outside lane when everyone started braking (I hate that bit, when you have to sling out the anchors and hit the hazard lights to warn the driver behind), and there we were, stationary. We crawled northwards and eventually saw blue flashing lights up ahead - on the southbound carriageway. Once past the vehicles that were pointing every which way on the road, illuminated by the headlights of several police cars and fire engines we could immediately get back up to normal speed again - no idea why there was the tailback on our side.

By the time we eventually got home we were starving, had tension headaches and our backs were cripplingly painful. A journey which should have taken 2 hours had taken just over 4. Today we have festive sore throats ...

Merry Christmas, one and all!