gibberish

Fuck you. M8.

I had, for me, quite an important day today.

At 9am I was part of a pitch team, in Fife, with one of my clients for a relatively small but nevertheless very important arts opportunity.  We really want to win this and it was important enough for me to cut into the morning before an important presentation to a large client at lunchtime in Glasgow with another of my clients.  And this evening I was planning to attend a memorial mass, with my mum, at St Columba’s Hospice for those that have passed away there, those people include my father.

So I had no option but to drive.

But logic said this would not be a problem.  I’d leave Fife by 10am and be in Glasgow by 11.15 given that we’d be past the notorious rush hour.  Coming home would be more of a challenge, but if I left sharp at 5.30 I could just make it to Edinburgh in 90 minutes.

Let’s put this in perspective here.  At night one can drive city centre to city centre in 45 minutes.

But no.  Oh fucking no.

The Fife pitch was a dream and I emerged blinking into the sunlight at 9.50 (ten minutes up my sleeve before I’d even started).  I flew along the motorway and reached the outskirts of Glasgow (a mere 9 miles to go) by 10.30.  Easily 20 minutes ahead of schedule.

When did I complete those 9 miles?

11.43.

I left the office at 5.33.  3 minutes to the poor.  Odds against me.  Knowing that when one hits the motorway leaving Glasgow at night one usually gets a bit of a free flow most of the way home, bar the Coatbridge turn off.

So, only that single mile to traverse.

When did I complete that mile?

6.25.

There is a very fine chapter in the very fine novel “Gould’s Book of Fish” by Richard Flanagan in which the central protagonist is imprisoned in a cage hung in the sea so that at high tide there is barely room to breathe and at low tide the occupant fries in the Australian sun.

It is utter mental torture.

That is what the M8 feels like and yes, I know, I have a comfortable middle class lifestyle and I am exaggerating like a bastard.  But in middle class world the torture of the M8 is unbearable.

An aside… What’s more, to release the tension I was listening to Desert Island Discs on my ipod (I know, I know, no need to point out the wankishness of this) when who should come on but Nick Clegg.  What a supercilious upper class fucking bastard he really is.  Six times he exclaimed “extraordinary” and my most hated politicians word “look” when they really mean “shut the fuck up and listen to me because I am important and you are a piece of fucking shit” was also uttered at the same frequency (sometimes sotto voce).  Nauseating he was, playing 100% to the galleries and not a genuine utterance passed his lips.

Back to the story… The M8 is chocabloc with huge lorries, literally thousands of them.  It varies in scope from five lanes at best, to two lanes at its busiest point (the Kingston Bridge) and the town planners seem not to have realised that this creates eternal bottlenecks.  It just does not work.  5 does not go into 2.  We all know that.

It’s fucking gross stupidity.  Somebody have a word with somebody and do something about it.

An aside… When we were in LA this summer the one thing that impressed me with that shithole was the fact that they had a car sharing lane that gave priority to cars with passengers.  That would not have helped me today but at least it showed town planners thinking about the issues they face.  This is simply not happening in Glasgow.

So, ban lorries from 7.30 am – 9am and 5 – 7pm?

Just a thought.

Put rescue vehicles on standby, on the hard shoulder, at peak times to clear up the mess when shunts happen?

Just a thought.

Make it a toll road?

Just a thought.

Do something that shows you give a fuck?

Just a thought.

Anyway, cheers Dad.  Sorry I never got there, but believe me I was thinking about you.  I’m raising a glass now.

“Fuck the M8″