A/N I entirely blame my cousin for this, she won't be reading but she knows who she is.
I yawned as I settled in my seat, for obvious reasons I hadn't got much sleep.
"Oh no, I'm not having another long drive with you snoring away."
"I don't snore."
"How do you know? And you did yesterday."
"I've been told."
We got cups of coffee at the next service station, little did I know Gary had them put an extra shot of espresso in mine, he really was determined to keep me awake.
Unfortunately about half an hour later he realised that giving me coffee was a bad idea, I don't drink it very often so the caffeine affected me more than usual. My endless fidgeting was distracting him from the driving, so we decided to stop at the next services, we'd just passed a sign saying there was one about 20 miles away, we should have got there fairly quickly.
In fact we got there fairly slowly, as a couple of miles later the traffic was completely stationary, after several minutes fiddling with the radio to find the local station to try and find the traffic news. At least the view was lovely, or it would have been if it hadn't started raining, and all you could see for miles was brake lights and an endless stream of cars heading north.
When the clouds eventually cleared the view was as spectacular as I hoped, but the sight of a wind farm in the distance triggered a long forgotten memory and I couldn't stop myself giggling.
"What's so funny?"
"Sorry, was just reminded out of the blue of the word bengs."
"Is that even a word?"
"Probably not but for some reason it's what I used to call windmills."
"OK." He replied sounding a little scared.
"And you didn't do anything like that then?"
"No."
"Really?"
"Well I did call pigeons, chickens and thought they were the same things. Going to London for the day and especially Trafalgar Square was rather chaotic as I tried to catch a 'chicken' for our dinner."
We trundled along for about 45 minutes before we eventually cleared the jam, most of the carriageway was clear save for a slightly smashed caravan and dented 4x4 in the inside
lane. It didn't take us long to get to the service station, in fact it took longer to find a parking space. Presumably other people from the jam who wanted to just get out of the car. Whilst I was in the predictably massive queue for the ladies, the place had cleared. I started to get quite paranoid in fact.
I had gone to get some lunch in the cafe, and was mildly offended when Gary said he would rather get a sandwich and have a wander outside.
"I've spent all of the day so far sat down, and have most of the rest of it to spend sat down, just want to stretch my legs that's all."
"Oh, OK."
"So how did the date go last night?"
"Really well, he did wear the pink shirt again."
"He must know how much you like it."
The women behind me in the queue were twittering away, I did hope they would not sit anywhere near me.
"We'll be planning your wedding next."
Typical, they're on the table next to me, not that I blame them, the view out over the pond was lovely. This was definitely the smartest service station I'd ever been in. The view of Gary was even nicer, unfortunately he did keep wandering about, so he drifted in and out of view. I kept hearing bits from the table next to me too.
"No, we can't put them together."
"But they RSVPd together."
"That was before she found out about his 19 year old stripper girlfriend."
"Matt has warned me that if you laugh at his middle names you will end up on a table with his Uncle Bert."
"That means it's really embarrassing."
"Come on, what is it?"
"Not telling."
"You're forgetting I have those photos, I'm sure your Facebook friends would love to see them."
I noticed that Gary had disappeared from outside and that someone who looked a bit like him in the queue, but I was desperate to hear the embarrassing names.
"Oh, OK, you can laugh now, but if you do it at the ceremony I will kill you. Giles Sebastian. The was a rich uncle."
I missed the end of the conversation because Gary appeared in front of me.
"Started raining, and I missed you. How long will you be?"
"About 10 minutes."
"Right I'll see you in the car."
The women on the table next to me started to leave at the same time.
"I'm not wearing heels, I have a perfectly fine pair of shoes to wear."
"You can't get married in Converse, what would your mum say?"
" 'I'm disappointed you have tattoos, very glad you're having a church wedding, so much nicer than a civil ceremony, and I'm not too keen on the hymns you have chosen.' I'm going to be on my feet all day they're very comfortable. I will break my neck in heels. Almost forgot, you will be getting a phone call about the speech in the next couple of days."
Unfortunately they were behind me in the shop.
"I'm not a crazy cat lady."
"That's what one would say."
"I only have two."
"That too."
"They're company for when Timo is away."
"Still not helping."
I settled myself into the seat when I got back to the car, and spread my purchases around, the bottles of water that Gary asked for, and my stash of Fanta and wine gums. There was an odd look on Gary's face at my supplies for the day.
"Always had them on a long ace journey when I was little, used to steal mums wine gums because I wasn't allowed them, she told me there was real wine in them. If we really wanted to take me back we should be arguing about wether to have Test Match Special or Radio 2."
"We just had whatever tapes were in the car, we did have one of TV themes for some reason."
"What's on the radio isn't important, I just want to get home."
When we had got comfortable and were no longer arguing about the radio, some things you clearly can't avoid inheriting from your parents, Gary said I seemed to have been concentrating rather a lot on the table next to me. I didn't think I had.
"It seemed to be a wedding planning meeting, odd place to have it, but the bride looked so stressed and clearly hated all the planning, so glad we missed out on that, think I may have killed mum, Stevie and Tilly if we had had to do that."