Chairman’s Chit Chat September 2024
Jessie and I are in a parallel universe.
We are seated on flimsily upholstered plastic chairs around an unstable, debris-strewn plastic table.
Each of us is slowly munching our way through a wildly expensive, ice-cold breakfast baguette and cautiously sipping an over-priced, molten lava hot, bucket-sized cup of coffee.
While we munch and sip, we people watch. There are swarms of humanity buzzing around. Singles, couples, family groups and passengers from coach trips – they all look as though they are in a hurry but seem not to know where to hurry to.
Yes – you have guessed correctly – we are in a motorway services.
When I first began travelling the motorway road network in the early 1970s, service areas were pretty basic. In those far-off days, they consisted of little more than a greasy spoon cafeteria, where the stodgy, unappetising food was either dangerously undercooked or burnt to a crisp and with a newsagent-style shop and toilets.
How most things have changed over the years. Today’s motorway services are a far cry from those of yesteryear. The modern ones have evolved to become a world apart, a self-contained bubble, totally divorced from normal everyday life. The basics are still there – the toilets and the newsagents – but the offering has changed beyond recognition.
Nowadays the basics are enhanced by everything needed to sustain life – a bewildering array of eating and drinking outlets of every kind, clothes shops and upmarket supermarkets for the weekly shop. No need ever to venture beyond the automatic doors to breathe fresh air and see the sun.
However, despite all the fancy additions, one aspect has not changed. When motorway services first came into being, they quickly acquired the reputation of being outrageously expensive.
This justifiable reputation remains to this day.
Happy motoring!
Tags: coffee, motorway, spoon