Salvation is at hand!
I’m cueing in the classic late 19th Century black spiritual When The Saints Go Marching In here because I’m exhilarated and frankly feel like it:
See here for all-time great Louis Armstrong – regarded as one of its finest ever exponents – taking it at a sedate pace as only he was able on a television show, courtesy of – YOUTUBE
Let me go back about three notches and explain.
If that Mick hadn’t been and gone and done it first, then Murphy’s Law – which has many versions, my personal preference being “If anything is physically and theoretically capable of going wrong, then at some point it will” – could easily have been known to history as Nelson’s.
Whether perhaps by genetic inheritance, or Fate, or ill fortune, or just because someone’s got it in for me, it has been my lot since birth to suffer almost seventy years’ worth of things just not going my way. I am not joking.
Only two nights ago I was preparing myself a ham and tomato sandwich on the kitchen sideboard
It was intended as a snack to go with my gin & tonic as the final pair in Pointless with Anthony Armstrong and Richard Osman, having selected their three names in ascending order of likely winner, were about to learn the fate of the first of them … in the run-up to BBC One’s Six O’ Clock News.
I had just cut through the first tomato slice thereof and placed the sharp knife on the board.
I then moved the tomato slice to its chosen resting place on top of the ham … when simultaneous as I did so, the knife suddenly threw itself upon the floor beside my left foot.
It’s the kind of thing that just wouldn’t happen to anyone else.
One hundred cars can move in perfect line at 55 mph past a given yellow speed camera in a 50 mph zone and mine – at number 23 in the queue – will be the only one whose driver picks up a speeding ticket.
However, yesterday – without any warning and from out of the blue – something happened.
At about 2.00pm I was driving to join the A316 at a roundabout just past Richmond en route to the south-west-directed motorway the M3.
The first thing I noticed was that, two traffic lights before the roundabout, for the first time in at least ten years the light turned green and stayed green until I had passed through it. Normally I am caught there, whether closest to the lights or in twelfth position, and have to wait one – if not two – light changes before getting through it as the cars ahead of me waste time or dawdle before moving off.
How did I manage it? There were no cars in front of me and I didn’t even have to slow down – I just kept going, that’s how!
Next hurdle was the main roundabout at St Margaret’s where I actually turn left in order to join the A316.
Some nincompoop of an actuary who works for the traffic authorities has set the lights system as follows.
When you are held at the front of the queue at the roundabout traffic lights from my direction, you have to wait about two to three minutes before they change.
And then when you do, and thus you are finally on the A316 proceeding south-westwards, you can behold a clear dual carriageway road ahead of you with a quarter of a mile until the next traffic lights and roundabout and your heart lifts at the prospect of finally ‘getting away’ upon your journey.
Only you can’t – because the same actuary has only been and designed the road so that – within about 40 yards of getting on the A316 – the traffic lights sequence ensures that the next set off traffic lights (which allow pedestrians to cross the A316) immediately turns red for another two minutes!
Why on earth didn’t they set the lights sequence so that – when the cars are let onto the A316 at the roundabout, they can set off for at least quarter of a mile without stopping, rather than made them wait for another two minutes just 40 yards later?
This would never have happened in the late 1950s when Cowdrey and May were batting for England, Bruce Forsyth hosted Beat The Clock on ITV’s Sunday Night At The London Palladium, Great Britain had a bit of an Empire and the trains in India still ran on time to within 10 seconds either way, thanks entirely to the systems and disciplines we’d instilled in the organisational structure seventy-five years before that great county was granted independence in 1947.
Then, suddenly, the transformation!
Only this morning I departed from the Sainsburys car park in Chichester, having completed my food shop, to go to PC World.
This expedition involved me circulating a large roundabout, thereby to “come back on myself” in order to enter the side-turning to the industrial park in which PC World resides.
I was not aware of the time as I parked up and strode towards it – but ominously, the PC World building was dark and there was no sign of movement inside.
I looked at my watch – it said 8.59am.
Literally, as I walked the last twenty yards to the front door, a man suddenly appeared inside coming towards it.
He leaned up and (presumably) turned the key that made the doors open … which they then did with clockwork precision as I approached.
I swear this is true.
I had neither to break stride nor slow down – the doors opened and I simply walked straight into the building as if I was Ali Baba who had just commanded “Open Sesame!” in the tale Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves from One Thousand And One Nights.
I feel free and triumphant for the first time in my life!
