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your foot anywhere near the clutch pedal is now remembered with affection and amusement, more than anything. Even when I drove my old Fiat Topolino through a ford in France, and found out the hard way that the stick by the river-side was calibrated in metres, rather than feet , there was someone with me who said, with truth, if not originality:

One day, you'll look back on this, and laugh!'

Could the Day of the Swiss Landslide count as the Worst Journey? My children would have none of it. Even now, thirty years later, they occasionally ask to borrow the photographs, so their friends will believe them when they re-tell the tale. Those pictures still give me the heebies, although we found that the gap between the truck-sized boulder and a 100-foot drop was actually at least three inches wider than a Fiat 128!

And, when we went to Austria the following year, the children were highly disappointed that there were no landslides!

Clearly, time blunts the edges of even the most fearsome expedition, so maybe I should look to the present. And you can't get any more present than right here and now. I'm sitting in my car, dictating these notes into a portable tape-recorder.

I might as well. It passes the time, and I'm not going anywhere right now, even though I'm sitting in the centre lane of the M25 motorway.

I've got one of those cars which the adverts say "speaks your language", and, if it could really talk, it might say something like:

"Oi! I've got five gears, you know! You haven't been past third in the last twenty minutes!"

It's hot. If I stay here much longer, I could plant tomatoes in the car. I can't open a window, or the sun-roof, because there's a coach in the inside lane, spewing out noxious black fumes every time its driver touches the pedal.

Speaking of noxious black fumes, I've only got one cigar left. I can get some more at the next service area. It's only ten miles down the road but, at this rate, it's going to take me an hour to get there. I could buy another bottle of water there, too. This one's getting a bit low. And, that reminds me, I'm bursting for a pee! Maybe I should empty the bottle, just in case?

That guy in the motor-caravan in front of me has it made. All he's got to do is get his wife to take over, and go into the back to use the facilities. He might even be able to make a cup of tea, while he's at it. Let's not think about tea! I never thought I'd ever say it, but that service area is looking more attractive by the minute.

Let's see what's on the radio. and, let's see if I can find a channel which isn't going to tell me about this tailback I'm sitting in. Classic FM! That's nice; I like classical music, if it isn't too heavy.

Remember Sir Adrian Boult? When someone once asked him to name his favourite piece of music, he said:

" the piece I'm conducting at the moment."

Well, that's the Worst Journey of my Life. The one I'm doing right now!

Learn more about this author, Keith K..
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