"You're going the wrong way!"

Well, as any old story starts in Wales. “We were bored”. I’ve had my friends come in and out of my life, very few that have kept contact since leaving home but having a mate like Jordan Archer, always keeps life interesting. Maybe it is because we were recalling this story at Christmas is the reason, I am writing about it now.

It’s one that always makes me wonder how, why and really did that happen?

Like I was saying we were bored after football training. So, we are looking about 7:30pm on a Tuesday night. There was a thing that was started. “Bet you won’t, you’re scared see” which meant that you were to chicken to do it. When Jordan turns to you and says let’s go to Merthyr for a KFC and you say these words. There is only one thing. We are driving 1 hour to get a KFC.

Now I need to add the point that Jordan hadn’t passed his test quite yet and I was the adult supervising him in the car. I’m sure we failed to point this out to his mother when retelling the story. It was her car.

So, there we are at around 8pm setting off on the journey to get a KFC. Why we decided to do this I will never know. Neither of us hungry, I guess just boredom.

Travelling to Merthyr was easy, there was no hiccups in that. There never is, simple road. There is no story in that. But what comes next is the story.

Detour

After chowing down on do some fried chicken and picking up orders for the boys. Jordan turns to me says it’s early yet let’s shoot over to Swansea. Yeah mate not a problem I mean it is only 9:30pm not like there is work tomorrow.

So off we go over the top on our detour home. Not a single issue. Tunes on the go, I have no doubt that there was a rendition of The Vegaboyz on the playlist.

To be honest it was a wasted journey couldn’t see anything out the window of the countryside, just eternal darkness.

"How the hell does he know where we are going?"

Dual Carriageway

At the point of turning on to the Dual carriageway to head to Swansea. We couldn’t remember where we were or which road to take on the turn off. So, we picked the 1st one looped around and straight onto the dual carriageway.

Plain sailing on the way home. That was until we saw on the other side of the barriers that a vehicle was flashing the lights and tooting the horn.  Now I turned to Jordan and uttered the words “What a f**king idiot”. We laughed and thought nothing of it until another vehicle did the same and this time, we saw them mouth the words.

“You’re going the wrong way!”

This is the point where I turned to Jordan and said. “How the hell does he know where we are going”.

Here is where I am sure Morgan Freeman would narrate. “It was then, the boys knew they were going the wrong way”.

The lorry conundrum

There were 2 huge artic lorries heading straight for us horns blaring. You guessed it we were on the wrong side of the dual carriageway. There was this little Corsa versus 2 lorries. I won’t lie. I have had my fair share of close scrapes before this and thought there would be no more. How very wrong I was. 

I am sure we named the car Moses after this as we parted the lorries and drove straight in between them. I am not kidding it was a close your eyes and hope for the best moment. But fair play to Jordan the little learner got us through there. There was a moment of silence that fell in the car. Neither knew whether to laugh, cry or carry on as normal.

After a few mins obviously we laughed about it. But I know at that moment when the two lorries came at us, we had the same thoughts, we would be wiped out like Harry and Meghan from the Royal family.

It’s safe to say we delivered all the boys’ food. All be it cold though we recanted the story to which they all laughed and called us “F’ing idiots”.

So, I guess the moral is don’t be scared. This is where life stories come from.