It happened suddenly.
We were driving down the narrow roads of the village of Milton Malsor, with its ancient histories and thatched roofs, on our way to the Greyhound Pub. We decided to stop for lunch after a couple hours of anxiety-provoking driving on the wrong side of the road. My dad was driving because he was technologically-retarded, and absolutely unable to navigate using modern means. That meant that I got the white-knuckle responsibility of directing us through the great monuments to Orwell and Kafka that are British roundabouts. We had missed the pull-in for the Greyhound car park. My dad had to make a u-turn. He didn’t appreciate the narrowness of British roads, and the weakness of rental tires.
Our adventure was interrupted with a pop.
We were saved by the bell when a nearby company sent a guy with a mobile “tyre-changing unit” before all the garages closed. It had been an hour detour, and combined with bad traffic on the M5, we wouldn’t get to our destination in Northumberland until 9 p.m.
Luckily, I had secured some snuff in London at a historic tobacconist. Snuff is fine tobacco that is snorted through the nasal cavity with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The effects are unlike any other tobacco product, as it bypasses the enteric system entirely, passing through the blood-brain barrier to give the user a kind of “mind-high” that is eminently pleasurable to certain personalities. Apparently my dad is one such personality. He took quite a liking to it.
“Okay! Fine! Give me a hit of snuff,” he would say every so often at regular intervals.
The Airbnb was in Donkleysville, which was a literal farm outside of Kielder National Park. Very idyllic, with its stone cottages and peaceful sheep grazing on green hillocks, the respite from the harsh realities of London proved most welcome.
The next day we drove to an old Roman fort at Housesteads that was part of Hadrian’s Wall. After that it was just a quick jaunt up to Glasgow.
But Scotland is a story for another time…
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