Alex Versus the Monster Trucks

My old schoolmate Alex has a strange relationship with his motors.

Either they, or he, have a habit of collecting collisions in the way other folks collect stamps... His latest sad tale unfolds:

"I was tootling down to Kent last Monday, with a stop off at Elaine's sister's in Long Buckby, when some hare brained carrot crunching twat from Great Yarmouth decided it would be a good idea to smash my car to smithereens with his 39 ton Volvo truck on the M1 intersection with the M6. I was stationary on the roundabout between the two motorways, indicating right to change lanes, when there was an almighty bang and the car just rocketed forwards ten feet.

I tried to drive into the side of the road and a cloud of blue smoke drifted from under the bonnet before I just coasted to a standstill and administered the last rites to a good and faithful servant (the car - not Elaine).

Fortunately neither of us was seriously hurt although Elaine still has a bruised and swollen arm and we both had stiff necks the following day. When I opened what was left of the car boot to get our luggage out, the carpet was folded into a neat ruck in the middle because it was about six inches shorter than it was when we set off!

I wouldn't like to have been in that smash in many other cars - the passenger cell was completely intact and the exploding head rests had stuck out to minimise whiplash - I didn't even know they were there!"

Doesn't sound the ideal start to a holiday?

"Meeting East Anglia's answer to Mad Max wasn't the only piece of bad luck that we had while we were away. Coming back to the hotel on the Thursday they had a power cut, which of course meant no water, no functioning toilets and worst of all - no, not the bar, there was an Oddbins down the road - even worse than that, no telly! They finally got the water going enough for a cold shower just before we left on Friday."

Blimey! But the holiday?

"Despite all that, we had a great four days in Kent. Dover Castle was very interesting although the town was an abomination.

Canterbury was and is, a fine city with an even finer Cathedral. Not the finest, but dripping in sufficient history to make me wish that I could have spent the night there alone, just to listen to the walls speak in the dark of the night - coincidentally "Becket", the 1964 film with Richard Burton and Plenty O'Toole was on on Saturday night, and very good it was too.

Whitstable stank like the back of a bin wagon and Leeds Castle was beautiful to behold from outside but with a mediocre interior and grounds that were more reminiscent of a municipal park than a country estate.

So a bit of a curate's egg then, but sufficiently interesting to make me want to brave the 7 hour journey home through the appalling traffic and go back some day. I think that the Kent Tourist Board could only agree that that was a fair minded and succinct chronicle of my brief perambulations around the Garden of England, though admittedly not quite as expansive as the 24 pages that you give it on your web site."