Brockley: A Car’s Worst Nightmare

Me and my Sat Nav have a volatile relationship at the best of times; he’s somewhat of a backseat driver, and I don’t take orders very well. Don’t get me wrong, there’ve been plenty of good times – but we’ve had our fair share of rough patches. Like the time he led me four miles down a country lane that eventually turned into a field. Or the time he tried to send me careening off a bridge by convincing me it was a roundabout. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he didn’t like me… But up till now I’ve been able to forgive him. Because up till now, he’d never taken me to Brockley. Up until yesterday, that is.

Now, being a (North)Eastender, it’s not often I venture much further south than Liverpool Street; if I even so much as sniff the river I get all nervous and have to start calling people Guv’nor or Treacle to balance things out. So when TomTom took me on a detour of the deep, dark south, I began to suspect that something was afoot. Had I not kept right well enough? Had I not taken the second exit? But it turns out it wasn’t me the GPS had it in for this time; it was my poor little KA. Because Brockley, it seems, is a car’s worst nightmare.

Travelling a two-mile stretch of quiet, residential road had never been so difficult, as I encountered obstacle after obstacle: bollards, narrowing lanes, partitions, one-way systems, bus lanes, big bumps, little bumps, lady humps – you name it, they’d fashioned it into a traffic-generating device. Judging by the ludicrous designs of some of these motor-slowers, I can only assume that their road planning office is full of primary colour bean bags, middle age crises and failed creative careers; a place that has Bring Your Hamster to Work days and actively encourages the word ‘mindmap’. I wonder what fun they’ll think of next? Car ski jumps? Hoops of fire?

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