Comedian Tracey Ullman has produced a couple of sketches recently that poke fun at the an attitude to Christianity which seems to be becoming increasingly prevalent in our green and pleasant land.

The first portrayed an applicant for a job who was received enthusiastically until she mentioned she was a Christian, when the interviewers stepped back, thinking she must be weird. The second portrayed a baptism which was going well until the godmother mentioned that she was glad to do it because she was a Christian, when the parents recoiled. Then the vicar revealed that he too was a Christian…

If part of the job of a comedian is to laugh at the absurdities in society, this was spot on. I am aware that not everyone in the UK is a Christian or even believes in God. But it is a country founded on Christian principles, and part of the reason so many people want to live here is that we have a rule of law founded on those Christian principles. The Christian ideas of love, freedom and justice still mean something.

But there are disturbing signs that all this is at risk. This week a Christian MP was questioned by the BBC and by a colleague because she came straight to a parliamentary committee from an Ash Wednesday service, where traditionally a small ash cross is marked on the forehead.

The Spectator reported: “To her credit, she kept her ashes intact, explaining: ‘I think they just thought I didn’t want to be embarrassed – but I was not going to rub it off. Many religions have visible symbols and Christians should not feel any embarrassment in either practising their religion or in the public display of religious symbols.’”

A small thing, perhaps, but the so-called BBC blew it up into a big issue on its website and Facebook site. Why? Would they have questioned the actions of people of other faiths in the same way? I suspect not. It’s more what The Spectator goes on to call the Secular Inquisition, which everyone expects.

More seriously, because it involves the justice system, it is now under question whether preaching Christianity outside of church is permitted – despite the fact that our history shows that the evangelism of people like the Wesleys probably saved the country from violence and divisions in the past.

Two street preachers in Bristol were convicted of a public order offence after the prosecutor claimed that publicly quoting parts of the King James Bible in modern Britain “should be considered to be abusive and is a criminal matter”.

He told the court that “although the words preached are included in a version of the Bible in 1611, this does not mean that they are incapable of amounting to a public order offence in 2016”.

He also claimed: “To say to someone that Jesus is the only God is not a matter of truth. To the extent that they are saying that the only way to God is through Jesus, that cannot be a truth.”

It may not be a truth to everyone, but it is a serious claim not confined to 1611, and one that under any realistic  view of religious freedom must be capable of being expressed to others. If it is expressed in an abusive way, that is another matter, and totally out of tune with the actions of Jesus himself. But in this case it was the listeners who became abusive. Were they prosecuted? Of course not.

Do we want to remain a Christian country? I suggest it is essential for the sake of our sanity and security. In the past few weeks a Hindu mob invaded a Christian peace festival in India, beat up the pastor and attacked other Christians; in Egypt some 200 Christian families have had to flee the northern Sinai town of Al Arish, where six Christians were recently murdered and Islamist threaten to ethnically cleanse the area. There are many similar examples from other countries.

Could it happen here? We may scoff at the possibility. But if we go along with the idea that Christians are weird or habitually abusive in their beliefs, we are sliding, and it may be that in the words of Leonard Cohen, “things are going to slide in all directions”.

Some Christians certainly are weird – some people say I am myself – but my beliefs are not, and I do not want to be afraid to express them. At the moment the ignorance of prosecutors and magistrates may simply be mildly alarming – even absurd. But is it just the thin end of a quickly widening wedge?

Once upon a time, a man (though he could have been a woman) lived in an enclosed room. He had everything he needed. It was a large and exciting room, and there was plenty to keep him occupied.

Being an intelligent kind of guy, he investigated every part of his environment and became an expert on it. He developed ways of working out what it was made of, and even where it might have come from – assuming that nothing had changed in the way things worked since the beginning.

He decided that it was very, very old and had come into existence by chance. He invented a theory to explain how this might have happened, although it was not entirely convincing. However, as he pointed out, there was no other theory.

It was suggested to him that perhaps there was something outside the room, but he found this was an unsatisfactory idea, because it could not be tested. In fact, he felt that people who thought such a thing possible were in some way mentally deficient.

He examined the room in great depth and worked out what would happen to it eventually.

He knew that after he was gone some people would find out more about the room, and that was fine. Eventually everything there was to know about the room would be known.

Some people said there were things in the room that he could not detect – perhaps things that could go in and out without his seeing them. He thought this was stupid, because if he had no experience of them, they could not be there.

He wrote many books about the room, and they explained many things about it. But none of them explained why it was there, or why he was there. Or who he really was.

He did not think these were good questions.

One day his room exploded. Nothing survived.

When 1984 passed without much sign that George Orwell’s prophecies were coming to pass, we might have been permitted a sigh of relief. But there are signs now that such a sigh would have been premature.

The kind of society envisaged by Orwell is now at the door, and not primarily because of the swing to right-wing politics. It may in fact be time to abandon the terms right-wing and left-wing, because both of them have the capacity to destroy freedom through imposing their own doctrines on people generally.

One of the signs of a 1984 society was the corruption of language, so that words did not mean what they seemed to mean. Today we are stigmatised if we are not “tolerant”. But what does that mean?

It used to mean, in the words of Tim Dieppe, accepting the existence of ideas with which you disagree. “It now tends to mean accepting all other ideas as equally valid, unless you happen to disagree with this meaning of ‘tolerance’ – in which case you are not ‘tolerated’.”

People who believe that there are absolute truths or moral values are often said to be intolerant, though this is not necessarily the case at all. If I believe that certain lifestyles  are wrong, I am just expressing an opinion, and it is impossible to deduce from that how tolerant of other opinions I am. It is even less logical to jump from that to say that I hate those who have a different view.

What we can easily end up with here is a society where those accused wrongly of hating are in fact being hated (and not tolerated) by people who believe they themselves are tolerant and hate-free.

Spooky? What about the idea of equality? Sounds wonderful, but it has come to assume a moral neutrality of all beliefs. Some people believe it is neutral not to believe in God, but in fact that is often just as strong a belief as being a Christian.

The Equality Commission in Northern Ireland prosecuted Ashers bakery for not being willing to make a cake that would promote same-sex marriage – in fact refusing to act against their beliefs, which did not involve hate or intolerance.

Felix Ngole, meanwhile,  was expelled from Sheffield University after posting on Facebook an opinion in support of biblical teaching on marriage. What is that all about? Surely it is intolerance by the university of views that it disagrees with, plus lack of respect for free speech. As Voltaire (an atheist) would have said, even if we disagree with an opinion we should defend absolutely the right to express it.

In the near future holders of public office, such as school governors, civil servants, councillors, parliamentarians, police and judiciary, may be required to swear an equality oath – that is, an oath to uphold British values. If those values require agreement not to express certain views, Christians could be barred from public office. Is this what we want, when our basic freedoms in the UK have grown out of a Christian heritage?

There are other examples of 1984 behaviour – for example “hate incidents”, which the police are obliged to investigate on the basis of one person’s view of something quoted elsewhere. And the agreement between the EU and social media companies like Facebook and Twitter  to take down any posts if “civil society” groups claim they constitute “hate speech”.

This effectively allows lobby groups, including Islamists, to censor opinions they disagree with by getting their members to mass report them.

Tolerance? Hate? Equality?

Confused? You will be.

Everyone I know seems to be ill. This is what is known as hyperbole. Sometimes it’s known as flu, or man flu. Other times it’s a bit of a flu. Occasionally it’s flue, but that’s just a spelling problem.

Here are some things you can’t do:

soldier on with flu

fight off flu

go to work with flu

have a bit of a flu

Flu is an extremely debilitating virus which renders you weak, aching and incapable of functioning in any normal way. You usually have to go to bed for a few days, and if you’re not in bed, you’re probably on your way to or from the loo.

Flu is not a synonym for a bad cold or a persistent cough. I am 71, and I’ve had flu twice in my life. It’s not something you forget, and it gets very irritating when people use the word lightly. It’s a bit like blasphemy.

There is no such thing as man flu. There is such a thing as malingering, but women do it too.

You can, if you like, have a flu-like virus, which generally means you’re achey and shivery and have no energy. It’s not good, but it’s not flu.

Why am I so bothered about the misuse of the word flu? Partly because over the years I have been susceptible to colds. I have an upper respiratory tract that is sensitive and easy to drive crazy. When I have a cold, my nose not only streams; it feels as if ants are running up and down it and biting. My eyes are sore and pour out water. My head feels as if it’s in a pressure cooker, and I sometimes have a sore throat too. I really can’t do anything but curl up until it goes away. I can’t read. I can’t watch television.

This is not flu. At worst it’s an upper respiratory tract infection. But it is disabling, which is why I get mildly annoyed by people who “just keep going” with colds and merrily infect anyone in their vicinity – many of whom get much worse symptoms than they do.

There is also the difficulty that if you stay at home with a cold, certain people will look at you askance. What? Just a cold? What kind of wimp are you? Well, since you ask, I’m the kind of wimp who would love to get the kind of mild cold symptoms that you do.

I’m not really whining. It just sounds like it. I am actually very grateful that I don’t get chest infections, or bronchitis, or pneumonia. Not yet, anyway. What I get is not life-threatening –  just very, very unpleasant.

My wife has just had a really nasty virus that generates symptoms of a heavy cold, plus a persistent cough and lack of energy, and which appears to go on and on. This is bad, but it is not flu. I believe the Queen had it, but it was not Royal Flu, though that is how it was described in newspaper headlines.

I understand that: I used to write newspaper headlines for a living. Flu fits nicely into narrow columns and big font sizes. But it is still wrong. Wrong, do you hear me? Wrong.  Just wrong.

Despite huge demand, I am using this opportunity to present you with an excerpt from the Alternative Carol Service at St Augustine’s Church in Norwich. We like to intersperse the carols and readings with figments of our imagination – in this case an episode of Mastermind.

We had this a few years ago, when an angel did quite well. This year a Shepherd tried his luck. It went like this. You may think it loses something in the translation.

Quizmaster:  Please be seated. And you are?
Shepherd: A Shepherd.
Quizmaster:  No, I mean what’s your name?
Shepherd: Shepherd. A Shepherd.
Quizmaster: No, I mean…
Shepherd: My friends call me Andy. Andy Shepherd.
Quizmaster: Oh, I see. And are you sure you’re in the right place?
Shepherd: I think so. I got directions.
Quizmaster: In the e-mail we sent you?
Shepherd: From an angel.
Quizmaster: An angel?
Shepherd: I find they’re more reliable. They don’t crash. Or freeze. Or go astray, like sheep.
Quizmaster: Oh, I see. (Suspiciously) And where did you see this angel?
Shepherd: Outside town. High up.
Quizmaster: I see. All right. Well, you’re here anyway. (Consults card) That’s all right then. And your special subject is?
Shepherd: Sheep.
Quizmaster: Of course.
Shepherd: I know all about sheep.
Quizmaster: Is there a lot to know about sheep?
Shepherd: You’d be surprised.
Quizmaster: I’m not sure…
Shepherd: So we went looking for this manger. I’m not sure this is the place. Do you have a manger?
Quizmaster:  Umm, no. What is a manger, exactly?
Shepherd: It’s a kind of feeding trough. Do you have a feeding trough?
Quizmaster: We have a canteen.
Shepherd: This is a canteen?
Quizmaster: No. This is a studio.
Shepherd: What’s a studio? Never mind. Probably a mistake in translation. Where’s the baby?
Quizmaster: Baby?
Shepherd: The angel mentioned a baby, too.
Quizmaster: I think you may have got a bit mixed up.
Shepherd: No, the angel was quite specific. I remember it clearly. I was keeping watch. Over the flocks. It was already dark.
Quizmaster: So perhaps it wasn’t an angel.
Shepherd. It was definitely an angel. The glory of the Lord, you see.
Quizmaster: The glory of the Lord?
Shepherd: Yes. Quite frightening. At first.
Quizmaster: At first?
Shepherd: Yes. But he told us not to be afraid. So that was all right. And then he told us about the baby.
Quizmaster: I don’t think we have a baby.
Shepherd: (Accusingly) What have you done with it?
Quizmaster: There is no baby.
Shepherd: I’m sorry. But if you’re asking me to believe you rather than an angel…
Quizmaster: I don’t think there was an angel. You must be mistaken.
Shepherd: There were loads of them. A multitude. A host, even.
Quizmaster:  A host of what?
Shepherd: Angels. It’s a collective noun. Host of angels, school of whales…
Quizmaster: I think we’re getting away from your special subject. It was sheep, wasn’t it?
Shepherd: Yes, I know all about sheep.
Quizmaster: Right, then. First question: Do you like sheep?
Shepherd: Of course. All we like sheep.
Quizmaster: That’s a strange way of putting it.
Shepherd: All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way. You must know that.
Quizmaster: It sounds familiar. I’m not sure this is going to work.
Shepherd: Of course it will work. If God does something, it always works.
Quizmaster: If you’re talking about the producer…
Shepherd: Producer?
Quizmaster: We call her God. The whole programme is her baby.
Shepherd: Baby. Right, so you do have a baby?
Quizmaster: (Sighs) We don’t seem to be getting very far.
Shepherd: Look, if the baby’s not here, I’m going to have to go. The angel said I had to find him. I’m sorry.
(Exits)
Quizmaster: Mr Shepherd, you have scored no points, with no passes. You seem to have everything right.

I am not really much of a political animal. On most issues I find myself in a minority, and I am sceptical about received opinion. I am suspicious of experts.

Actually, that’s only partly true. When I was operated on for the removal of prostate cancer, I was glad that the knife was yielded by someone who knew what he was doing. Likewise, when I fly, I am glad that the aircraft was constructed by experts. Expert engineers, doctors, dentists, builders, plumbers, electricians? Yes, please.

But experts at defining details of the past? Experts at predicting the future? Experts at reconstructing the traffic system in my home city? Experts at economics? Politics? Statistics? Not so sure.

Economists and statisticians in particular seem to suffer from a certain delusion, because they tend to forget that human beings are involved. Kenneth Boulding, himself an economist but also a poet, a mystic and a Quaker, observed: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on for ever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

And yet many companies and by extension government activities seem to regard continual growth as the only road to success. Can you imagine anything more idiotic than demanding that police hand out an ever-increasing number of speeding tickets to demonstrate their efficiency? Or a school required to demonstrate continual improvement in its results?

We should be able to rely on scientists. But in many areas they are prey to a kind of conservatism that will not accept any challenge to basic beliefs. As Tolstoy put it, “most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

Does it really make sense to believe that the forces we see at work in nature now have always been the same and will never change? You might be surprised to discover how much science is based on this assumption.

But what I really want to write about is horse manure, because it sums up my political outlook.

I know what you’re thinking, but you may be interested to know that in 1898 the world’s first international urban planning conference was baffled by the problem of horse manure.

In those days, of course, traffic was horse-drawn, and more deadly than motorised traffic is today – which is a bit of a shock if you happen to think that cars are a massive social evil. (Some people do.)

There were the usual problems with people getting run over (rather a lot of them, incidentally), but there were other less obvious drawbacks – like the disease carried by flies found in horse manure.  Worst of all, though, was the sheer bulk of it. The manure, that is.

In 1894 The Times estimated that by 1950 every street in London would be buried nine feet deep in horse manure. Another expert at the same time reckoned that by 1930 the horse droppings would reach Manhattan’s third-storey windows.

No-one could see any way out. They thought they were all doomed, rather as many people today think we’re doomed for different reasons.

What could possibly save them? Something completely out of the blue and which no-one had foreseen. The internal combustion engine.

The point, though, is that this was unforeseen and out of the blue. No expert had predicted it. How could they? And yet they were making confident predictions that the world they lived in was doomed.

I have heard it said that, looked at this way, motor cars have saved millions of lives.

Less importantly, they have shown that experts in certain areas don’t know what they’re talking about. Literally.

So I am not a political animal. I am an optimist.

I was rather disappointed with The Daily Telegraph, which normally does a good line in obituaries.

Leonard Cohen, who has died aged 82, is a man who deserves a bit of depth, but there in the first paragraph was the tired old cliché about “music to slit your wrists to”, which is as superficial as it is wildly inaccurate.

Cohen’s songs, to those who have ears to hear and admit to possessing at least a modicum of spirituality within, are inspiring, uplifting and life-changing. “I know there’s a spiritual aspect to everybody’s life,” Cohen said, “whether they want to cop to it or not. It’s there, you can feel it in people – there’s some recognition that there is a reality that they cannot penetrate but which influences their mood and activity.”

Bob Dylan, a big admirer of Cohen’s songs, described his work as “great, deep and truthful, multidimensional and surprisingly melodic”. He added: “I see no disenchantment in Leonard’s lyrics at all.”

Suzanne Vega described his work as “a combination of very real details and a sense of mystery, like prayers or spells”. Rabbai Mordecai Finley called him “a great liturgical writer”.

It has always been surprising to Cohen admirers like me that his quality is not immediately obvious to everyone. Everything he writes is deep and at the same time playful, mixing such apparent opposites as sex and spirituality with gentle panache.

The Daily Telegraph seems not to be totally convinced. It mentions accurately that his record company CBS decided not to release the album Various Positions in the USA, but fails to point out that this album, far from being a dud, was one of his best, including the stunning “Hallelujah”, plus brilliant songs like “Coming back to you” and the moving “If it be your will”.

Maybe some Americans are not much into self-deprecation, ambiguity and indefinable  spirituality.

It cannot be denied that Cohen – a Canadian Jew from an upper middle-class Montreal background – had a huge impact on many people’s lives through his songs, poetry and his two novels. But in person he was charming, generous and self-deprecating. The two concerts of his that I went to (one at the Albert Hall in the 1980s and one in 2013 at O2) were outstanding.

After O2 I wrote that his “magnetic presence shrinks the arena into an intimate setting, with the audience as friends who have dropped by, and who the singer is surprised and delighted to see. His injection of spiritual awareness into everything he writes gives a depth that is lacking in so many modern lyrics, and the musical arrangements come with matching profundity, but with lightness too.”

Perhaps Cohen was a little too concerned about God for some tastes. The lead song from his last album, released only last month, contains the refrain “Hineni” – a biblical Hebrew word meaning “Here I am” and carrying the implication “I am at your disposal” or “Send me”. It is another example of his endearing lack of pride – among other things.

It is tempting to quote at length from his songs and poems, but they are easy to find online, and pointless repetition is not his style. I will end with a quote from one of his songs, however, not because it’s his best, but because it’s true and makes us realise how lucky we are sometimes to live in an age of quality recordings:

“You’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly
From a window in the Tower of Song.”

Don’t forget to listen.

Should Bob Dylan have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature? He certainly doesn’t need the money. But does he merit the applause?

Looking back at recent Nobel prizewinners in literature, I recognise only three of the names in the last ten years. This may say more about me than about the prizewinners, and we certainly wouldn’t want to turn it into a kind of oleaginous celebrity event like the Oscars. But three out of ten ain’t good, as Meat Loaf might have said – or to be more precise, Jim Steinman, since he wrote Meat Loaf’s songs.

There is little chance of Jim Steinman getting the Nobel Prize in Literature, but he did write some amazing lyrics, as did Don Henley, Jackson Browne, Dory Previn and John Fogerty, not to mention Chuck Berry, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Dougie Mclean, Billy Bragg, Paul Simon – and Rory and Calum Macdonald.

There is no reason why song lyrics shouldn’t be considered Nobel prize material. Are they literature? Well, they aren’t physics. Perhaps the very name of the prize – donated by the explosive Mr Nobel – has a subliminal effect and we think, pop songs aren’t very noble, are they?

Books are substantial things. Songs float around in the air, and they have tunes, which is cheating.

But I prefer to think of literature in terms of the effect it has on me and others. A few books have had profound effects on me: Catch-22 and The Lord of the Rings, to name but two, but also Lavondyss and Pale Fire. I don’t think it would be stretching the truth, however, to say that Bob Dylan has had a deeper effect on me than any book written in the last thousand years.

I was captivated by his lyrics from the outset, although – unlike all those journalists who based their approval on the early songs that everyone knows – I think his material from the late 60s and 70s was even more poetic and imaginative. And I don’t think I’m totally alone in admiring his singing: he threw out the boringly technical and introduced a whole new dynamic timing to the voice which was taken up by Mark Knopfler and many others.

Of course prizes are by their very nature subjective. Most of you will have nodded wisely when you read a few of the names above, and taken a mystified step back when you came to a couple of others.

Bob Dylan got his prize for “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. I can’t begin to argue with that. Objections come mainly from those who have only heard his songs from a distance and not paid them the compliment of close listening.

My only caveat would be that there is someone else who deserves the prize, and deserves it now. He too is a songwriter, a singer, a poet – and a novelist. He too gets to the heart of things and creates magic with words. He is not American; he is a Canadian. His name is Leonard Cohen. Perhaps they could share it.

When I was a young lad, many moons ago, we used to have three weeks of holidays a year. I know this is hard to believe – many of my contemporaries, I am assured, had to make do with a one-day coach trip to Blackpool. I knew nothing of that. We had a car.

I read recently that there were only one million cars on the road in this country in 1950. A trivial number – one with which even the inept Transport for Norwich might be able to cope.

We had a Vauxhall: strangely, I remember its number: DPW 155. Later, we had a Rover, and then we had a Lea-Francis. Quite exotic. Then my father died, and we had nothing.

But that’s another story. Before that we enjoyed what I had become accustomed to expect: a fortnight in some such desirable location as Croyde, Hope Cove, Perranporth or Llangennith. The first two are in Devon, the third in Cornwall and the last in South Wales. Remote enough, but not foreign. We weren’t that well off. As I recall, we generally stayed in a caravan, which was static only in the sense that it wasn’t moving.

In addition to The Summer Fortnight, we also had a week at Hemsby, which was on the brink of becoming the arcade capital of the East. I remember putting pennies into strange machines where the only incentive, as far as I can remember, was getting them out again. These were old pennies, of course: trivial money, 12 of them worth 5p today.

But that wasn’t Hemsby’s main attraction. There was The Marrams, where we stayed in a rather exciting bungalow, and there was the Valley. Both are still there, though the sea is nibbling away at the protecting dunes.

I could go on in nostalgic vein, but the point I really want to make is that holidays in those days were relaxing. Holidays nowadays are anything but. On a recent Swiss train holiday (which I enjoyed tremendously) our journey home took 17 hours and required six trains, a coach and a tube journey. While we were away we also reached 11,000 feet above sea level, travelling by local railway, cog railway, funicular, cable car and through mountain tunnels, emerging into ice and snow.

On a previous trip this summer to the Outer Hebrides we experienced four ferry journeys and eight hotels, and travelled a total of more than 2000 miles.

Not exactly relaxing, and that’s without the dreadful hassle of air travel, which can induce a nervous breakdown all on its own.

So what are holidays all about? As my friends Linda and Anne might say, they are about relaxing on a beach, but I’m not all that keen on sand. I like a bit of wilderness. Most holidays I go on nowadays require several weeks at home to recover. Maybe I’m just getting old.

Well, I am getting old: no question about it. And with that comes the urge of the bucket list. How long have we got to go where we want to?

I am resisting desperation: my bucket is considerably smaller than some, and my horizons are not expanding. I even fancy a week in Hemsby. How sad is that?

I have to admit that I can be impatient. Fortunately most of my friends are patient with my impatience, but sometimes it spills over and reveals itself.

To an extent it’s always been there, but it’s been getting worse since I became aware that the years ahead of me are fewer than the years behind. Much fewer. The fact that my grandson has reached his 14th birthday is a factor. How long have I got? Can you speak a bit faster?

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life doing things that are a waste of time. I do those things, of course, but I don’t want to.

I resent filling in forms, or attending meetings that go through everything “line by line”. I know some people enjoy it, but I don’t. I shall have to fill my tax form in soon, and I’m not looking forward to it.

Why does software take longer and longer to load? Is it me?

Getting from place to place becomes more and more stressful. My train from Coventry to Euston was held up by 28 minutes last week. That’s very nearly 50%.  And have you noticed how the police grab every opportunity to close roads for as long as possible? Even after relatively minor accidents?

Don’t even get me started on Transport for Norwich, who not only delight in imposing as many roadworks as possible on the city at the same time, but manage to find contractors who work infinitely slowly. Why?

I have worked out that if speed kills, the speed of death is about 45mph. Twice in the last couple of days I’ve been in a queue behind drivers travelling along perfectly serviceable A roads at that speed, and I can tell you that it’s murder.

It’s not totally their fault. If only the second in the queue was able to summon up the nerve to overtake, the problem would disappear – slowly, perhaps, but it would disappear. Unfortunately, no-one seems willing to overtake nowadays. Have they forgotten how? Or do they really think that a slow-moving queue is safer?

Last time this happened, I dropped back to avoid the mind-numbing boredom of travelling at that speed on a road designed for 60mph. Why didn’t I overtake? Four cars at once was pushing it a bit, even for me. I’m not so impatient that I want to die straight away.