Having read Kezzerbabe’s rose tinted spectacle version of the Leicester Fiesta I think it’s time I set the record straight.
It was a bright sunny day as we set off for the fair city of Leicester (stopping on the way to pick up some essential supplies like beer.) Leicester, probably the most multi-racial city of Europe excluding London. Leicester that has a golden mile of ethnic shops, banks and jewellers whose spectacular lighting display on Diwali probably eclipses Blackpool. Leicester, fair city in the Midlands with a road system designed by pedestrians with guide dogs and signage designed by dyslexics. The only place worse to drive through than Leicester is Birmingham which has the added problem that you can’t understand the locals if you exhibit the most uncharacteristic part of male behaviour and actually ask someone the way.
I have a state of the art Smartnav but I had forgotten to renew the subscription, but undeterred, I put the address and post code in the Multimap and hey presto! I got a road by road, door by door instructions to our destination. Or so I thought. I thought it was strange when the map showed the venue in the heart of the city centre. And I mean right in the heart. My biggest worry now that I had my infallible fail safe instructions was where would we park in such a solidly built up area. The other little niggle (just a tiny one) was that the route just seemed to stop. The street I was looking for was not marked – merely that it was 0.2 miles from a major junction. Undeterred we trundled down the A46 with Tim driving so that we could have a little drinky-poos when we got there.
The golden mile was as I described and the street was thronged with hundreds of people of different colours and all wearing different cultural clothes. The route was simple – virtually a straight line. What we didn’t know was it was a straight line to nowhere. We took the first roundabout with no problem. And the second, then the third. We found the street that the multimap told us to go to and we travelled the 0.2 miles that we had been tasked. And then we sat in the busiest street in the world looking at each other. Well maybe not the busiest but certainly the one with the most buses outside London. And taxis. Not much chance to stop and ask anyone so I got into my Christopher Columbus mode and told Tim to drive on. We would simply go round the block and start again. To do that we would have to turn left, then left again. Wrong. This was Leicester after all. Finally we found our reference point.
We followed the directions to the letter, even counting off the 0.2 miles. We sat in Leicester’s equivalent of the Bermuda triangle. No street there of that name. By now tempers became frayed. YES I HAVE got us lost but has anyone got any better ideas other than keep telling me that we are lost. No! So once again it is up to me to make a suggestion. Irene has a cunning plan. Why not phone Lanzarote and get him to guide us in. Hah Hah! I had already thought of that but I needed a reference to tell him where we are and not just we are in a street in the middle of Leicester with loads of buses and taxis. Instead of telling Tim to go left I tell him to go right and we pass the railway station. Now I can phone and get directions.
Lanzarote takes a while to answer and I can hear the party in full flow in the background. The directions are a bit lengthy and complicated so I ask Irene for a writing implement. This is Irene I asked. The woman with so many things in her handbag that you can’t lift it with one hand. The woman that hi-jacks all of the pens in the house and hides them in her handbag. The woman with several bingo dobbers, bingo marker pens and a myriad of other writing tools. She can’t find anything. No wonder I drink a lot!
After a short journey with amazingly detailed directions from Lanzarote written down using a pencil that Irene keeps as a give up smoking prop we arrive at our destination. The comes the “you go first – no YOU go first – it’s your idea.” Like you were when you were fifteen and going into a pub for your first illegal alcoholic drink, Slowly and with some trepidation we make our way through the garage and into the first part of the garden. We had already heard the music as we drove up the street. Again, slowly, I lead the way through a gate in the hedge and into a TARDIS like garden…………..
Oh dear, I’ve run out of time!
