Over the years, I’ve done a fair few miles across Europe, as I’ve previously intimated.
It has a sort of golden allure. The idea of rocking up at the Tunnel, that giddy first few minutes trundling along the motorway outside of Calais, followed by a deep breath and then plunging into that goddawful first few hours of boring fog-drenched flatness that the North of continental Europe seems to specialize in.
Over the years, it’s gone from madcap blasts in sports cars, to the John Deer-esque burr of a diesel estate and a roofboot the size of Swindon. When we started doing it, we took a change of pants, passports and a pack of Babybels. The number of passengers has gone up with the arrival of the little ones, the amount of gear has gone up (but we always forget the tin opener), but two things remain constant. The first is the Babybels (and perhaps some small spicy wind-inducing sausages. I will confess to farting and blaming it on the children as one of life’s pleasures now I’m in my late 30’s). The second and most important facet is entertainment
According to my good lady wife, the children are not to be spoiled with DVD players, since she used to have to stare out of the windows for hours on her childhood eurojaunts, and the CHILDREN MUST LEARN. This is fine. I am driving, so she has to deal with domestic discipline. However, there comes a point when we are all bored and discord erupts. So games have been invented to keep us all amused. There’s the usual ‘who am I’ game, which is isn’t entirely fair, since my son’s choices are invariably Batman/Spiderman/Anakin Skywalker or a character from a Nickelodeon cartoon I’ve never seen. And so I lose and get grumpy, and then everyone creeps round me for a bit
But the best game, which I know is spreading amongst a select few, is Lorry Tennis. It’s a simple game, but generates excitement, rows and tears – three requisite items for passing the day in a car that smells of wet tent. The base rules are simple. Pick two or three lorry franchises rarely seen in the UK, but often seen on the continent. The odder/ruder sounding the names, the better. Ours are Willie Betz, Norbert Dentressangle and for bonus points/schoolboy giggling between me and the wife, the famous(ish) Belgian haulage contractors, Fockeday. Then all you need to do shout out the name as you spot the lorry. Encouraging your children to yell ‘Willie!!!’ at the tops of their voices as you trundle towards Dijon keeps them amused for hours.
Advanced players can start to build in their own rule sets to add complexity. Ours are:
• The Norbert or the Willie has to be on the move, so passing Service Stations full of stationary HGV’s used to be a fruitful hunting ground, and is now banned under the 2007 ‘Its my game and I make the bloody rules’ amendment by me
• The driver can call a let at any point, usually because it’s raining/icy/generally inclement OR is undertaking a heroic overtaking maneuver somewhere near Stuttgart and needs to concentrate
• Extra points can be gained for spotting a lorry with a branded trailer (known as the ‘Double Norbert’ rule)
• Limited edition lorries also score better. White Willie’s (they are normally yellow) or Norbert’s that are in fact tankers are highly prized by experienced players
• Eddie Stobart’s are practice calls in France, you can call them, but they don’t count, but you can all feel pleased that one of our own is that far down
Working on the basis that this is cheaper than 2 x DVD players, I can spend the difference on wineboxes/coffee in Calais on the way home and feel justified in the unwarranted hammering the current account takes in Carrefour. And if, like me, your entire family is fiercely competitive, to the point where arguments over who saw the white Willie tanker first (a rare rare treat for the Willie connoisseur) can last for 10 or 15 minutes, this has kept us amused for literally years.
And crucially, it’s better than French/Belgian/German local radio
I travel a lot for work. I get quite irritated. 