IT'S NOT THE APOCALYPSE, IT'S THE A1

The longest road in the world is the Pan American Highway which begins in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and stretches all the way down to Ushuaia, Argentina. All in all, the road covers 30,000 km

Second to this, is the stretch of the A1 which winds from Durham University to North London, twisting interminably through the scrofulous lorry parks and bombsite service stations of Yorkshire and Derbyshire, to the flat cabbagey fields of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire.

Many a parent has driven this tarmac eternity, starting out wide-eye and optimistically middle-aged, only to arrive home ready for their free bus pass and pacemaker.

Despite being a “smart motorway”, the M1 still boasts large chunks of its fat four lanes reduced to 50mph. Then there are the breakdowns, the extra roadworks, the pile-ups, the sea of crawling lorries, the ocean of dawdling humanity.

So google maps often directs you instead up the A1. One long bendy two-lane for 258 miles all the way to Durham. What is that like, Adam, to drive there and back in a day I have been asked literally never. Yet here I am telling you.

Veterans of the A1 will tell you all about the phenomenon of the Adult Stores that crop up every hour or so. Why? Perhaps the “overtaking” lorry drivers who slow everyone down by driving parallel to other lorry drivers serendipitously spark up a romance with a fellow trucker and decide to invest in sex toys and viagra? Perhaps the tedium of the drive sends otherwise chaste motorists into a sex frenzy? Or a longing to buy things the way we did in the 1980s? Perhaps it’s a midlands thing? They’re all sex mad there right?

The green flat sprawl of Cambridgeshire gives way to the equally green flat sprawl of Northamptonshire. It’s not terrible exactly. It’s just flat. And green. Nottinghamshire offers some extra trees and contours. And sex-mad midlanders, presumably. Then the service stations become more pitiful, and scarred. Now there is no quinoa salad and blueberry smoothie, sucker. Capri Sun is the nearest thing to fruit juice. There are limp pasties and sweaty chocolate bars and toilets that smell of helmet cheese and despair. Girthy chimney stacks belch factory chemicals and a sign in a field reads “prepare to meet your maker”. We are in the North. It has taken five and half hours. On one road.

Wall-eyed from coffee, traumatised by tailgaters and self-righteous pace-setters doing sixty in the fast lane, you dutifully drop off your university child - you know, the one who could have gone to a London university. You gird your damp and tangled loins, clench your aching buttocks, and with a deep, deep breath set back down the same long and winding road. You experiment with your daughter’s playlist. Surely there is new music out there. But no. It is hopeless. You have played all the music. All the music in the world. Your body is a fizzing hot mess of chemicals and cramped muscles. Sugar and saturated fats have replaced your haemoglobin. You have eaten all the crisps. All the crisps in the world. I am Crisp! If you cut me do I not bleed salt and vinegar? You think now would be a good time to take up smoking. Meth, at the very least.

Time it right and you hit the North Circular bang on rush hour. It’s the A1. It’s not the apocalypse. But it’s not far off.