Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000-Mile Car Journey Around Britain

Are We Nearly There Yet?: A Family's 8000-Mile Car Journey Around Britain

Ben Hatch

Language: English

Pages: 320

ISBN: 1849531552

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


The story of a madcap five-month family trip to write a travel guide—embracing the freedom of the open road with a spirit of discovery and an industrial supply of baby wipes
 
"Hurry up," I shout at Dinah, whilst on the overhead telly Ray Mears’ Survival is playing extraordinarily loudly because Charlie sat on the volume button of the remote. The kids writhe about in the V05 shampoo they just spilt, laughing as the last of their clean clothes bite the dust, and I'm thinking: "Survive driving round England with two under 4s, staying at a different hotel each night and visiting four or five attractions a day and sometimes a restaurant in the evening. Sleep all in the same room, go to bed at 7 p.m. after having had no evening to yourself, wake up at 7 a.m. and do it all again the next day with the prospect of another 140 nights of the same—then come and tell me about survival in your khaki ****ing shorts, Ray."
 
They were bored, broke, burned out, and turning 40. So when Ben and his wife Dinah were approached to write a guidebook about family travel, they embraced the open road, ignoring friends' warnings: "One of you will come back chopped up in a bin bag in the roof box." Featuring deadly puff adders, Billie Piper's pajamas, and a friend of Hitler's, it's a story about love, death, falling out, moving on, and growing up, and 8,000 misguided miles in a Vauxhall Astra.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

her sister Lindsey gave birth, I actually thought it was part of the same thing. I didn’t take her seriously. I assumed it would blow over. She was suddenly making a beeline for any under-two in a room, stroking baby pictures in magazines. She was teasing me, I assumed. It was a joke. Then my mum got sick and six months later she died and the next thing I knew Dinah, tired of waiting around for us to get married, have kids, move on to that next stage, had slept with some guy who worked in a

surrounded by well-fed city boys discussing the Bank of England’s latest rate move with mobiles hanging like sunglasses from the middle buttons of their shirts. Dinah spots someone who looks like Nick Hewer, Lord Sugar’s right-hand man from the BBC series The Apprentice. Although she’s based this solely on the greying back of his head and four overheard words, ‘The wine list, please’, it’s enough to fuel another discussion about Dinah’s brainwave for a buggy with a special sleep compartment in it

face. He’s in a black car that’s filling up with smoke. I swing my head round to check on Dinah and the kids. I shout, ‘Is everyone all right? Is everyone all right?’ At the same time I’m aware Dinah’s shouting, ‘Get out of the car. Get out of the car.’ I open my door. The lady driver’s out of her seat. I shout, ‘Is everyone all right?’ at their car. The lady looks into the back of our Astra, sees Charlie and Phoebe and starts to say, ‘I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.’ The man, whose face was next

tilts Charlie into the feeding position just as the final tumbling act in the ring reaches a crescendo and one of the troupe jumps onto the head of another with a great bouncy fanfare of music from the show band. The audience clap and wave their light sabres. ‘Thank you very much,’ says Dinah, dipping her head. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ I say, waving one arm to the crowd. ‘And for our next act…’ says Dinah, laughing. ‘We will extract a miniature PACKET OF RAISINS.’ ‘From the INSIDE pouch of

‘But what if it comes back to get us, Daddy?’ ‘It won’t come back. And it won’t get us. Bats don’t get people, Phoebe.’ ‘But what if this one does?’ ‘I promise you it won’t.’ In the bath Charlie pretends his sponge is a bat and waves it in my face, laughing. Phoebe does the same with her flannel. It’s all family folklore now. Except it’s not. At bedtime Phoebe has to sleep with the light on, while Charlie refuses to go to bed until we put on his Spiderman slippers. ‘Charlie, there’s nothing

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