Alfred Awakes From A Dream, Having Arrived In Arthur’s Kingdom (A Part of Their Holiday In Devon) by Alfred N.Muggins : Part 1

7/8/22 (16/8/22)

    Alfred awoke from sweet dreams of the Southwest of Britain, having almost seen Glastonbury Tor in the distance, after gliding down the motorway in Mrs Muggins’ new hybrid, part self generating electric car, the new ‘family car’ (unfortunately rather smaller, and seeming to be less powerful than his ( or her!) beloved ‘Tank’, which unfortunately had been taken off them to make way for the new car! (The great thing about the new car, however was that it would not cost anything like as much in petrol, being quite ‘Green’ (well an almost black shade of grey actually! (makes a change from A Whiter Shade Of Pale!!) pretty much the same colour, dark grey, as the Tank had been!)

    Actually Alfred already liked the new car a lot because it had definitely been saving them money to run, and also because it drove smoothly, and noiselessly (particularly when running on electric), and happened to be automatic, which made it even easier to drive (although you had to remember to put it in Park, when you stopped anywhere, or there might just be a nasty accident! (Also he could claim to be greener than most of the other drivers on the road! Which gave him a nice sense of social superiority, which was something he didn’t feel very often!) (not so good for fighting the Russians however, unfortunately, (or for knocking other cars off the road!!)

     He didn’t actually see Glastonbury Tor in the distance, as they glided effortlessly through Somerset on the motorway to the Southwest, because he was driving, and he didn’t want to crash the car, but he had surely seen it in the distance on previous visits to the Southwest a few years before, and he could feel that it was here somewhere nearby! He could feel the pull of Arthur’s legends, pulling him magically into the lands Arthur had once ruled so magnificently and so fairly!

     They had stopped at the Welcome Break Services south of Birmingham, where Alfred had been extremely impressed by the many electric car charging points in the car park (one or two of them actually being used! Which was actually a very good sign for the future (maybe the greenhouse effect and global warming could be turned around in time after all?)!), and the extremely foresighted water retention project, in which rainwater would be gathered and spread through pools, to be retained in the land and keep England Green! (so that it doesn’t just drain away (down the plughole, so to speak!) and be wasted (for example in flash floods or heavy rains.)).

     Nonetheless the little hill he and the dog climbed in order to get a more elevated picture of the complex was rather dry and parched. Their resourceful dog (on his extendable lead of course!) quickly found a silver bowl of dog drinking water, and helped himself, while Alfred took a picture of one of the extremely polite rubbish bins, which actually said ‘Thank You’ to those who were good enough to deposit rubbish in them (in the form of a written sign)! Alfred would put these pictures on Facebook, as some of his many ‘Friends’ would be sure to appreciate these informative pictures, evidence of progress in the fightback for such values as decency, politeness, and for the war against overconsumption (production?) of greenhouse gases and climate change!

(to be continued shortly)