Taking its toll
I’ve just had another really lovely weekend 
What I’m doing at work at the moment is totally screwed up, but inside I still feel all warm and happy, which makes a pleasant change! It all got off to a rather frustrating start, because my boyfriend was the best part of an hour late to pick me up on Saturday morning 
Now punctuality isn’t really his strong point, so on the basis that he told me at 11 he’d be with me at one, I was expecting him at one thirty. Nevertheless, by the time it got to one forty-five I was a little annoyed, on the grounds that his drive is just under an hour and thus if he hadn’t been abducted by aliens (forgivable reason for being late), he mustn’t have left work until the time he was supposed to be arriving 
When he finally arrived around two, it turned out I had maligned him by overlooking a more probable explanation; he had got lost
I was initially slightly grumpy for several reasons, mainly not having been fed at an appropriate time It felt a bit weird because we weren’t sure what we wanted to do, but this was happily soon rectified when we spotted a sign from the motorway telling us that we were approaching the junction for Lichfield. People keep telling me what a nice place Lichfield is but I’d never been there, so it seemed like a plan
Feeling more cheerful, we promptly turned off next to the sign saying A38, but soon found ourselves on a strange, winding sort of slip road. Something didn’t feel quite right here, and sure enough to our complete and utter astonishment we found ourselves unexpectedly confronted with the booths of the M6 toll. To the best of our knowledge, we had not been on the M6 toll. We hadn’t passed a sign which told us we were about to enter it, and we certainly wouldn’t have chosen to if there had been one. Nevertheless, here we were being charged £3.50 to get off it 
I was not amused, especially when I tried to pay with a five pound note and it emerged that you could only pay with the exact coins. I was very confused about the whole business so asked a colleagues today, and he said that if we were coming off at Lichfield we had actually been travelling on the toll road without realising it, and yes you do always have to pay if you get off at that junction. So it seems we didn’t take a wrong turning, and were just being fleeced by the Highways Agency. I don’t understand enough about the geography of motorways to know if there was another route we could have taken to avoid the toll road (there surely must have been??), but I am still very angry. Charging people for being on a toll road when you haven’t first given them an option not to be on a toll road is tantamount to fraud in my opinion 
When we finally got to Lichfield I was about to pass out with hunger, so we quickly made our way to a very nice Italian restaurant called Ask. I think that’s a chain I’ve seen around somewhere before, and I’d definitely go there again because there was a very extensive menu and the spaghetti carbonara I had was delicious Feeling somewhat more relaxed, we went for a little wander round the city, having a quick look at the cathedral and stopping to watch the ducks. There were some absolutely adorable baby ducks swimming around, and that definitely made my day.
We’d only paid for two hours parking so after a few minutes spent failing to find the correct carpark we were off on our way again, heading back to Leicester via Burton. I am happy to report that the road didn’t actually pass *through* Burton, but rather passed around it. I have no idea what property prices are like in that town but I am of the opinion that the government should actually pay people to live there, so terrible is the stench from the brewery
Once back in Leicester we checked into the trusty Travelodge and after having had a bit of a nap, headed out once more to meet up with some old friends of my boyfriend. There was a slightly embarrassing moment when I thought we were looking for a pub called “The Key” and it turned out to be a pub called “The Quay”, but other than that the evening passed off without incident It was a very loud sort of pub unfortunately which made it rather difficult for me and my quiet voice to be heard if we wanted to say something, but most of the time I didn’t have anything to contribute anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal. I started the evening on lemonade, but later remembered that I had meant to practise drinking again this weekend in preparation for going on holiday, and ended up having a small glass of wine with no ill effects. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I might have done, but apparently I need to learn to drink beer for Hungary anyway. I also need to buy a water pistol, and perhaps a new swimsuit too.
Anyways, we had a lovely lazy Sunday morning together - it involved getting bacon and egg cooked for me which is always exciting, and made me feel very cheerful about the future Although I did then go home and massacre my boyfriend’s pride and joy of a CV, so I’m still waiting to hear if the future still exists
Tags: daylight robbery, lichfield, M6 toll