Tebay Services

September 2008

At Tebay services on the M6 the old folks were on their outings. Tightly-curled grey hair and light anorak jacket and slacks and tights and trainers and you eat your bag of biscuits and drink tea from your flask, on the benches by the artificial pond, while the mallards strut and laugh.

Inside the cafeteria, where we choose for our lunch a pork pie and salad, and drink a none-too-bad cup of coffee – surprisingly good quality – a group of disabled young people from a minibus with ‘Lady Taverners’ on the side, and by the window of the cafeteria and overlooking the lake, a pair of women, one black and one white, both absolutely vast, drinking from large paper beakers of coca-cola, and business chaps in their shirts and ties and suits, who eat like us for the most part, with plates from the salad bar. The elderly foursome behind me are talking in London accents about A-e-mee, who may have been a granddaughter or something.

Motorway South of Ulm

September 2005

An Icthus

My lunch at a motorway service station in Bavaria. The brown substance is lentils (not baked beans) and the yellow is noodles. The sausages could be viewed as one of those Christian fishes that people stick on the back of their cars (and which only ever face left – look out for a rare right-facing one – if you spot one you get a prize). My companion is reading the instructions for eating her salad and the blue car behind is telling me what it thinks of me for including it in the scene.

For more about the icthus and its use as a symbol for the Nordsee fish shop chain, see Nordsee Fish Restaurants, Are they symbolic?

Working Class Mustard

Ruhr Area – April 2005

A drive through the industrial belt, Duisburg, Essen, Bochum, Dortmund, it was Easter Sunday and therefore practically no big wagons on the road which, while it made the journey smoother no doubt, lent an unreal air to the roads (literally). We stopped in a service station of which the region has fewer than elsewhere, and ate Frankfurter sausages with senf alongside the natives. Actually, we didn’t, we had something else, but the natives certainly were eating little else but sausage and mustard, great mounds of mustard which, once their sausage was consumed, they spread liberally on their bread and chomped down heartily. Personally, I don’t like German senf, I find it too sweet and too vinegary. Why is it that ‘working class’ people love sweet, vinegary things so? Not like me, I’m privileged middle class you know.

Brunhilde the Pad Polisher

Rotating Toilet Seats –January 2005

In Germany the motorway service station toilets have self-cleaning lavatory seats – when you flush the toilet a pad on a metal arm comes out of the wall and plonks itself down on the toilet seat which then performs a revolution. Of course it’s an eccentric revolution because toilet seats aren’t circular, and this makes the spectacle far superior to watching your clothes go round in the washing machine. When the circuit is complete the arm retracts and goes into the wall, behind which there is a large blond German lady with a scrubbing brush who polishes up the pad for the next person (I made up that last bit – at least I think I did).