M5 slip road madness

OK – got to keep this one short, because I’m running out of battery and the pictures should really speak for themselves.

Coming home this evening (just before 6pm), as usual, I took the Racecourse Road slip road off the M5 South and joined the traffic at the lights. However, not as usual, when the lights changed, the traffic didn’t move. A quick check up ahead revealed that there had been a accident on the bridge (nothing too serious) and that there was a tow truck about to move the car which was (somehow) blocking  two lanes of the mountain-bound traffic. In doing this, the tow truck was blocking the third lane and so we weren’t going to be going anywhere for a while.

I flicked the engine off and sat back.

And then I looked to my left and there was Jensen Button leaning on a lamppost. Or at least a life size cardboard cutout of him, anyway.

Which was rather surreal.

Since I was engined off and handbraked up, I grabbed my camera and I shot him.

(photographically speaking)

And then I settled back in my seat and listen to John Maytham talking about speed cameras on the M5 or something, which was ironic because I was next to the M5, but I wasn’t actually moving and there was a woman next to the road who was only wearing a g-string and absolutely nothing else.

So, the whole speed camera debate was…. wait… what?

Yes – it was a virtually naked woman making her way purposefully up the grass bank between the freeway and the slip road. Not drunk, I don’t think and certainly completely unabashed. I did what anyone would have  done and shook my head incredulously. Looking around to check that I was not imagining what I was seeing, there were a lot of other drivers with similar incredulous responses. This had instantly topped Jensen for surrealism.

It was then that I realised two things. Firstly, that the mess on the bridge  had been sorted out and we could move again and secondly, that my camera was still right next to me. So I shot her too – probably rather too quickly with hindsight, but firstly, I needed to start driving and secondly, you don’t really want to get any sort of reputation as a pervert amongst the M5 rush hour crew.
The result was this:

Which really wasn’t too bad for an instant, rush-hour, rush-job, point-and-shoot-through-the-window, towards-the-light-Carol-Ann-and-it’s-high-time-you-got-driving-now and does at least illustrate that I’m not making all this up.

As for the woman, she walked up onto the bridge, right past the (incredulous) tow truck crew like they weren’t even there, shouted at some cars and then crossed back from whence she’d come and that was the last I saw of her as I had to negotiate a narrow gap twixt smashed up car and central reservation.

Tomorrow’s journey home will probably not be quite as interesting as tonight’s was, but to be honest, that’s just fine.

Only in South Africa…

5 thoughts on “M5 slip road madness

    Leave a Reply