8th December:

The last three weekends have involved trips to Stansted Airport to either pick up or drop off visiting family and friends. For reasons that I cannot yet fathom, each of these trips has been disrupted, one quite substantially, by accidents on the M11 between Cambridge and Bishop Stortford. Even more curiously, all of the incidents appear to have involved ariculated lorries and a number of cars, including a black 3-series BMW with Polish number plates.

What conclusions can be drawn from this recurring experience of bent Bavarian metal accompanied by the smell of roasted no claims bonus? It's hard to say, but I would either suggest that Poland has a unique surplus of 1980's 3-series Beemers and has therefore launched a government-funded scheme to pay learner drivers to visit the UK and write them off, or that Mr. Wladyslaw really does need his eyes tested after all.

Either way, if your taxi to the airport happens to be black, boxy and smelling of Barszcz (that's Borscht to you and I), I'd politely decline and take the train.