The server dropped the half-filled ice cream cone when the call came through. It was now snowing very heavily outside, and anyone who wanted to travel any further needed to get back into their vehicles immediately.

TPR and I rushed out of the service station along with everyone else. There wasn’t room for us in the coach, so we had no option but to track it in our own car. This plan worked reasonably well until the coach took an unexpected turning off the motorway into a petrol station and TPR failed to follow it.

We now had to face up to the prospect of spending Christmas lost on the motorways of Birmingham in a blizzard.