THANKFUL IN TRAFFIC

It took two hours to get to work this morning. A lorry driver had crashed into the central reservation barrier, closing the motorway and causing the entire town to snarl up in trails of snaking brake lights.

I was halfway down Sulham Hill, my own brakes creaking as the rain dripped from the leafy canopy above. The radio was going on about Europe and West Ham and the Prime Minister and The Queen, stopping only to pause for the weather and the traffic. It occurred to me that that's pretty much all the radio ever talks about.

I was relaxed. Everywhere would be busy, no-one would be getting to work on time. There was nothing I could do anyway, and therefore no reason for stress at all. In fact, it was more like a really slow, early-morning tour of the countryside.

So I rolled down the window and breathed in some of the damp morning air. It reminded me of being on holiday - the green arches of the trees above their dark trunks, twisting and turning through the leaves; it reminded me of car journeys through the New Forest or the Lake District. The very British rain and the sound of passing traffic, swooshing up the hill was like memories of old.

The only difference was that at the end of the road was the office and not the beach. Neither lakes nor mountains were about to glisten through the trees.


A little while later, the radio presenter asked an old Japanese lady on the telephone to explain what she saw aged 13, when she emerged from the Hiroshima blast. She told him...

"We would like to apologise," said the presenter, "for any distress caused to listeners who might be sensitive to that level of graphic detail."

I had my hand over my mouth. People on their way to work, arriving at school and going about their daily lives that day in 1945, had to experience that dreadful event. Nothing would ever be the same again after that devastating moment when their city was destroyed by an American nuclear bomb.

I looked around at the dripping trees, the grey rolling sky and the red brake lights in front of me. Beyond the hill, the English countryside stretched calmly into the misty rain, and the hills of South Oxfordshire rolled in the distance.

Late for work perhaps I was, but always I'm grateful, and I've got a lot to be thankful for.