Member-only story
After the Fear: What it Feels like to Get Over a Phobia
It’s 4am and I’m somehow functioning
It’s 4am and I’m doing 70mph down the motorway. So far, the only motorway driving I have ever done is for about ten miles on a French one. For those who don’t know French motorways, they’re almost always empty regardless of the time of day.
You’d think the same would apply in England but thanks to our country apparently relying on lorry logistics, the road is surprisingly busy.
Lorries hang out in the left lane (that is, the slow lane) like a lumbering convoy, taking their goods around the nation so our supermarket shelves are stocked and our next-day deliveries arrive scarcely after we’ve ordered them.
It’s been raining here. A lot. And although it’s only sporadically raining now, the lorries kick up spray that covers the windscreen whenever I overtake them.
Sometimes I find a lorry overtaking another lorry. The road is like a wall of spray and Waitrose branding. So I must move into the farthest right lane, doing 70+ between a behemoth and the central reservation. One wrong move, one glance away, one sneeze and I dread to think what will happen.
