Ian McMillan: Spice of life on the highway to hell and back

The middle-aged man was sitting in the passenger seat of a Ford Focus driven by his wife, who was wearing a saintly and stoic expression of unbearable suffering.

In the back of the car was a young student who was pretending to search for something on the seat or in a carrier containing milk.

Absurdly, a number of raw mushrooms were rolling around on the seat, adding a level of farce to a situation which, frankly, didn't need any more levels of farce adding to it.

I was that middle-aged man and this is my story.

My wife and I had gone to Lancaster to pick up our lad, Andrew, from his student house (I like that phrase, "student house": it's as though the house is learning to become a proper house) and bring some of his stuff back home for the summer, although he's going back to Lancaster in the autumn to do another degree, and in the autumn we'll be taking all the stuff back, plus some new stuff he hasn't bought yet.

His pants have had more road miles than most, let me tell you.

We went to his house and packed the car and then went for a nice lunch in a nice Italian restaurant that Andrew and my wife had been to before; it had white walls, a proper espresso machine and a huge bowl of mints on the counter – always comforting in any Italian establishment.

As I studied the menu, I was seized by a strange desire for meatballs. I'd not had meatballs for ages, and I wanted meatballs. The waitress

asked if I wanted them spicy, and I did.

"Yes please!" I said, implying that I was a man of the world who knew that the eating of spicy meatballs meant that I was a spicy kind of guy who led a spicy life in a spicy way.

I also ordered a nice big glass of orange juice although, as things turned out, it wasn't nearly big enough.

The meatballs came and, let me tell, you that they were spicy. Very spicy.

As my wife and son chewed their way through their non-spicy food, I

took my spicy food slowly.

"Is it spicy?" my wife asked.

I nodded, because if I'd opened my mouth to speak I would have ignited her hair.

I poured the orange juice down my charred throat as though I was trying to cap an oil well. My mouth was like the inside of an Aga.

I ordered more juice. Then more juice, none of which quenched

the fire.

I went downstairs to the toilet and drank cooling water straight from tap. I opened my mouth and wafted it with a paper towel.

We paid and left and I scooped up a handful of mints and thrust four into my mouth; they soothed it a little.

"Was it a bit too spicy?" my wife asked, disingenuously.

I smiled in what I hoped was a non-committal way. She knew the truth, though. She's known me too long.

We went back to the student house and checked that nothing had been left, and then set off back to Darfield. The rain was heavy and the

spray was apocalyptic and my mouth was still smouldering.

We noted that the traffic going the other way was moving very slowly, as people streamed towards the Lake District for the Bank Holiday weekend.

We silently and smugly congratulated ourselves that we were on the

quieter side of the road, heading to Barnsley and not Bassenthwaite. Smugness, of course, comes before a fall.

As we approached the Blackpool turnoff, Andrew began to root around in the bags. The mushrooms rolled about.

My wife asked, innocently, although she already knew the dreadful answer. "Are you looking for something?"

He nodded. His laptop. He'd left his laptop in the flipping house, and, of course, he needed it.

We got off the motorway and went round a roundabout and got back on the motorway in the slow, slow traffic. And the rain. And the spray. And the spicy mouth.

Back at the student house, the comedy drama built to a climax when Andrew couldn't find his key.

"I must have brought it into the car because I locked it," he said, stating the blindingly obvious.

He ran his hands along the seat. My wife looked in the glove

compartment. I tried to get my hand under the seat, hoping for the

touch of cool metal.

The mushrooms were scattered around the car. A bag of shoes was emptied and checked. My mouth felt like the Great Fire of London.

Then Andrew found the key, under a paper bag. We got the laptop and set off. Again.

So that's why you might have seen us, stoic and/or burning on the M6. You might have seen Andrew proffering a mushroom to me.

You may not have heard my reply.