Final warnings?©

I may be guilty of a slight misrepresentation.

A close inspection of the previous five posts could suggest that today I am lying in the sun on a Spanish beach; in fact I am in an office in Toulouse eating Judi’s chocolate cookies.

I should stress that she has given me explicit permission to do so – I think the exact words were “help me save my fat ass from getting any bigger”; Judi, a colleague, is American.

Her cookies are excellent, but to be honest I would prefer to be on the beach in Spain. However, I thought it prudent to show up at work and replenish some of the holes dug into my bank account by a Sandy Spanish cash machine.

And to be fair the sun had not bothered to show it’s face very much during my visit, except on Sunday the day we had to pack and drive home – always a difficult exercise in timing; too early and you miss the best day, too late and you don’t miss the converging motorway traffic jam outside of Narbonne.

I, reluctant to leave, was too late.

Still it gave us another chance to do battle on a game of Spot the Spot©, and a traffic jam (anticipated0 can give you some interesting variations.

Spot the Spot© was explained in these pages a few-walks-on-the-Spanish-rocks ago - and attracted one or two comments, but unfortunately no seven figure publishing deal.

I was a little alarmed to see that Janet, Abruzzo Edublog was thinking of playing whilst riding on a motorbike, and although intercom technology certainly would allow this I would urge her to find a more reliable scoring system – we used paper and pen – and to be wary of the driver’s head orientation; the game can entail quick looks over the shoulder and a fair amount of peering.


Anne, The Island weekly, meanwhile is considering a 15 hour version of the game – which would certainly register as a Spot the Spot© world record, but may stretch the capabilities of the game from alleviating boredom to stretching it. We successfully kept it going for six hours – through the traffic jam and a stop at the airport to pick up Krissie – but the last point was contentiously won whilst two of the players were fast asleep.

Still, the excited shout of “Butterfly” woke them up!

So what suggestions do we have for traffic jams?


“Tongue” was an interesting one. It requires establishing complicity with someone in another car, probably a small child; too old and you will be ignored, too young and it will end in court. When complicity is well established and after a few distractions: pulling faces, waving, thumbing the nose etc, you can stick out your tongue in mock aggression and then try to shout “tongue” before anyone else in your car does, without choking in the process.

“Someone dancing” requires a good CD – Michael Jackson works well – an open window and at least one person in your car prepared to disco- dance in their seat. Loui proved expert at this. The trick is to remember to shout, “someone dancing” through the laughter.

And “Knees” is a tricky one. Better to stipulate “bare knees” and even better “two bare knees of the same person” to avoid heated arguments.

Final warnings?

The more you play this game the weirder the players become, so you need to be prepared. For example, if you put the name of someone you are picking up at the airport on the list, and you respect the rules of “car engine off pausing the game” it is wise to explain to that person that they should expect some strange behaviour as they approach the car, are suddenly abandoned and four people try to enter the car simultaneously, turn on the engine and shout at them.

And it’s worth remembering too that not many passport officials respond warmly to four or five people unanimously shouting “Spanish Moustache” at them.