Today I went for a half hour drive in A Real Car.^TM (A Real Car^TM is here defined as "not a Kombi Van.")

It was strange. The half hour drive took eleven minutes.

The only explanation I can put forward for this puzzling state of affairs is that I wasn't driving the Kombi. If I had, it definitely would've taken half an hour. Maybe more.

The Real Car^TM had some unfamiliar features. Chief amongst these was an accelerator pedal that actually did something. I put my foot down on it and the car went faster. That's normal, I guess, but what was unfamiliar was that it did so straight away. In a Kombi, the accelerator pedal is mainly there for decoration. It's considered quite acceptable to put your foot on it, but there's no guarantee that anything will actually happen.

So. I'm driving A Real Car^TM and then I notice something about the traffic lights. For the first time ever, I got more than one green light in a row. In fact, I got green light after green light. It was all very exciting, but then I started to wonder why this was so unusual.

And then I realised that I'm a Kombi driver. And Kombi drivers are on a different journey from other drivers. We get more time to think. We get to drive around a stylish, slow-moving house, with a sink and a fridge and a comfy bed. And we get to look really cool, even if our cars are decorated in psychedelic colours.

But mainly, owing to the presence of a decorative accelerator pedal, we get to see a lot of red lights.