In Search of Oldton



Inevitably, with the motorway came a service station and possibly a Little Chef eaterie.

Admittedly nobody has sent me any lyrical memories of time spent pumping gas - although Barry writes movingly about his dad's final trip out to get petrol.

It is a known fact, though, that motorway service stations are places where people often choose to abandon their cars and their loved ones, lose their identities and drift off into the night to jump off a suspension bridge, bleed to death in a remote wood or start a new life in South America.

In a sense, then, each time you stop for petrol or a meal in a place like this, you are more than likely to be surrounded by several lost citizens of Oldton.

Writers for the Future