Moments you think you're losing your mind.

Woebot

Well-known member
An extremely bizarre thing happened to me on Friday.

I was driving up to Bradford and on the way North I stopped at a service station called Tibshelf services.

Had a sandwich. Nosed around.

Then kept on travelling.

As it happened on the way south I pulled off the motorway to get some petrol at the same service station. Just a conicidence.

Parking my car outside the lodge once again (before filling up) I noticed things were subtley different. There had been a police unit in one of those permanent caravan jobbies beside the entrance.

Entering the building and it felt like I had come to the back door. All the components of the building were the same a Costa coffee shop, newsagent, phone accessories sales shop, but somehow they were all just slightly different.

Gradually i came to the conclusion that when they built the service station they must have used *precisely* the same floor plan and built two lodges, one either side of the motorway. The bizarre thing was when I spoke to the lady who was cleaning the floor, and asked her if there was a similar station on the other side of the road, she seemed totally baffled. Maybe she only works this one?!?

I drove back towards London feeling thoroughly confused (if a little amused). This twilight situation on a motorway- worthy of an incident in a book i reckon. It was almost as though I'd died and passed into a parrallel universe!
 

gabriel

The Heatwave
yeah that often happens to me, (stopping at the same place when doing in different directions) and yeah the service stations always seem to be pretty much exactly the same on both sides of road.... plus they're all so similar anyway and generally quite eerie. also, there always seems to be higher percentage of tracksuited/shellsuited people at service stations than anywhere else in my life. what's that about?
 
xiquet said:
also, there always seems to be higher percentage of tracksuited/shellsuited people at service stations than anywhere else in my life. what's that about?

Could be that such clothes are comfortable to travel in? It's probably not the case that service stations are holding pens for the untermensch.
 

mms

sometimes
HMGovt said:
Could be that such clothes are comfortable to travel in? It's probably not the case that service stations are holding pens for the untermensch.

yeah you get the same thing at airports
snowheads with freshly styled hair in comfy travelling clothes, everything very clean as they don't wear those clothes often .it's all a bit odd.
 

Lichen

Well-known member
HMGovt said:
Could be that such clothes are comfortable to travel in? It's probably not the case that service stations are holding pens for the untermensch.

Which would explain why a similarly high percentage of this kind of clothing can be found on cross-channel ferries.

…but wouldn't explain why you rarely see them at train stations and airports. Motorway travel is relatively cheap. I think there may be an untermensch angle at work here, :eek:
 

Lichen

Well-known member
Back to the thread

Step into lift

Hum a tune

When doors open, step out

Swim in your wonder and confusion: "This environment mirrors exactly the one on the floor below"

Quickly realise lift hasn't actually gone anywhere

Dart back in
 

jenks

thread death
once, when invigilating a particularly impish colleague came up to me a whispered:

'do you remember coming in here?'

i didn't!

and i'd only been in the room for 5 minutes, it totally screwed my mind for the whole day.
 

michael

Bring out the vacuum
This probably sounds like I have lost my mind, but first time I saw a whippet I honestly thought I was going nuts. :)

I was walking down these obscenely steep steps and the dog was running up them, directly towards me. Since it was completely straight on it looked about 3mm wide and I remember seriously freaking, thinking "IT IS NOT OF THIS EARTH!" for just that first second or so until I had a bit more time to see what was coming.

Haha.
 

3underscore

Well-known member
Motorway service stations - there is a really scary one around Preston with a look-out tower.

One thing that has always really unknerved me about motorway service stations. As they are designed for a break from driving, why are the arcade machines nearly always driving simulators?
 

PeteUM

It's all grist
michael said:
This probably sounds like I have lost my mind, but first time I saw a whippet I honestly thought I was going nuts. :)

I was walking down these obscenely steep steps and the dog was running up them, directly towards me. Since it was completely straight on it looked about 3mm wide and I remember seriously freaking, thinking "IT IS NOT OF THIS EARTH!" for just that first second or so until I had a bit more time to see what was coming.

Haha.

Almost made me cry with laughter.
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
michael said:
This probably sounds like I have lost my mind, but first time I saw a whippet I honestly thought I was going nuts. :)
being from Wigan the first time I saw a dog that WAS'NT a whippet was pretty traumatic.
 

fldsfslmn

excremental futurism
This happened to me a few years ago at a service station somewhere near Liverpool (I think), while travelling by coach from Glasgow to London. I was a bit drunk leaving Glasgow, and at the service station I walked up a flight of stairs and down a long hallway, not realizing I was actually crossing the motorway via an enclosed footbridge. In fact, when I sat down for a bite to eat in the identical café on the other side, the function of the hallway was completely indistinct, having produced a mœbius strip-like effect. We simply don't have service stations that complex here in Canada.

... There was even a remarkably similar coach parked out front on the other side, and when I went onboard and climbed upstairs, the person sitting next to me was different, and my coat and bag were missing (containing my passport, bank cards, cash, personal effects). I didn't quite figure it out yet, though, and I had to actually get off the coach to see that it said CARLYLE on the front before the panic actually set in. It was a good sprint back over the footbridge, though. The driver of the London bus was so close to leaving that he actually had his foot on the brakes. I half hoped I would have been given the opportunity to start life over again with a new identity in CARLYLE. I think that would have been fun.
 

tryptych

waiting for a time
3underscore said:
Motorway service stations - there is a really scary one around Preston with a look-out tower.

I grew up near there... I think the tower holds some kind of truckers cafe, but I'm not sure...
 

martin

----
What I've never understood - why do all motorway service stations sell jazz mags? Do drivers really think, "I don't want to fall asleep on the motorway, so I'd better toss myself off"?
 

Lichen

Well-known member
They're there for lorry drivers I reckon.

Same as King Size Rizla (at least that's what the Rizla MD told HM Queen when she was touring the fag paper factory.)
 

Raw Patrick

Well-known member
I used to work in a garage and sold lots of porn mags to truck drivers. They always went for Razzle and Fiesta which shows limited horizons I think.
 
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