The mystery of the white van in Bournemouth Bay deserves an explanation. So I came up with this one.
Barry Thompson was a man of simple pleasures: a full English fry up, a cold pint at the pub, and the thrill of navigating Britain’s roads in his trusty white van. He wasn’t one for maps and sat navs were for wimps. Barry prided himself on his impeccable sense of direction, honed by years of delivering everything from dodgy flat-pack furniture to mysteriously unmarked packages. After all, what’s a white van man without a bit of bravado?
On a particularly drizzly August Tuesday morning, Barry found himself on a mission to deliver a load of garden gnomes to a fancy new estate in Bournemouth. “Easy peasy,” he muttered to himself, glancing at the soggy scrap of paper with an address scrawled in barely legible handwriting. “Straight down the M3, screech a left somewhere, and Bob’s your aunty.”
Barry’s day started off well enough. He managed to avoid every speed camera and even snuck in a quick lardy bacon bap at a greasy spoon near Basingstoke. But as he approached Bournemouth, the sky darkened, and a thick mist began to roll in off the coast. “Typical British summer,” Barry grumbled, squinting through the windscreen.
His sat nav, which he only kept as a backup (because he was actually a bit of a wimp), started spouting nonsense. “Turn left at the next roundabout,” it chirped. Barry, confident that he knew better, ignored it and carried on straight.
Twenty minutes later, Barry was hopelessly lost. He had a sneaking suspicion that Bournemouth’s town planners were in league with Satan. Every road seemed to loop back on itself, and he could’ve sworn he’d passed the same bemused pensioner thirteen times. “I’m not asking for directions,” he muttered, as if anyone were around to hear him. “Real men don’t ask for directions.” They just get lost.
The rain intensified, blurring the lines between terra firma and H20. But Barry, stubborn as a mule, refused to stop. He spotted a sign pointing towards “Seafront” and, reasoning that the estate must have a sea view, floored it. The van bounced along increasingly narrow roads, down a hill and then….
Suddenly, the road dipped even more sharply. Barry clutched the steering wheel as the van skidded on the wet tarmac, hurtling down whilst leaving his Y fronts in a sticky panic. The mist and sea became one. A vast expanse of grey, choppy water greeted him, and Barry realised too late that testosterone tends to make you wet.
With a mighty splash, the van plunged into the waters of Bournemouth’s bay.
Passers by did not know what to do. In the confusion and with a deep concern for barry’s life they grabbed their phones and started recording. With the fear that Barry might drown in front of their eyes they downloaded to Whatsapp and sent to family and friends with multiple crying with laughter emojis. Their empathy for Barry’s life threatening predicament knew no ends.
Later that day, Barry was fished out by the coastguard, who couldn’t quite hide their amusement. They had been alerted by the videos and images going viral on social media and thought they better check it out. When asked how he’d managed to drive into the sea, Barry seemed too engrossed in scrolling on his iphone while looking like a fresh piece of gammon as embarrassment swelled his cheeks.
And so, the story of Barry the white van man who navigated straight into Bournemouth’s bay was born. It should be a cautionary tale, a story passed around pubs with a pint in hand, reminding everyone that sometimes, just sometimes, it is ok to ask confused looking pensioners for directions.
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