In a jam

Trust a radio critic, she who is paid to listen, not to rely on the wireless set in her car for information when stuck on a highland road miles from anywhere in a jam that stretches far into the horizon in both directions. But when a forest fire closed the road we were travelling on back across the mountains I realised I hadn’t a clue how to retune our southbound radio from the preset buttons and so couldn’t find the local station, Moray Firth Radio. After three hours, in the gloaming, we turned back along the road we had travelled. If only we had waited — or listened to MFR. Ten minutes later, the road reopened, exactly as MFR had announced to their listeners, as we ruefully discovered only the next day after an expensive overnight stay.

I should have known that MFR would have more useful info than the Northern Constabulary; the quality of its traffic info is how the station attracts and keeps its listeners.