THANKFULLY, I am missing the opportunity the watch the second Australia v British and Irish Lions Test match.

The demands of a university open day for a teenager who would rather be glued in front of the television, mean that we will be watching the rugby in retrospect.

Mind you, given the nail-biting drama that unfolded in Brisbane last Saturday, that might not be a bad thing.

I spent most of the first Test driving along the M4 and then trying to negotiate the frankly baffling environs of Swindon, of which the notorious Magic Roundabout - look it up, it will boggle your mind - was the least of my worries.

The match sounded unbearable, just as watching a recording later felt unbearable too, even though the result was known by then.

So fraught were those final minutes that, having arrived at our destination - Swindon Harriers’ athletics arena - we were confronted by a man watching the match on one of those mini portable TV thingies, smaller than a tablet, bigger than a mobile phone, earphones welded to the side of his head, lost to the world.

So lost in fact, that when Australia won the first of their two eminently kickable penalties in the dying moments, he greeted it with a body parts-invoking epithet that I am unable to repeat here.

Jolted back to the real world of an under-13s and under-15s athletics meeting, he suddenly realised that what he had shouted was, under the circumstances, as appropriate as offering Kurtley Beale a pre-kick sip of beer to calm his nerves.

This was followed by profuse apologies and seconds later by a disbelieving cry of “he’s missed it!”

I had to return to the car for a rug at this point, so Lord knows what might have been uttered when Australia had a second penalty opportunity to snatch victory shortly after the first.

I can only assume that he managed to contain himself, for he remained unejected from the environs when I returned.

The aforementioned Kurtley had slipped and slithered, victory was the Lions’ and all was well.

Speaking to my emotional wreck of a 17-year-old son on the phone shortly afterwards, I got a vivid sense of what it must have been like to watch the drama unfold. He was hoarse and the dog had sought quieter surroundings in the kitchen.

He will have spent today’s match learning about student finance and his mother and I will have been hanging around waiting for him.

Under the circumstances, I can only hope that any robust swearing will have been employed in the cause of celebrating a series win.

Relief road - either way – let’s get on with it

IN the 22 - count ‘em - years since an M4 relief road was first proposed, the idea has been trumpeted and derided in equal measure.

Here we go again.

The announcement earlier this week that the project is firmly back on the agenda, with the Welsh Government poised to borrow tons of cash to fund it, has been a) warmly welcomed as a much-needed shot in the arm for the South Wales economy, and b) condemned as a disaster for the environment.

Wildlife bodies will be gearing up to fight the proposal, fearing the Gwent Levels will be decimated, while politicians of all hues and business leaders will be rubbing their hands at what they see as the prospect of a much-improved transport network.

It is vital that these arguments, though they have been aired before, are subject to sound, rational debate once again. More than enough time has passed since the previous M4 Relief Road scheme was shelved - 2009 - for both sides to be required to update their cases.

But please, let’s get on with it. We all know that the wheels of government grind exceptionally slowly, but if this is the priority everyone who favours it says it is, how about applying some much-needed oil to the engine of bureaucracy?

It was May 1991 when the Welsh Office, in those pre-Assembly days, first put forward the idea of an M4 Relief Road. The delay has since been longer than any endured by motorists using the much-maligned existing M4 around Newport.

Three months after that Welsh Office announcement, a similarly ambitious project called the World Wide Web was launched.

I think it’s fair to say that progress on that one has been a wee bit quicker.