In order to free the dog from a tangle he had got himself into on the back seat, I stopped in a layby last weekend, on the A491 just off the M5. A strong memory stirred. Ah yes, I vomited here once. I was a kid, in the back of my dad’s car, on the regular drive from the West Midlands to our caravan in south Wales. I was always, but always, car sick. On a good day, I’d make it well into Wales, even surviving the then tortuous Heads of the Valleys road but, one way or another, before journey’s end, there would be an incident. A wail from me, a curse from Dad, a screech of brakes, a leap from Mum out of the front seat to open the back door for me to stagger out and heave. The whole operation was as slick as a Formula One pit stop. The A491 layby puke stuck in my mind because it was my quickest ever on that journey; we were barely five minutes into it. “Not already, surely,” moaned my dad. Oh yes. Curse, screech, door, heave and we were on the road again. It was good to get it out the way early doors, I suppose we thought.

Whatever happened to car sickness? Is it still a thing? A doctor tells me that the meds are a lot more effective now. Kids these days don’t know they’re born. The tablets I was given – Sea-Legs, I think they were called – weren’t much help. All in all, the whole business blighted my kidhood. It got to the stage where the mere smell of my dad’s Volvo was enough to turn my stomach. My poor parents. One time we couldn’t safely stop, and all my mum had to hand was a paper bag. She got it to me just in time. We had two seconds to breathe sighs of relief before the sodden bottom of the bag gave way, depositing its cargo all over my lap. Where were you when Elvis died? I know where I was. I was bent double on a grass verge in the car park at Strensham services with my mum holding my forehead. Oh, the memories.

• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist