Driving me crazy

Blogger seems to be refusing to publish anything today, so everything has been a bit delayed. Apologies.

Anyway, one of my landlady’s sons was home this weekend. Quite a lot his post comes here and he found that he had a parking ticket for some recent parking violation. Once he had thought about how he was going to afford to pay that on his meagre student income, he then opened another envelope to find that he had been caught for going through a red light. Oops. He can’t even remember going through a red light and isn’t really a reckless driver in his Mini Metro. Anyway, he has to pay a fine and will get points on his license. It was an expensive weekend for him.

So far, I have never had a parking ticket or been done for speeding. Certainly on the latter it’s more by luck than good judgement. Not that speeding is a good thing, but I do have a slightly heavy accelerator foot on occasion. I think I got flashed by a speed camera one night but nothing ever turned up in the post.

You have to learn the rules of London driving in order to survive. Basically, as a London driver you have to have the mindset that absolutely everybody else on the road is merely there to inconvenience you and to slow down your journey. They should therefore be ignored at all costs- at junctions, if they’re pulling out from the side of the road, or wanting to merge into a queue (although they’ll have probably snuck along the outside of the queue and be trying to force their way in anyway). The only exception to this is at roundabouts, where you must watch like a hawk for the most minute gap between cars and then pull out. Failure to follow this guidance will merely end in tears, as someone may well drive into the back of you. You have been warned.

A once sent me a copy of ‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths, I like to think that it was a humorous compliment to our relationship rather than an indication of the likelihood of death from being driven by me. But, again, you have been warned...