Grey Days

This is actually Saturdays blog, but the way things work out midnight comes too soon sometimes.

Another grey day in a succession of grey days: no wonder we founded an empire in the sun! What do we do now that we have lost it all? Move to Spain! What a good idea: why didn’t I think of that before?

Tomorrow we have the first viewers of the year for the house. This is something of a surprise as we did not expect anyone this early in the year. It would be silly to get our hopes up as we are used to disappointment so far: at least we are able to sit tight and wait and are not panicking, not yet anyway. We will have to wait and see: again!

I think that I am becoming even more misogynistic. Over the past few months I have got used to shopping when I return from taking Toni to work; so I can be inside Tesco by 8.20 am. Tesco is encouragingly empty at this time, though it is actually too early for the proper bread to be ready, but it does make browsing around the aisles a positive pleasure.

The roads are emptier and, until early lunch time, roads are a delight to travel. The danger of lunchtime is that the aged drivers make a determined foray into the cut and thrust of ordinary life. Their driving often reflects their expectation that the school run is over and the roads ought to be given to the mature: the result being that the driving is ‘individualistic’ – or erratically slow as the rest of us discover.

It is hardly a sociological discovery to state that the process of driving seems to strip layers of superficial artifice constructed by people against the intellectual incursion of the nosy world and leave drivers in their basic, sometimes atavistic state. I know people who say that they don’t like driving; but I have yet to meet someone who says that they are indifferent drivers. If we are all experts then drivers occupy the same zone of irritation as parents. All parents (without exception) are experts on education, and certainly more learned and experienced than any teacher who might be attempting to inflict their pedagogic black arts on their innocent babes. In the same way all drivers (without exception) always do the right thing and behave with decorum and professionalism. It therefore follows that there can be no criticism which is not unwarranted and impertinent. It therefore further follows that all actions taken by all drivers are right and proper at all times. This makes any reasonable analysis somewhat impossible. Any attempt at analysis should, therefore, be resisted with immense contempt at all times.

You might say that very few people would be stupid enough to comment on any one else’s driving in the same way than only a suicidal idiot would comment truthfully on any baby or child offered by parents for contemplation and adulation. It is how analysis is presented that is the issue.

Here are the ways in which analysis is perceived by other drivers, you will notice that 'other' drivers do not actually have to do anything which is against the other driver, just existing is enough, but the list following shows ways in which the threatening analysis is understood:
1 Driving too close
2 Driving too fast
3 Driving
4 Looking at other drivers
5 Not looking at other drivers
6 Using a mobile phone
7 Keeping to the speed limit
8 Talking to a passenger
9 Using hand signals
10 Driving a 4 wheel drive
11 Driving a two door car
12 Driving with stickers on the rear windscreen
13 Driving a vehicle with tinted windows
14 Driving a vehicle with Penthouse bunny stickers
15 Having a sign in the rear window with "Princess on board"
16 Driving with the head lower than the top of the steering wheel
17 Any Porche driver
18 Not wearing a seat belt
19 Smoking while driving
20 Driving a Ford

So, any behaviour, driving style or attitude on behalf of another driver is an implied analysis.

There is no escape.