Give Way.

Just in case you weren't aware, or having been living in your own little micro-climate, we've had some serious rain. The wettest spring and early summer since records began apparently. As if to confirm this, we are cultivating the worlds biggest flat mushroom under the kids trampoline in the back garden, so big it could easily provide the family with all of our five-a-day requirements. I keep thinking that, one evening, I'll look out of the patio doors over the garden, and see a little pixie sitting on it and fishing into a large puddle. The weather was getting me down last week, I can't deny it. I have been a bit of a misery and the incessant rain really hasn't helped matters. So over the weekend I made the pilgrimage Dahn Sarf to see an old friend, where I get 24 hours of respite (being able to pee in peace and stay in bed past 7am). The Daughter tried her best to squeeze out some fake tears at my departure on Saturday morning (if that girl doesn't end up at drama school, I will eat my shoes), and off I went.

I'd just pulled up at some traffic lights on an island where I was to pull off onto the M1 South, when I saw a silver Corsa sitting on the M1 North sliproad. It didn't have its hazard lights on so it drew my attention. And as I passed it I saw its elderly driver start to reverse back up the sliproad towards the island, having realised he was going the wrong way! Later that day I heard on the radio about an accident on the M4, caused by an elderly man driving the road way up the motorway. A coincedence? I think not.  Bless him, he'd probably tried to reverse his way home.  The way back was almost as eventful, with a closed motorway and a detour, which is just brilliant when your bladder is brimful to bursting. Whilst stuck in traffic about 70 miles from home, who should inch his way past my car but my GP?! We both did a "Ooh I recognise you! / You put me on the pill last week!" face before a Volkswagon  campervan came between us and off he disappeared into the crowds.

I saw some bloody awful driving on that journey; lane closures and roadworks really do bring out the arsehole in people. Mean faced buggers stick to the bumper of the car in front and do the 'pretending to fiddle with the radio so I don't have to look at your pissed off face as I refuse to let you in' thing. I do consider myself a good driver, pretty courteous to my fellow motorists - mainly to try and compensate for what a total roadhogging get The Husband is! My last accident was a decade ago, after a row with The Boyfriend (before he became The Husband), when I reversed like a lunatic off the driveway and straight into a lamp post. As if that wasn't enough, I jumped out of the car and shouted "DO YOU WANT A PICTURE?!" at two elderly neighbours who happened to have witnessed the whole thing. Took me a while to convince them I wasn't a raving lunatic. But since then I drive much slower, much safer and am much nicer to people patiently waiting at junctions. Although since having the kids, I firmly believe the driving test should have a special segment in it whereby you have two kids sitting in the back. The manouvres should include: trying to get them into their seats on a rainy day without crying because the car is covered in mud, having to concentrate through a three year old trying to unclip his own seatbelt and dangling his coat out of the window, and drive with a five year olds constant yabbering "Do you know the people who sing this song? Are any of them dead? Where's that lorry going? Why hasn't that man got a coat on? Do you know that lady?". If you can pass that without driving the wrong way up the motorway or reversing up a sliproad, you deserve a medal. Maybe that poor old fella had got his grandkids in the car...