Several recent dispatches from the antipodes have inquired as to how I was getting on with the driving.
Modesty prevents me from going on and on but I have to tell you that I'm a STAR!
I've whizzed past countless bicycles (and even a little white van one day), and I haven't had more than ten vehicles queued up behind me at any one time! When they do manage to get past they're still quite cheerful and give me a little wave. It's a funny sort of a wave though, it's done with the fingers closed. Must be a local thing.
For those hapless tourists not as skilled behind the wheel as myself, driving in the UK can be a hair-raising and frustrating experience.
I mean to say, you can be driving along a perfectly normal road, white line down the middle, adequate shoulder, not too many curves, when suddenly some malevolent engineer has decided to play funny buggers and turn this ordinary road into a bitumened goat track wide enough for a small car going in one direction or the other with a six foot hedge on either side.
Every so often there's an elbow sticking out into the hedge where you can seek refuge from on-coming traffic, but no opportunity to turn around, retrace your steps and catch the first plane home.
So here you are, sneaking along this winding country lane telling yourself that this is what England's all about, when suddenly you round a bend and coming towards you down this green tunnel is the biggest tractor you've ever seen!
The owner of this agricultural monster is evidently late for an appointment (to rake the hay perhaps?), because he's hammering down the lane like the Grim Reaper is after him.
Just as you're wondering how quickly death will come under those giant wheels, you spy one of those little kinks in the road and in you dive.
When your heart stops hammering in your ears you realise that good old St Christopher has done it again!
I could devote the rest of my life to having him reinstated? I foresee an internet campaign, signatures, marches, placards, a trip to Rome even!
Oh, um, none of that happened to me of course, it was a story I overheard on the train.
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