The scariest day of driving I've done in my life was when we picked up an American-sized (read "huge") people mover from downtown San Francisco. The combination of maze-like city streets, a bulky car, sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle (thus needing to aim for the wrong side of the lane I was in), and driving on the wrong side of the road completely did my head in. It was only having a child sitting in the back (?Phi) that stopped me from bursting into tears when I could not for the life of me figure out how to turn on the headlights. (Automatic headlights! What fey American magic is this??)
Though there has been no risk of tears this time around, the two days I have been in the car here are almost in the same league.
Day one was the trip from Heathrow to our digs for the week. Start with a badly jet-lagged brain, given it was about 3am Brisbane time when we were driving. Add a hefty dose of "first time driving a manual transmission in 10 years" (how many times can I stall the car before I leave the Hertz parking lot?), mix with a tonne of unfamiliar road signs (probably should have Googled those before I started driving, huh?), and add a pinch of "are those speed limits in miles or kilometres per hour?" (just go the same speed as everyone else ... which is somewhere between the two). Bake nicely in some peak-hour evening traffic. Eventually, after a few missed turns, quickly recovered from, we pulled into the laneway leading to our apartment complex, as I had rehearsed on Google Street View back at home ... to find bollards across the laneway. Well, bugger.
After scouting around on foot, I found that the entrance to the complex is now kind of in behind a Crowne Plaza driveway ... which itself is accessed via a freeway on-ramp. Nope, there is absolutely no way this can go wrong.
So I go back to the car ... and discover I can't get the gear stick into reverse. Ah, there's an unlock lever I need to pull to access that stick position. 65-point turn in a narrow laneway, with a couple of further stalls for good measure. Then back in to walking-pace traffic (and by that I mean the walking pace of an 18-month old toddler), and refamiliarising myself with the fine art of riding the clutch.
And as I enter the freeway on-ramp I hear my dearly beloved say, "Isn't that the lane you wanted?", as she points back over her shoulder. At that point I let fly with an utterance that I won't repeat here.
I'll give credit where credit is due. London drivers are courteous to a degree that leaves Queensland drivers in the dust. They need to be to deal with a roadway system which is unable to send a road from A to B without 4 major changes in direction, 2 changes in road name, and half-a-dozen "two lanes becomes one lane becomes two lanes becomes one lane".
London drivers, bless you all, and my apologies for not extending the same courtesies back. I look forward to the day when I am confident enough in British traffic that I can spare some cognitive processing power on seeing what I can do to help you. Hopefully that will be before we are back in Australia!
Oh, and as for the _second_ day, well, I might get to that later. But the short version is that the country roads are even worse than the city ones!
"Chronicles of a Barns UK Holiday" The Barns family - minus two children who must valiantly continue on with their high school education - head to the United Kingdom to explore all things historical and popular culture.
