MisterMMM.com: anecdotes from the road

February 23

It was about 2 years ago and he was doing his test in the next few days. We had been heading north on the A38 having come from the Toyota roundabout, and had then come off the next slip road onto the Findern roundabout aiming to head towards littleover.

We came to the end of the slip road, in the right hand lane, with the right indicator on, to take the third exit from the roundabout, towards Littleover. Everything was lined up fine. The roundabout was clear, we moved into our gap, and carried on around.

Just before the short cut exit on the left, which is the cross-country road to Mickleover, I cautioned the driver to slow down as we couldn't see far around the roundabout to the right, due to the vegetation and trees in the way. I made the point that you must be able to stop in the distance you can see, and we couldn't see very far. Anything could be there!

He joked with me not to be silly because who would go round a big roundabout like this one, the wrong way. Before he could finish the sentence, something came the wrong way towards us. It was a white haired woman with two white haired friends, in a blue Rover 200.

My driver went into a kind of shock, not knowing what to do, and went deaf, to boot. So, I stopped the car. The old lady coming towards us stopped and looked very confused to me. It might have been that she thought I was on the wrong side of the road. My driver wanted to know what to do, so I said to wait. Of course, the next car behind us, came up quick and then went to overtake on the left, until they saw the old ladies in their car. They stopped! This happened with about 5 cars, until there was a phalanx of us across the roundabout. The old lady then waved at us all to thank us maybe, and proceeded to turn right off the roundabout towards mickleover.

So when you are out driving with me, and I talk about the possibility of ridiculous things happening: it's not an over-active imagination, it's just that sometimes it happens. Like the time I met someone at 5 lamps going the wrong way around the one-way system. But that's another story ;-)