<Warning, may contain ranting and unreasonable-ness>. OAP's driving slowly whilst wearing hats.

[Mumofaflump]

Seriously? If you cant manage at least 40 mph down a perfectly good A road with a limit of 60 mph then, in my opinion, you shouldn't be driving.

Every morning I get stuck behind at least one person who crawls along at 35mph. Invariably they are driving fast expensive cars too!

Dont even get me started on those who drive fast cars slowly whilst wearing hats..... GRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Disclaimer - it is a perfectly good road, 60 is a perfectly sensible speed, conditions permitting.

Oh....

:(

Why?

:(

I just looked at your photos

Ohhhhh...

You did say hating you was allowed!

Oh no, don't worry! No offence taken I promise

:)

I'm a very lucky lady to have gotten back as soon as I did. Blame heartburn for the last month of pregnancy so no appetite and being too tired to eat for the first month with a newborn!

I had that!

I still have a belly

DD is 18 months old next Friday

TBH I have always had a bit of a dodgy relationship with food. You know most people comfort eat? I comfort starve... This is the heaviest (and curviest) I have ever been, and I quite like it!

Still

:)

Ha - I can top that - I still have a baby belly and ds3 (precious last born) was 14 in April! In fact I weigh as much as if I were carrying all three of them at once. I would put a pic on my profile but I don't have a camera with a wide-angle lens!

Anyway - back to the topic. I was talking to dh about this thread, and another important indicator occured to us - Driving Gloves! DFIL wears driving gloves to drive his Volvo estate (in which he proceeds in a stately fashion round the roads of Cornwall). He is a stereotypical, textbook Old Buffer - can bore for his country at international levels, falls asleep on the couch in the evening, and thinks the Art of Letterwriting should be kept alive. Recent presents to dh and the dses include books on Toilets of Cornwall, Cornish Pasties and Cornish Cheeses, whilst my birthday present last year was a history book on Inventions of the Ancients. There's a marked improvement in the standard of gift when his ladyfriend helps him, but if the parcel is book-shaped, we tend to brace ourselves and expect the worst.

SDTG

Yes, driving gloves! Especially fingerless kid-leather ones that come from The Edinburgh Woollen Shop!

My mother, lovely creature that she is, complains her 2.0l has no oomf. That, dear mama, is because you are driving in 5th gear, up a hill, at 30mph...

Does anyone else's mothers have a special range of hissing noises to be used in the car...

"Sssssss, mind that cyclist!"

"Ssssss, slow down!"

Etc?

I nearly forgot my dad used to have a carcoat!
This was in the mid 70s to be fair.

Gingery/terracotta crinkly plether. With a dark brown faux (very faux) sheepskin lining. To wear when driving

Practical and stylish.

Pleather not plether. As in pretendy leather.

What a stylish gent he was, LOTF - and how proud you must have been to be seen out and about with him!

Someone way back down the thread said you should speed up when approaching green lights. Not according to my driving instructor. If they've been green for a while, you should be aware they may change and ready to stop.

I suspect most people who have passed their test do speed up but it's not what you are supposed to do!

I have to add what I saw yesterday - obligatory Honda driving at 40 on an A road. With a bloody great FIRE ENGINE behind it with sirens wailing and lights flashing!! They were completely oblivious!

Can I throw something else into the mix re slow drivers? I would like a government grant to study the correlation between slow drivers and having a National Trust membership sticker in the rear window.

Its a worthwhile study! I wonder if they are made of lead , or particularly un-aerodynamic because inevitably when I am stuck behind a slow-coach they have one of those in the window. Actually, DH and I have also noticed that the slow-coachiness seems to increase in direct proportion to the amount of years out of date the national trust sticker is...

You listening Cameron? We need answers to this, dammit!!

some lunatic woman was driving out of the Bingo carpark last night as we left church.
She came haring up the pathway (it's literally a pathway, as it is the Bingo's access to the road, but it is also a pedestrian walkway between the church and the carpark behind the church)
she didn't even seem to be looking! She was driving far too fast for the pathway.
I had started walking across the pathway when she sped up to me.
I didn't stop because I was in the road! and she didn't take a blind bit of notice of me.

I said to DH "all she's missing is a hat!"

I use the A6 a lot. There are stretches where the speed limit goes from 50mph to 40 then to 30, back to 40 for a few yards then down to 30 again.

Hats or otherwise, there are drivers who just stick at 30 because then they don't have to think about the speed limits. It's also a very bendy road with lots of double white lines so it's impossible to get past these people.

Then there are the cars from the Netherlands. These drivers think the speed limit signs are kph, not mph.

Then there are the cyclists who think cycling along an A road is healthy! These invariably cycle in pairs, side by side. Or in droves, evertaking each other.

The A6 is pure hell.

Would you all hate me if I confessed I drive at 50, 55 tops down the NSL A-road between my house and the next town? I'm only a learner and 60 is scary! (Am doing my best to do 55 to avoid holding people up - it's not a narrow road but definitely two lanes only, lots of bends and nowhere to overtake safely.)

If you dint live in Suffolk that's fine Edam

Or even don't!

if it's bendy, you'd be a fool to do NSL, anyway.
NSL on narrow, windy roads basically just means "we're not dictating, take it as slowly of as fast as the road conditions allow"

nickel, it's not narrow exactly, the bends aren't sharp, but the position of the bends and hills are such there's nowhere safe to overtake - you are either on a bend or approaching the brow of a hill. Even when I was a very new learner only doing 40 no-one overtook on the 60 stretch.

Dh's dad is a lovely man, but OMG he is the most frustrating man in the world to be in a car in.

For whatever reason, he has an aversion to main roads. They're not interesting, apparently. So he will take the most circuitous route possible, often criss-crossing the lovely empty dual carriageway that will get you there in 5 mins flat in his effort to avoid anything resembling a A road.

I once stupidly took the offer of a lift home from him when I'd been visiting DH in Barts. The tube journey there took 20 mins. The car ride back took an hour and a half. I hadn't eaten all day and was nearly crying by the time I got out the car... kept looking wistfully at the A102 as we diverted away from it time and time again...

No hat, though, as yet, although he does have 2 (2?!) panama hats on the back shelf at jaunty angles to each other.

SMIL bought me a quilted peach satin tissue box cover (with lace edging) for Christmas one year. I hope to God she doesn't think I'm the sort of driver that uses one!

My grandad was a great driver, army trained and very calm...Gran on the other hand was a nightmare, far more interested in random gardens, people walking on the pavement, 'pretty coloured' cars etc than concentrating on driving. We breathed a sigh of relief when she gave up driving, only to find she was also a terrible passenger. On one memorable occasion I picked her up and was driving her to my Mums for Subday lunch, on the motorway section she suddenly leaned across in front of me to clean a smear off the windscreen in case it distracted me!.