I've turned out to be not so tolerant a driver as I might have hoped. I was explaining this to my boss at work and telling her about the dreaded roundabout that I would arrive at every morning to find that people who are going in a different direction to me think it's ok to queue on the roundabout despite the fact that they can see that they can't get off it. Every morning I would set out in a sunny temper and generally feeling benevolent to all road users, then every morning, at approximately 8.25, I would arrive at this roundabout and be freshly surprised by THOSE IDIOTS! Quite why it surprised me every day I am not sure - maybe I'm an optimistic type. Anyway, the morning I ended up telling Jackie about it was the morning I had beeped. I had not beeped to alert someone to danger but to make a gesture at the car sitting quite pointlessly in the middle of the roundabout and preventing me from turning right. The beeping was a bad idea, as was the arm-waving 'sheesh!' gesture that I followed it up with. It wasn't a bad idea because someone jumped out of the car with a hammer but because the passenger in the car turned to me, shrugged, and laughed in a way that made me feel like a bit of a div. Unfortunately there is no gesture which says 'Oh God, I am a total dick' so I just looked the other way with my teeth gritted. Anyway, when I told Jackie about my roundabout woes I expected her to agree that I should persevere with my efforts to not be such a dick. She didn't though, she offered me a far better solution, a different route to work which involved no such aggravating roundabout. She lives in the same village as me and has had a couple of years to decide the best way to get to work. I don't think the new route took any more or less time than the old route but it was lovely to not have to feel a wave of self-loathing every morning at 8.25.
A couple of weeks after the adoption of the new route I left work at the same time as Jackie and found myself driving behind her. I made a couple of attempts to alert her to this fact (Why? Why do I want to say, 'Hey I'm behind you! I can see the back of your head woooo!'?). When we got to the roundabout in Dunston she went into the left hand lane instead of the right and I felt quite confused - had I misunderstood her description of the new route? Was there actually an even better new new route? I decided to follow her and find out. So I followed her into Dunston and thought 'aha, she's going to turn off here, cut down Wellington Road and...' but she didn't turn off there. Then I thought she'd turn off at the next right but she didn't. At that point I realised that she might not actually be going home. She might be going shopping or to her boyfriend's house. The actual destination was not that important, not nearly as important as the fact that I was no longer driving home behind her but following her, very much like a complete freak might. I decided that the only way to escape being seen as the weirdest workmate in the history of weird workmates was to turn off at the next turning and find my way home from there. But then she did the worst possible thing - she pulled over. She pulled over and didn't get out of the car. I took this as a sign that she knew I was following her and was trying to shake me off her tail! Arrrrrgh! Can there be a greater work-based faux-pas than accidentally stalking your boss? I drove past her and away along a road which I didn't know and got home half an hour later than usual wondering if I should ring her on the phone in case she spent all night worrying about me following her. But I thought that if she didn't answer the phone I would look even more strange and she might become even more worried and would possibly have reported me to some authority before I had had a chance to explain myself.
As it was she claimed to know nothing about it and her facial expression was not too bad considering she had been greeted with 'Morning! Did you think I was following you last night? I was... but not in a bad way!'
