Orphans

I wrote the following entry last summer, just after the event, but didn’t want to post it because it gave me shivers every time I thought about it & I wanted to get hold of a photo to explan things a bit clearer & then it just sat in my Drafts folder.

I guess it’s worth posting now in order to remind me that I shouldn’t listen to everything I’m told, especially when it’s a machine…

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Today, through blind acceptance of technology, incomplete Italian road-signs and my own indecision, I nearly killed myself, my wife, possibly other road-users and made my children into orphans. I say this without exaggerating.

We are most of the way through an Italian road-trip, taking us from Pisa, down to Naples (stinky and dirty), across to Bari and back up the Adriatic coast to Pescara, across to Parma and back to Lyon.

Having just arrived in Bari, and renting a cottage on a farm, we decided to leave the kids unattended while we went to the supermarket to stock up. The SatNav (TomTom) told us that it was a 15 minute drive away; it was still light, 7PM, so we weren’t too worried about leaving them (they are 12 and 10).

Sean, with the lilting Irish accent had been our SatNav companion (“turn roight, won’t ye”), and until now had served us well. It has taken me over a year to convince my wife that a SatNav is not merely a toy-for-the-boys and is indispensable, and she was just coming round to my way of thinking as he had got us through some difficult places without problems. Over time, I’ve got used to the phrases used by TomTom, knowing that “Exit Ahead” means in 2KM, and not 20 metres, but, as we arrived at the entrance to the dual-carriageway, I was puzzled by, “Turn Right, then bear left”. I turned right, as directed, then, confused by the on-screen map, the instructions and the road signs (lack thereof), I immediately came across a fork which seemed to offer me the possibility of choosing left or right. I was sure that “Bear Left” didn’t mean immediately, but it seemed clear that this was what I needed to do. A snap decision and I took the left fork. The road took us downwards, looping sharply to the left. This seemed normal to me, but my wife said that she thought that we should have “bore left”, further along the road. Committed, I carried on, and after entering onto the dual carriageway, she said (calmly, I thought) that we were on the wrong side of the road. It took me 100m and a lifetime, before I panicked, (“shit, shit, shit, we are going the wrong way”). Cars were coming towards us at great speed, luckily for us, still a few 100 metres away. Not knowing what to do, I put on the hazard lights, and tried to do a U-turn on the dual carriageway. We were in a hire car, and the reverse gear was not in the same place as on my own car, so, of course, in my panic, I stalled it (‘shit, shit, shit”, “keep calm”). Cars started passing us, slowing down, flashing their lights and blowing their horns. Luckily, there was a hard-shoulder & I managed to get the car turned round as a pile of cars was now stopped in front of us. I drove off the motorway at the exit which I had just treated as an entry and carried on our way to the supermarket, not speaking much about the event.

It was only when we walking around the supermarket isles that the potential consequences kicked in: death, destruction, our kids, alone on the campsite, wondering, as it got darker, where mum & dad were and whether they should tell somebody, even though they didn’t speak the language. This left me shaking and distracted for quite some time afterwards, as I’m sure you can imagine.

Later, after we got back to the campsite, I ran the event through my mind, wondering just how I managed to make such a mistake. Next time we drove past the entranceexit, I took a photo so that I could study.

Bear left (but not just yet, you fool)

The photo you see here was taken just after the “bear right” part of Sean’s instructions, and therefore the “bear left” part is still to be acted upon. As you can see from the photo, a car is clearly coming off the motorway sliproad – if the car had been coming off the motorway at the time I made the mistake, I obviously wouldn’t have “borne left”. But imagine I’d gone left a few seconds earlier as this car was coming round the blind corner further down the slip-road…all of us would be dead I reckon. Looking at the picture, and comparing it with other motorway sliproads, the difference that I think threw me is the lack of a “No Entry” sign warning me not to go left. With the arrow pointing to the right, and the car in the picture, it is fairly obvious, but in the different circumtances, believe me, the mistake was easy to make. Next time you find yourself going onto a motorway, look and you will see that the “No Entry” sign is right next to the blue sign and there are generally two of them.

Anyway, all’s well that ends well and (singing) “I can laugh about it now but at the time it was terrible”. I blame primarily myself, then Italian road-planners, then TomTom (although to be fair he didn’t do anything wrong).

Anyway, all’s well that ends well. Moral: don’t believe everything you’re told: weigh things up and make your own informed decision.

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No place like home

What this picture of my iPhone movements in the last year shows (apart from the surprising continental drift of England and Wales into the Mediterranean sea, which may explain the warmer summers – I guess the Scottish got their independence after all), is that I have been to many places, but not home in the last 12 months. It’s time to change this: see you in July.

Can you tell we went on a tour of Italy for our holidays last summer?

Paperback Writer

I’m going into hospital next week for two weeks. Nothing serious, just observation to see where this epilepsy is coming from and check meds and stuff. I think I’ll be hooked up to a bunch of wires on my head and chest, and essentially be bed-ridden.

Rather than take this as a setback and a complete loss of valuable time, I am trying to see the positive in it, after all, there must be some somewhere. The pile of books to read is already prepared: Oliver Twist, Lustrum and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, although this could change. That’s a fairly passive use of my time though; I’m looking for something creative to do, and am open to suggestions. My top fantasy at the moment (apart from reliving my lousy football career) is to write a novel, and this would be a good time to start getting some ideas down on paper (so to speak).

I have many short, witty anecdotes in mind, but no coherent thread – a bit like my life in fact. Maybe a story about an Englishman in France who develops a medical condition and…nah, it’s probably been done before.

All in a good cause

I checked out my old address, www.soggers.com, this afternoon, a little like, for nostalgia’s sake, driving past your old house years after you moved out to see whether there are any remnants of your passing.
I was happy to see that the old place hasn’t gone to seed and has professional inhabitants, albeit ones you wouldn’t want recourse to visiting. It seems that soggers.com is now the place to go for all your debt management solutions. Soggers have a tagline that I wish I’d used, “Helping You Conquer Your Mountain”. I think I might give them a call…

A Bad Habit to Break

Two sensitive, heated debates are running in France at the moment that I notice have even made it into the English news. One is regarding French national identity – what does it mean to be French? (please don’t bring out any handlebar mustache, string of onion and beret imagery because that’s long gone). I think the goal was to get disparate groups of people to rally around a common definition of French-ness (a common language, know who Zinedine Zidane is etc – actually wait a minute, now I’m being equally stereotypic), but I’m not sure, and in general it was decried (quite rightly in my opinion) as a potentially racist, anti-immigrant policy. Finally, it looks like we will end up with French flags flying outside all schools and a bill-of-rights being displayed in classrooms.

The second is regarding the wearing of the Burqa, the full-length clothing with a full-face veil worn by a small proportion of Muslim women – the wearing of these is proposed to be banned in public buildings.  It seems to me that the two debates got mixed together.  For example, one of the proposals was that Muslim men who are seeking French nationality will have their application denied if they force their wives to wear the Burqa.

Anyway, it seems to me that the government has not been entirely just in trying to ban wearing of the Burqa. This garment is indeed (again, in my opinion), demeaning to women, and as far as I understand, nowhere in the Koran does it state that a woman should be covered from head-to-toe in public to (presumably) protect a man’s honour.

However, I have spotted a flaw in the argument; a loophole that needs closing immediately: What about Nuns? They wear Habits and what are they if not head-to-toe garments worn in public, serving no other purpose than to avert the gaze of amorous males! Does it state in the Bible that they should wear them? Does it not make it difficult to identify them on video surveillance cameras?

I say, SARKOZY: BE CONSISTENT – BAN NUNS FROM WEARING HABITS TODAY! Only then can you defrock (sic) the Muslim’s argument.