You Give Me Road Rage

“I’m the worst person to be stuck with in traffic” – Larry King

The last thing I want to do with this blog is to get political.  But will whoever is in charge please, please, sort out the train strike so that we can go back to our usual sustainable level of commuter misery?

His Nibs and I had absolute ructions in the car yesterday, trying to get home from work.  There was a train strike.  So all the commuters who usually take the train from miles outside Dublin had to take their cars into the city, and we all got to sit in traffic jams for fecking hours, giving each other dirty looks and swearing to ourselves that we’d get a job down the country before this time next year.

His Nibs will admit that he is an absolute martyr to road rage.  This is surprising to me, because in general he is a laid back, peaceful sort of person who wanders only occasionally into anger.  Put him in the car, though, and he turns into the Incredible Hulk.  In a traffic jam he becomes incoherent.  He shouts so many swear words that I can’t pick up the actual gist of his sentences at all.

I know all this very well.  So yesterday, when we got to the car, I decided that I should drive home from work.

“I’ll drive today.  There’s a train strike.”

“I know there’s a train strike.  Why does that mean you should drive? I want to drive.”

“You don’t want to drive.” I was so insistent as to be annoying.  “You think you want to drive, but you don’t really.  I’ve checked the internet.  The road is like a car park.  You’ll just lose your temper.  Get into my car bed there, and go asleep for yourself.”

He wouldn’t be told.  This could be something to do with the fact that he cannot bear to watch me drive his car.  I don’t know why.  I’m not saying I’m the world’s greatest driver.  But I don’t think I’m the worst either.  I passed my test years ago (first time, as I often inform my unfortunate husband, he had to have two goes).  I have no convictions or points on my licence, although he alleges this is inexplicable, the cheeky git.  I haven’t been in any accidents.  And yet my driving seems to annoy my husband to infinity and beyond.

It all starts well enough.  I get in the driver’s seat, and remind him that I have a licence, that I often drive, and that I don’t need any help.  He doesn’t usually say anything, but I can practically hear him rolling his eyes in the passenger seat.  Then I start driving.  Within minutes he’ll pipe up that “You should change lanes.  It’s faster on the other lane”.  When we’re stopped in rush hour traffic on Dublin’s quays.

Things get worse from there.  His Nibs continues to tell me what lane I should be in to avoid any problems further up the road.  And because I’m difficult and stubborn and refuse to be told what to do, I deliberately stay in the lane I’m in, even if I had been intending to move.  Then he’ll tell me to take my foot off the clutch when we’re stopped, which is apparently a very bad habit, and one I hate being caught out in.  And he’ll usually remind me to change gears the millisecond before I’m about to change up anyway.  And again because I’m stubborn I’ll refuse to be told and we end up roaring down the N7 in third gear.

But there was no chance of us roaring anywhere yesterday.  Because Dublin, and the road out of it, were in total gridlock.  And His Nibs was in the driving seat.

There’s a left turn we take to get out of the city as promptly as possible.  As we approached this turn yesterday, His Nibs started yelping because there was such a back up of traffic in front of us.

“We’ll never get through Inchicore village” he moaned.  “If it’s this bad this far from the N7, we’ll be in the car all night.”

I said nothing.  Sure, what was there to say?  When he’s right, he’s right.

“Where does this road bring you?  If we don’t turn off?”

“Ballyfermot village”.

(For any non Irish readers, Inchicore and Ballyfermot are suburbs of Dublin city.  So is Palmerstown, which we will unfortunately get to later, both literally and in this story).

“Have you ever driven down there?”

“Yes”

“And?”

“And you get to Ballyfermot village, then you turn left, and eventually you join the N7.”

The N7 was where we needed to be, so His Nibs ignored his usual left turn, and kept driving.

I should say, I was on this road once, in my entire life.  Dropping somebody home.  Somebody who then gave me very clear directions on how exactly to get back to the main road.  And this was years ago.  I wasn’t half as confident in this route as I allowed myself to sound.  But His Nibs was starting to get a bit shouty.  And for some reason I thought that moving had to be better than sitting in traffic.  And in fairness, I knew I was right.  Common sense told me.  Eventually there would have to be a left turn that would bring us to where we wanted to go.

We drove along, moving slowly, for a few minutes.

“So is this Ballyfermot Village?” he asked me.

“Yes.”

“And where do we turn off?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

I thought it was best to stop bluffing.  I hadn’t a clue.

“What do you mean you don’t know?  You said you knew the way.”

“I said you go down here and eventually turn left.  But I don’t know where.”

Well, dear readers, my beloved His Nibs instantly became absolutely furious.  It was impressive to see, actually.  He went from driving along, keeping an eye out for signs, to screaming and swearing like something out of The Wolf of Wall Street in a millisecond.

“Stop shouting and swearing” I told him.  “It’ll be grand”.

He went bonkers.  Blathering on about he should never have listened to me, and if he’d gone the usual way, he’d be stuck in traffic, but at least he’d know where he was, and now we’d never get home, and other dramatic nonsense.

In fairness to His Nibs, I was being annoying.  I’d very strongly implied that I knew an alternative route home, then admitted that I had no idea where we were, and when he started giving out, lay down in my car bed, with my blanket and pillow, and instructed him to be quiet, that I was going to sleep.

But he wasn’t going to let me away with that.  At every roundabout he asked me which way he should go.  And at every roundabout, I instructed him to go straight through, unless the left exit was signed Limerick, The South, or the N7.  I didn’t even look up.  He must have wanted to kill me.  But instead he yelped and shouted and threatened other road users, and deliberately disobeyed me by making an alarming amount of noise.  When we reached Palmerstown he seemed to get his second wind, shouting about how we weren’t supposed to be there, and now we were halfway to Sligo.  This was a gross exaggeration.  Sligo is two hundred kilometres from Palmerstown.  I know this, because it said so on the sign we were soaring past as His Nibs was shouting this information.

“Do you know” I said, lying back down and snuggling into my car bed “I remember when you were more fun than this.  When you had fire in your belly and adventure in your soul.  There’s no need to worry just because we’re not supposed to be exactly where we planned to be at this moment in time.  How much fun would life be if we were always on the right road?”

My eyes were closed and my speech already slowing into sleep as I preached at him.

“Well being at home with coffee and toast would definitely be more fun than driving around here for hours, going around in circles, wouldn’t it?” he snarled.  “Do that yoke on your phone, where you talk to it, and it turns into a satnav.”

I don’t know why he carries on as if he doesn’t know what Siri is.  He knows better than I do, even though he doesn’t have it on his phone.  We often question her, when we’re out and about in the world.

“It has no battery.  I’m sorry about that, actually” I told him, making it sound as if I wasn’t remotely sorry for sending him off on this wild goose chase in the first place.

We got to the N7 eventually of course, and peace was instantly restored.  Apparently, I’m not as foolish as I look.