The Road To Hell

I had a nightmare the other  night.

A driving nightmare.

A driving at night, nightmare.

A driving at night on the road to hell, nightmare.

Where did this come from? Who knows. I haven't driven a car in over a decade. I have *never* driven a car in the UK.

I am not sure I even could drive here.

Everything is on the wrong side for me. They drive on the opposite (wrong!) side of the road.

Even the inside of the car is on the opposite (wrong again!) side for me.


I have always had issues with my left and right. When driving in the US I *always* wore a hair scrunchie on my left wrist so I could tell them apart quickly.

Imagine having to do that on the opposite side of everything?

Um....no thanks. I am sure the people are Britain are breathing a huge sigh of relief.

Plus even when I used to drive in the US, I never enjoyed it. I am NOT a petrol head. The reasons are this are two fold.

1) Driving always killed my back. When you are a shortie with a broken coccyx sitting in a bucket seat designed for a tall person without a broken tailbone--well....it ain't pretty. I was in agony every time we had to drive long distances. And pretty durn uncomfortable driving short distances.

2) I have no sense of direction. At all. Zero. Zip. I am the person who literally could not find my way out of a paper bag with a map and a torch.

So being in agony, trying to tell my left from my right and trying to read signs and navigate made for a very stressed, very tense little Spider.

So anyway,  this was my dream.

I was driving a car at night down a multi lane motorway somewhere in England. I know it was England because the signs were not bilingual as they are in Wales.

It was night, visibility was very poor. It had been raining. That in itself is a REALISTIC situation a person might find themselves in.

Then it got weird.

The exit signs were all in RIDDLES. Seriously! Spiderman had to try to spot them from far away, we had to decode the riddle, I would then attempt to maneuver the car across several lanes of busy traffic and then exit. We kept wishing he had a telescope so he could see them from further away to give us more time to decode them as some of them were quite tricky.

The only riddle I can actually remember was this one:
Seven chickens turn thrice widdershins. What am I?
Answer:



Seriously, they were all like that. And what's up with the use of the archaic word widdershins? I only knew it meant anti-clockwise from reading the book/watching the excellent miniseries Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. Because that is how Richard Mayhew has to summon the Marquis De Carabas for the Lady Door.

the wonderful Patterson Joseph as the Marquis



So basically, I woke up in a cold sweat with my heart hammering away like an armed policeman.

Spiderman thought it was hysterical and said,
What do you get when you cross a spider with a fruitcake?
Answer: YOU

Later I was able to laugh about it. But more than anything, I am thankful to live in a nation, in a country, in a town that encourages and allows public transportation and walking.

Because if you have to stand on a street corner and surreptitiously check your left from your right or squint at buildings that may or may not be familiar to remember your way home then at least no wanker is beeping their horn at you or crashing into your tail end because you hesitated.