Going Hard and Going Home

Imagine the scene, it’s Friday and I’m driving home from the office in my car, which I will explain at this point is a large Mercedes 4×4. This puts me quite high up and gives me the same view-point enjoyed by most large van drivers, though not quite as high as you’d get from the cab of  an HGV truck.

I was on a dual carriageway and being keen to get home was peeved to be stuck behind a queue of slow moving traffic, the drivers apparently half asleep and not quite at the speed limit. So I pulled out to overtake the convoy of “zombie drivers”. Unhelpfully a silver Mazda pulled out in front of me doing a speed that was little more than that of the convoy of undead bozos.

My initial annoyance at this manoeuvre soon turned into interest and then amusement as the front seat passenger leant across to the driver and reached out with her hand. Over the next kilometre she proceeded to mess around in his lap before her arm settled into a steady rhythm. His driving became erratic and his speed did not improve, dropping occasionally so I had to ease off the accelerator.

Eventually after about three kilometres the car in front gave a sudden lurch to the left and was rapidly corrected before the passenger’s hands got busy in the driver’s lap. He began to accelerate, perhaps realising the hold-up he’d created and allowed me to overtake the queue before I returned to the nearside lane. He stayed in the overtaking lane – do these people not read the Highway Code? Anyway his bad driving allowed me to pull alongside at the next roundabout and as I peeked inside the passenger compartment of the Mazda I caught sight of her collecting together a handful of tissues from his lap.

I don’t think she’d been helping him blow his nose.