Driving Miss Daisy style

Good Friday my foot. It started out horribly and got worse. Waking up at 04h00 to get my hubby to the airport was only the beginning. Of course I did not mind that tooooo much as he had done me the courtesy of a lift to the airport in the early hours in February, so how could I refuse? Leaving home late was my first gripe. Not very late, but late enough for me to get caught speeding on the M50. Driving at 80 km per hour on the M50 at 04h40 should be allowed, compared to everyone else I was SLOW, but the camera flashed and winked and my heart sunk – 4 flipping penalty points *&^%. I was in a 60 km zone, due to road works – but where I got my picture taken….NO cones and no signs of road works…just the fading tail lights of a speeding truck up in the distance. Oh well. At least I can say that was the worst part of my day! Malcolm did have his usual panic attack which involved him climbing into the back of the car while I was driving to search for his passport which he was all of a sudden very sure was at home. I was not very impressed, we were about 10 minutes from the airport and he had muttered something about his passport before we even set a tyre on to the M50, why could he not have checked then? The panic was for nothing, well actually for Malcolm it is a pre-requisite so ignore that comment, and I dropped him off at the departures area with all baggage, ticket and passport accounted for.
Now for the trip home, the M50 is the LONG way round, but as I was a virgin airport driver I decided to play it safe and go back the same way. I do know that I went around one traffic circle a couple of times but after that it was plain sailing all the way home. I even got to drive my car at 120 km for a stretch – yes legally and it felt so strange going so ‘fast’. Amazing how quickly I have got used to toodling along at 50 km, I felt reckless doing 120km, a speed I regularly exceeded back in S.A – if you are not doing at least 130 km on the highways you are TOAST. 60 km limit in the suburbs –equates to 80km on your speedometer and beware those who do not obey, hooting, flashing, tailgating or rude hand signals are almost par for the course.
After my experience on the M50 at 04h30 in the morning I see that a lot of the Irish have very similar speedometers to the South Africans, luckily without the aggression. As a ‘newby’ I am generally behaving myself and now with 4 penalty points coming my way I will certainly continue with my toodling.