So we left Ps Dave and set off for Steve and Shereen’s place in Wirral, just outside Liverpool, about a 45-minute drive away. Ps Dave insisted that we phone Steve when we got nearer because “you’ll never find their place otherwise”.
Okay then.
Driving in England is SOOOOO easy and so different to driving in South Africa.
For one, the roads are clearly marked and there are plenty of signboards.
The weird thing is …not that they call their highways “motorways” or that the exits are called “junctions” but that EVERYONE knows the number of the exit. They’ll say “take junction 5” or whatever, and sure enough, junction 5 is the correct exit. Here in South Africa we say “take the Edenvale offramp” and I’d have to search long and hard to find a person who knew if it was the 3rd, 4th or 10th exit off the highway. All we look out for is that “Edenvale” sign.
Nevertheless, I digress… but this kind of weirdness is what I LOVE about travelling and this is my blog, so I’ll ramble on.
The second thing that’s so different about the driving is that everyone is so courteous, again, VERY different from the aggressive driving style native to most Johannesburg drivers. People obey the rules of the road and it’s actually a pleasure to drive and as a result, not very stressful at all. Even for us foreigners.
We’ll get talking about driving in Ireland later in this blog because that, dear friends, is another thing totally.
Of course, I had no idea of distances because I’m used to kilometers, and not miles.
Anywayyyy, when we started seeing signboards close to our “junction” ;) I sent Shereen a “text message” to let her know we were close. She, in turn, alerted Steven who “rang” me to give us directions to some gigantic hardware outlet (something like BBQ, maybe BRQ?) just off the “motorway”. Okay, I’ll stop with the “ “– I can’t resist.
Clearly Steven moonlights as Speedy Gonzales because he was there waiting for us when we arrived. To my question, how will we find you, he said, don’t you worry, I’ll find you. And he did ;)
After all the kissing and hugging (Marcia) and shaking of hands (Dion), we followed him to their flat which did not look like it was that difficult to find. But our friends obviously don’t think much of our navigational abilities.
We spent a lovely hour drinking tea and chatting while we waited for Shereen to get home from work. Their home is lovely and comfortable and feels very “Shereen” to me LOL
As an aside, I must say it is so easy to get into the whole English tradition of drinking tea. That suits me down to the ground and was a habit I adopted very quickly and happily.
Both Shereen and Steven sounded EXACTLY the same after 8 years in the UK. Steven is English so that’s understandable but I was surprised by Shereen. Although I did catch her saying “yeah?” a couple of times. I love hearing that and even now, it still makes me smile ;)
It was like we’d seen them just last week the way all of us just slipped right back into our friendship and chatted and chatted, and then chatted some more about serious and silly things. Lovely!
We went out to supper to Queen’s Hotel (Dion’s notes in my journal say “overlooking the River Mersey”) where we had a delicious carvery. Yummy!
When we got back we did a very un-Dion&Marcia thing and phoned some B&B’s on the spur of the moment to find accommodation in the Lake District for the following evening. Everybody was very English (no problem with being rude) and said “no, we don’t have place for just one night; we only rent rooms for two nights or more, and no, I’m not prepared to change that. Alright then, bye!”
You’ve got to have a grudging respect for them setting such good boundaries though.
We then decided to really just BREAK LOOSE, drive up there and just look for accommodation willy-nilly. I don’t do willy-nilly but both Dion and Steve & Shereen were quite comfortable with this devil-may-care attitude so FINE!
And that was Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment