Roundabout ...

Today I was made to face one of my lurking fears: the fear of roundabouts. Now before you ask, yes: I've been driving for 30-odd years, and I'm not a bad driver. I am, however, a Dunoon driver. I learned in Dunoon, I sat my test in Dunoon. I can cope with single track roads, and am quite happy on one of the most dangerous roads in the country, but motorways and big roundabouts leave me quaking and completely daunted, for there are to this day only two roundabouts - both of the mini variety - in Dunoon, and one of them is covered by Scottish Water travaux just now and has been for months. Not much practice there, then - and people tend to drive over the top of them anyway.

But today I had to undaunt myself and get to the Southern General hospital with a friend who needed to be there. The people who do such things have strewn the road through Greenock/ Port Glasgow with new roundabouts, and today whoever arranges the weather had provided a pea-soup fog to complicate my life. Throw into the mix the last roundabout before the hospital, with not one single road marking anywhere on it, and the confusion that took me back to the M8 via Braehead and its multiplicity of roundabouts, and you have the second circle of my personal hell.

But I did it. I didn't kill anyone, nor did I cause any accidents. Only one rotter hooted at me, and he wanted to speed anyway. No moral high ground for him. Funny thing is - it all looks so logical in my nice little picture. I have a feeling it's the other drivers I hate. I'd manage fine on an empty road ...

Wild things

This wild and wooly day happened to coincide with a fairly long-standing arrangement to visit Edinburgh, so having chipped the ice from the windscreen this morning we set off in the sunshine across the calm Firth of Clyde to do just that. The journey took us just over two hours, door to door, and we arrived in time for coffee. Yeah, yeah - we'd heard the weather forecast; we knew it wouldn't last ...

We leave Newhaven as the wind begins to drive rain in our faces. We've enjoyed a lovely lunch, hugged our grandchildren, heard the new drum kit. It's 3.30pm and we reckon we'd better head for home. We are not even past the city boundary when we learn that Western Ferries have gone off - Cal Mac don't seem to have been running since mid-morning. The traffic is already nose to tail as we edge out onto the M8 and towards Glasgow.

In the four mile traffic jam before the Kingston Bridge we decide we're driving home over the Rest and Be Thankful, via the Erskine Bridge because we've ended up in the wrong lane to go along Great Western Road. By now, the motorway is flooded in the low-lying bits, and great gouts of water fly up from under wheels and crash onto our roof. Every so often a gust hits us with the force of a giant fist. We have heard the same news bulletins till we could repeat them verbatim, but we keep Radio Scotland on for the traffic updates as we whizz over the Erskine Bridge in a lull and on towards Loch Lomond. And it is as we embark on the lochside road that I realise we are listening to Get it On. Now, I have only just clocked this programme, thanks to Ewan, and it strikes me it might while away the drive if we make a request. I entrust this task to my pal Di, in the back seat with her iPhone. Ask for "I remember you", I instruct - they're looking for songs that should never be covered, and it's sure to come into that category.

And so it is, best beloved, that forty minutes later, after we have braved the dark battering of the Rest and the long run down Glen Croe, as we hurtle through Strachur, we hear a message for "Di and Chris, driving home" and find ourselves singing along with Frank Ifield at the top of our voices. What fun. The miles have sped by and we're as jolly as a school trip on speed. We don't even care that it's taken us four and a half hours to get home.

Pity Mr B (driving) has to spoil it all. He announces that he feels like the coach driver - on a Saga outing.

Ah well.