Le Rod-Redge

I was intending to continue my look at language this week, exploring further glorious products of linguistic miscegenation along the lines of le leggin and le re-looking.

But then I was driving my daughter to school this Wednesday morning… It was another ice-cold, tundra-dry morning: the type of morning when windscreens can explode for no conceivable reason, like Spinal Tap drummers.

Generally, I enjoy driving in France because there’s so little traffic (though I still bear the mental scars of a white-knuckle ride round the Paris Péripherique). Nevertheless, you have to stay on the qui vivre, as somewhere along the line you’re likely to encounter some progeny of incestuous parents. Yesterday, a couple of things pushed me up onto the moral high ground here – whence I doth survey the valley below.

There was no music for once. Tilley was still busy learning her German passage to recite in class. So I was alone with my thoughts when some twat flicked his or her lit cigarette-butt out of the car in front. I watched it bounce over the tarmac towards the verge.

Why is it that, after centuries of evolution, human beans still cannot think about the consequences of their actions? If it had been the Midi in mid summer, for example, that glowing cigarette-butt would have bounced into the tinder dry undergrowth and sparked off a conflagration that would have roasted countless innocent creatures and ruined the lives of all those people whose houses would burn to a cinder while the legions of unpaid volunteers fought in vain to quell the flames. 

My God! Even our saintly dog shows more awareness of others. Whenever he’s gorged himself on found carrion during a walk and has suffered an uncontrollable attack of nocturnal runs – as has happened maybe six or seven during his ten indulged years on earth – he has had the good grace to go on the floor tiles rather than a rug. Often by the door. And don’t tell me that it’s because he doesn’t wish to soil his sleeping place. This ain’t no human bean, this is a sentient, considerate and supposedly ‘dumb’ animal.

But my bias has diverted me… Meanwhile, back in my Berlingo, I thought fondly of my brother’s Corgi James Bond car. How wonderful it would be to drive an Aston Martin with built-in chain-cutter and rocket-launcher. See some act of lunacy or thoughtlessness on the road? Simply push Button B to launch a pair of heat-seeking missiles that would blow the perpetrator to oblivion.

I’d need some rear-view offensive weapon as well for tout-puissant 360^o control. The French are obsessed with politesse, but it all goes to pot on the road. It’s not generally the isolated high-profile incidents that you might find in the UK; it’s more of a nation-wide passive road rage. The kind that wears you down: attaching themselves to your rear bumper, failing to dip their lights, flashing you for driving too slowly – that kind of thing. My wife treats daily the products of living with a large cork up your back passage. She believes that the only time they feel free to go ape-shit is when they’re behind a wheel.

Anyway, that was the second incident that inspired me to write – a limpet clinging to my back bumper and blinding me with his or her headlights. I take great delight in driving as perfectly as I can under such provocation, religiously respecting every speed limit and generally, no doubt, working the limpet into a state of raging fury.

I have this routine I devised for a fantasy stand-up routine. It’s based on Bob Newhart’s ‘The Driving Instructor’. It features a stiff, proper-looking Gallic instructor and his timid pupil. ‘Closer… Come on, closer. Now flash… With your headlights… Like that, come on. Again… Come on, keep up. You’re losing him… OK. We’re coming to a bend. What do you do?… No no, au contraire. You pull out. Yes come on… Overtake!’

Yes, OK. It’s probably not hilarious, but it makes me titter in times of duress. (Oo er, no, don’t! Titter ye not, missus.) On the other hand, titter ye imperatively. Anything that helps calm you down. Because ‘these rod-redge ees driveng me crezzy.’