20 motoring
mojacar@thesentinella.com
S
Want some Moore? Join Kev Moore live on BAY RADIO every Friday night at 9.30pm on The Sunset Strip with Noelle. You can also follow Kev's hugely politically incorrect fantasy rants 'Want some Moore??!' at: http://wantsomemoore.wordpress.com Motoring...ahhh!, the lure of the open road, the wind in your trousers and your top down (not you Madam) indulging in chicanery, adverse cambers and everything our glorious highways can throw at us. Not any more it seems. Motoring, and it's heinous inbred second cousin, parking - have been appropriated by the selfish. The selfish. They're everywhere. Not only do they ignore the law, they make their own. Did you know that in Spain, if you drive the wrong way down a one way street fast enough, it's absolutely legal? Especially if you're in a big truck? In fact you can pretty much commit any crime, from murder to insider trading as long as you've got your frickin' hazard lights on. As Shakespeare might've put it: "Wherefore art thou, Alfa Romeo?" "Parked Anderneef your balcony darlin' on double yellas, an oi darnt give a mankees!" Take parking. Some dude designs a car park, right? Not rocket science, a big ol’ piece of asphalt, (or concrete, if that’s your bag) – slop out a few tins of white paint and carefully delineate the parking bays, making them car-sized. Then along comes Johnny Motorista, he doesn’t even LOOK at the white lines, he parks across them, or diagonal, or blocks someone in, in fact he’ll do every goddam thing EXCEPT park between the lines. I've also discovered that the broken white line at the entrance to a Spanish roundabout means "get across it before some other git gets there first". I could wax lyrical about the reckless drivers on the Autovias, but those that obey the speed limit with the zeal of someone with obsessivecompulsive disorder are often far worse. Sitting resolutely in the outside lane on the Alicante bypass, with a convoy behind them that stretches
back to Perpignan, you can almost hear them explaining to their long-suffering wife held captive in the passenger seat, "It's 120 here dear, no more, no less” I saw a guy the other day achieving a remarkable double whammy by not only parking in the clearly labelled disabled bay, but also on yellow lines. He got out and sauntered off into the market without a care in the world. I wanted to take a chainsaw to his kneecaps and say: NOW you can park there! ..and Spanish T -junctions? Forget it! If you happen to pull up to one and the guy opposite waiting to turn off the main highway doesn't know the rules, you could both be sat there forever. I was sat at one for so long once, my trousers came back into fashion. It's all down to Ego, you see. Some people, when they have a steering wheel in their hands, believe NOTHING is more important than them, their ability to go faster than you, park anywhere they want, whenever they want, and tough luck buster if you have the temerity to cross their path. My favourite example, and one that I see regularly around the Benidorm area, is double-parking. It's breathtaking. Both sides of the road are full of cars, not a space to be had, so some people simply pull up alongside the parked cars and get out. You gesticulate wildly at them, and they just look at you as if you're the insane one. Another law in Spain is that no matter what kind of a street you are in, even if it is unfeasibly narrow with no room for other cars to pass, if you see a friend you can come to a complete stop and discuss the recipe for paella with them. All day. Tooting your horn is encouraged, but only to annoy neighbours, and to generally add to the Mediterranean ambience. Did I say ambience? I meant ambulance, because the next person that does that to me is going home in one.