Not Pootling Along (Humour)

I hate weekends. Or to be exact I hate having to go out in the car at weekends. The roads are full of people pootling along. Cars are all about getting somewhere, right? When Herr Daimler and Dr. Benz invented the first automobile it was so people could have a carriage they could just jump in and go where they wanted without having to hitch up the horses, fill they hay bags and hang a couple of buckets of water on the back, next to the shovel.

Shovel? Oh yeah, you know how tree huggers whine about what cars throw out into the environment. Well just think about what horses throw out. So those two worthy gentlemen did humans a favour when they built a horseless carriage that needed no shovel. And when Henry Ford built the Model T and put automobiles within the means of an ordinary guy we were all swept up in the craze for getting somewhere.

One of my grandfathers was an early adopter and ever since the 1920s my family has been brought up to understand the importance of knowing where you are going and getting there without wasting time. So we cannot understand why there are so many people who get in their cars just to pootle along.

Now readers of my other blogs will know that as far as I, my sister fatsally (who is neither fat nor named Sally), and our non blogging bother Graham. are concerned there are only three unforgivable sins, murder, serving weak tea and pootling along.

This morning I offered to take my wife to the supermarket and because the Asda (Wal Mart) car park is like Paris at rush hour and the red wine at Tesco is mostly coloured water mixed with anti-freeze and sulphur I decided we would go to Booth’s, the posh people’s supermarket in the nearby town of Clitheroe.

Big mistake. First, as we wended our way through one of the picturesque villages along the route we got stuck behind a hippie in a Morris Minor (photo). the quintessentially English small car of the 1950s and 60s. Now even when new Morris Minors are built to pootle along, they are for people who have nowhere to go and all the time in the world to get there. This guy in his venerable Morris Minor had long, straggly grey / brown hair, a wispy beard and sandals (Obviously I could not see that he was wearing sandals but he was, as sure as you have a hole in your bottom he was,) … and he was pootling along too. OK, its hard to do anything else except pootle along in a Morris Minor with a split windscreen (i.e. a really really old Morris Minor) but to add insult to injury he had a Friends Of The Earth flag flying from his radio aerial.

Now an 850 cc engined Morris Minor, with the flat top low compression engine may only have less than half the engine capacity of my Honda but it is ten times as dirty.

And this idiot was patronising me.

Grrr, Grrr I went. Grrrrrr Grrrrrrrr my two litre, 16 valve V-TEC engine said to let me know it was getting pissed off with pootling along. I stuck my foot down and with a contemptuous snort zooomed past, only to land behind someone in a Toyota Prius with one of those “Please drive carefully – child on board” bumper stickers.

Now those really make me mad – and my car. Grrrrrrr, Grrrrrrrr! went the engine while I fumed “Fuff chuff fuffing me chuffing you chuffing me fuffing drive chuffing carefully? What has it to do with me? It’s your chuffing kid, you drive carefully or better still catch the bus. I’ve got places to go, people to see a very sporty Honda to keep happy.”

Give me the weekday traffic of angry businessmen, impatient salesmen, homicidal drivers of white vans and bus drivers who don’t know what an indicator is. At least they are intent on getting somewhere.

Eventually we got to Booths, got the wine and took the scenic route home which is about twice as far but a road frequented by mad, hairy bikers and so much too scary for people who pootle.

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