Tiresome Travel

Friday 24 June 2011 – Today I eat breakfast, poached eggs on toast as eighties Welsh rockers, The Alarm play Tell Me. I nip down to the shops to grab a few things, before the heat of the day increases. I’m leaving when a guy asks for my car keys, he’s locked out of his car and needs to try to get in. The car has a Bulgarian sticker on the bumper, I think to myself, bleeding hell, that’ll be a long walk back then.

I get to my car and I’ve been blocked in, despite the plethora of available parking spaces, someone has left their car behind mine. I look around to see if the offender is near by and noticed me. No such luck, I sit and wait. Ten minutes later a small Chinese lady from the shop opposite, comes out and moves her car from behind mine into the vacant space on its right. No apology, no eye contact, not even the slightest recognition that I’ve been inconvenienced.

The heat today is almost unbearable; I guess I’ll become acclimatised to it eventually, but just a few weeks in from the UK and this is almost too much to bear. A cool shower after lunch sorts me out, and as Tiziano Ferro sings Mio Fratello, I drink a pint of ice cold apple juice.

I leave for Castel Frentano, for the free language lesson, I’m driving along the lane until I have to stop, because the road is blocked by two cars, side by side. In front is a tractor and some sort of harvesting machine. The car on my side of the road moves forward, this allows a car coming in the opposite direction to pass. I watch as the car in front then stops next to the tractor and starts having a conversation with its driver. I beep my horn, nothing happens. No apology, no eye contact, not even the slightest recognition that I’ve been inconvenienced. (I’ve been here once before today). I beep again: nothing. I beep again this time continuously sounding my horn: nothing . I get out of my car and walk round to the elderly driver and tell him to move out of the way. No apology, no eye contact, not even the slightest recognition that I’ve been inconvenienced. He pulls his car forward a few feet, parks up and as I drive past the old git flips me the finger.