Driving in Britain is a mixed bag. The skinny lanes, parked cars, traffic and enormous roundabouts can be tricky, but any difficulties they pose are easily outweighed by how incredibly polite British drivers are. I have heard a car horn only once or twice and nearly everywhere I've been drivers, more than often with the right of way, have stopped to let me in. In fact this probably would have happened more in a week over here than it would have in a whole year in Canberra!
Driving around parked cars, over one way bridges and through narrow hedged lanes all requires drivers to give way: one driver waits (or backs up) while the other one goes. And this is where the prompts and thank you's come into play.
Prompts meaning go include flashing lights, hand waves, pulling over, small beeps and, if you're like me, the wipers on full because you STILL keep forgetting they're on the left!
The thank you's include smiles, nods, thumbs up (on rare occasions the double thumbs up), waves, more light flashing and my all time favourite and one that I have only recently witnessed - the double winker. Yes -that's right - I let a tiny car in front of me in Bath today and both orange winker lights went on and gave me, as you would expect, a big double wink, or does that make it a blink?
We have called them the Happy Hazards and they are quite delightful :)
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