Hockley Heights Gazette

The British love to Queue. How do you measure this love? Simple, drive with me to work one day. I am happily motoring up the A12 northeast of Chelmsford every workday morning, when I hit the exit to Springfield in order to make my way to New Hall School (see map picture). There are two lanes exiting the A12, there are two lanes through the roundabout, and there are two lanes coming out of the roundabout into Colchester Road. But if you do come with me on this trip, you will see 50 vehicles clogging the left hand lane (in blue) of the exit, all the way back into the left hand lane of the A12 (which causes an accident almost every day, because that traffic is moving at about 80mph). Meanwhile, the right hand lane (in green) is relatively free! Almost from my first day, scared of being rammed from behind as my bum sticks out into the A12, I have been "illegally" using the free right hand (green) lane. Well, you would've thought that I was pillaging the landscape given the response I get. Shouting, honking, people moving over into the free lane and swerving about to prevent my transit, flicking of headlights and all the general bad behaviour we've come to associate with angry drivers. How is it that the normally sane, courteous and generous drivers of the UK become enraged when they see me? I'm not queueing, mate! And you won't catch me doing it either! Use both lanes I say, live a little...