Driving Miss Katy

Barring a life threatening and/or debilitating injury that prevents me from walking, I have come to the decision that I will never, ever get behind the wheel of car here in Ireland. Bleeding profusely from the head? No problem, my feet still work fine, I’ll walk thank you very much.
Tonight Mark and I borrowed his uncle’s car for a quick trip to the grocery store because it was dark and cold and rainy and because an earlier walk to the village came up empty.
As Mark could tell you from the driver’s seat or as I will tell you now from the safety and comfort of our warm and cozy room, there’s more to it than merely driving on the left side. You must also throw in insanely narrow roads, a stick shift on the left that operates like Islamic script from left to right, round-abouts filled with overly confident drivers whizzing past (though I assume most of those drivers come by their confidence honestly having grown up learning to drive on the left) and road signs in Gaelic. Plus, while I didn’t actually see her, I’m quite sure a little old lady with an unpronounceable name wearing a dowdy woolen suit and thick stockings stood in a dark alley mocking us and grinning like an Irish Macbeth-ean witch showing teeth turned bad from decades of too much sugar in her tea.
Oh, and Mark can’t see for shit in the dark.
Of course Mark did fine with the driving he just had a wee bit of confusion regarding the directions, therefore prolonging my “It feels like I’m in the driver’s seat but there’s no steering wheel and more importantly no brakes agony” of riding next to him for what was supposed to be a quick trip to the grocery for some dinner ingredients. Three rights then a left can easily become two rights then a left especially when you’ve got a totally freaked out, white knuckled wife in the front seat internally chanting a “left, left, left” mantra under her breath in her oh so helpful attempt to keep you driving on the left side of the road. No wonder really that he turned left too soon.
All this for some chicken tikka masala. And it turns out there’s a grand Indian take away just ‘round the corner, no more than a few-blocks walk I’m told.