ON THE ROAD
My CAR ACCIDENT
My worst moment - 2014 - Rear-ended on M4 on way to Writers' Holiday July, hit barrier, ended up in fast lane, car written off. Later discovered right arm injured
My best (magic) moment - I shouted 'Block the lane!' and the driver of a lorry (truck if you are reading this in the US) who had run to help me, ran back and moved his vehicle diagonally across all three lanes. My saviour. My protector. He therefore stopped anybody driving into the accident vehicles. (My car spun on impact with the barrier. I was in the fast lane. The other vehicle was in the slow lane. Debris from my car in the middle. The diagonally parked large, long, high vehicle was visible for miles, alerting drivers to slow down and not to hit vehicles which were stopped.
My second best moment was learning from the rescue vehicle driver that if my car was rear-ended in the UK the police and insurance would automatically blame the other driver, not me. Even if I had slowed down to avoid a giraffe, kea or mouse, hallucinated any of the above, had a heart attack, or done anything wrong - the vehicle behind is supposed to have kept their distance ready for any emergency stop.
World's worst/best/most amusing or dramatic?
Jeremy Clarkson. Dispute apparently caused by numberplate referring to Falklands. Broadcast over the holidays. We discussed this at New Year's Eve dinner. Our observations were:
Speaker 1 TRAVEL LOCATION
Wrong place and wrong time. Avoid travel, games and fights in predictable trouble spots.
The event happened at a rural place. The brightest people in rural locations, the ones who are rational and verbal, go to the big cities to find work. Rural locations often have populations who are badly paid, out of work, more inclined to settle disputes by fighting, hostile to strangers. Not a good place to pick a fight, even a friendly football game, nor find yourself in a fight.
Speaker 2 TRAVEL ETIQUETTE
When you are guest in a country, you should not insult the host. If you cause offence by accident, immediately apologise.
Speaker 3 TV PROGRAMME STYLES
The programme is known to get laughs from making fun of the location and people. The host country should have known. In addition they should have been warned and asked if this was acceptable.
Speaker 2 TOURISM - all publicity is good publicity
YMCA objected to the song which they thought made fun of them, but it proved so popular that they found it was a great advertisement and reconciled with the songwriters and came to an armament to use it as publicity.
Kazakstan - upset by Borat - found their tourism increased so much that, like the YMCA, they started to run tours and adopted the attitude, if you can't beat them, join them.
Maybe you and/or I can add some more of these later:
SEA
My worst
My best
World's worst
World's best
World's most amusing/Dramatic
PLANES
My worst
My best
World's worst
World's best
TRAINS
My worst
My best
World's worst
World's best
http://www.infoplease.com/news/2014/current-events/world_jan.html
My Successes in 2014
Passed level one of WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust). Now I can recognise and read wine labels in restaurants and supermarkets around the world.
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