A round-about way

I had to drive over to Nottingham unexpectedly today. My Mum's finding it increasingly difficult to get upstairs and had finally decided to have a single bed brought down into the dining room. As a result she has no space for the table/chairs and I was going over to pick them up, and to set up the bed for her.

In the usual circular way of things with Mother, this was a return to the state of play before Christmas when I thought I was going to have to juggle all the pre-Christmas goings on (such as the mulled wine party) with a dining room reconfiguration. At the eleventh hour she called the whole thing off. Someone had mentioned getting a Stannah stairlift fitted and that idea became flavour of the month. I knew very well she had no idea how expensive they are, so I just sent up thanks for not having to move the dining table before Christmas, and bided my time.

Sure enough, Stannah were kicked out of the house (£7,000 AND she would have had to have two radiators moved) and the move was back on, so off I set.

So now, we get to the point of my tale (at last! you're probably thinking) which is mini-roundabouts. Yes, sorry, another driving blog. Only in disguise this time. Non-UK readers, particularly those in North America may be in the dark about what exactly I mean by "roundabout." Well, you could Google it, but basically imagine a four-way stop (or in some cases, more, or less ways) but with a circular road in the middle instead of a square lump of tarmac, and where priority is given to cars coming round the circle (the roundabout) from the right. Only in the case of North America (and the rest of Europe), they would be coming from the left. If there's nothing coming from the right, you can enter the roundabout, and once you're on it you have priority over anyone else trying to enter.

I know from talking to North American friends that the idea sounds mad, but trust me it works very well and - to European eyes at least - makes a lot more sense than a four-way. How you ever work out who was first and last to pull up if it gets busy I wouldn't like to guess.

Anyway, I'm not talking about roundabouts per se, but MINI-roundabouts. These are used at junctions where there isn't enough space to build a real roundabout, but where traffic control is simplified by the roundabout concept. They're often just painted rings on the road like this one. My reason for blogging them is that on my journey to Nottingham there are two of these little guys, and at both of them I saw drivers making a real meal of them. I said they're used where there's not much space, right? So it's amazing how many drivers try to drive around the little painted circle, even when there are no other cars near the junction. Why?

The whole idea of them is that they introduce the concept of the roundabout, without necessarily needing to be treated like one in terms of road positioning. I admit opinion is divided on this one (and indeed there's even a campaign to abolish mini-roundabouts and end the confusion) but to me, all that is necessary is to give way to the right, just as you would on any other roundabout. If there's no-one about there's absolutely no need to attempt to drive around the paint. Indeed in many places it's physically impossible to achieve that anyway.