In Canada, when someone honks at me, I assume they’re impatient and mostly just ignore them. Here, when someone honks at me, I assume the worst and my immediate thought is, “What did I do wrong?”
Ran a bunch of errands this morning – after the garden centre, the ATM, the grocery store, & the petrol station, I headed home. I was at a roundabout waiting to turn right (meaning I would be driving 3/4 of the way around the circle, clockwise) when the guy sort of behind, sort of beside me honked. Immediate thought: “Oh shoot, I must have done something wrong.”
I drove home from there, pondering, then fuming (the other guy had been turning left, so was no longer anywhere to be seen). I pondered about my mistake – this was a roundabout I’ve used literally dozens of times – how did I screw up? Came to the conclusion that I hadn’t, leading to the fuming. I’ve mentioned that here (or at least in Orkney), people trust when they see someone indicating, and will just drive into the traffic, assuming the other person will be turning as indicated. I can’t do that – I need to see the car start to turn as promised. Well, there was a car coming towards us through the roundabout, indicating that they were going to take the exit, so I could have gone. But I waited – a nanosecond at most – until they started to turn. Either way, the guy behind/beside me was in no way being inconvenienced by that nanosecond pause – he could have turned left any time he wanted. Hence the fuming. Dammit, he was wrong, I wasn’t.
Drove home in a funk. Got out of the car. Ah – my gas door was open, and the cap dangling from it.
Oops. Thank you, sir.