We recently got a roundabout in town. It took the place of a traffic light that created more trouble than it was worth. The roundabout really helps. Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t know how to use it. It’s a one lane circle with four exits. That whole yield to traffic in the circle thing has them baffled.

Let me tell you a thing, townsfolks – this is the easiest traffic circle, roundabout, devil’s trap you will ever find anywhere in the world. It’s well lit, signs are posted, it is now literally the easiest intersection I have ever encountered.

As some of you remember, a few years ago I went to Wales, and I spent a week driving there. Having never driven on the left side of the road was bad enough, but the fucking roundabouts! Holy mother of Satan! I should warn you now for language. There is no language that is off limits in describing the Welsh roundabout.

It’s a rural country, Wales is. I almost never had a car behind me or was in any traffic to speak of. Unless of course, you are in a roundabout. Then, every fucking driver and his brother are so close up your arse that they should buy you dinner first.

There was one roundabout, just to interrupt; they call them roundabouts. Sounds civilized, doesn’t it? Much like the Scottish version of ‘hills’ which are really fucking mountains. (Look up Craigower Hill if you don’t believe me.) Cunting roundabouts! Traffic circles from Hell! This is no exaggeration. Driving in Hell would not be this bad, and that includes not having air conditioning down there.

As I was saying, there was this one roundabout; one of many really, but this one really stands out. Plenty of traffic; of course I’m the only one who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

First, you enter the roundabout when there’s a lull. There is no fucking lull. It is four lanes of fucking no lull. But wait, there’s more to ‘first’ than meets the eye. When you enter, you of course, enter to the left. The steering wheel is on the right side of the car and you enter from the left when there is a lull.

Good fucking luck.

You enter the circle and you look for your exit.

This fucking roundabout – did I mention that it has four fucking lanes?! This fucking roundabout has signs, but they’re useless. I don’t even see how native Welsh drivers can understand them.

All signs are in both Welsh and English. This isn’t a problem, but one example I’ll share that I ran into more than once is ‘men working’ in Welsh is something like five words. Construction ahead took two signs and that was just for the Welsh portion.

These signs for the circle, in the circle: do they say: Bangor, 10 miles with an arrow pointing the way? No, of course they don’t. They say something ridiculous like A4 with an arrow.

A4?!

Fucking cuntswallop! Is this Bingo?! I didn’t get my Bingo card when I entered the roundabout – who do I see about that?

So I go around again, hoping that the car riding my arse isn’t going to hit me even though I’m going twice the speed limit since I still don’t know if it’s miles or kilometers and I’m hoping for the best. (It’s miles by the way.)

There is a sign detailing all of the exits. There are seven spokes to this roundabout. SEVEN!

Four of them say Bangor. Bangor is about the size of Central Park. Alright, maybe that’s a slight under-estimate, but it’s a smallish college town with basically one road through the whole of it.

Now, the fun begins.

To exit, you need the left most lane. Or do you? When you exit, you are exiting from this four lane monstrosity to a two-way, two-lane, no yellow lines, bordered by ancient or at least medieval stone walls that barely give your side view mirror room to scrape by.

And scrape by I did now and again.

To digress, on a one way street, it’s even worse. And that’s assuming you’re driving the right way; you never know with the GPS piece of conCRAPtion. Modern compact BMW versus thousand year old wall? Scrape the wall. After a thousand years, that wall isn’t coming down. Trust me. Besides if I don’t scrape that wall, I scrape the church on the other side. St. Mary’s. Also about a thousand years old.

And now back to our regularly scheduled rant. Now you hope that this is the only roundabout, but it’s not likely. They like a series of them to keep you on your toes. I think it’s a Darwin test – survival of the fittest. Or the luckiest.

Roundabouts are the reason there’s a church on every corner. If you’re not praying while you’re driving, you’re clearly not stressed enough. Most of my time behind the steering wheel included my white knuckled clutching until the final stop when I could barely uncurl my fingers and heaved a sigh of relief that I was still in one piece.

Often I would burst into tears upon stopping simply at the thought of having to go back the same way, but there was also the release of tension with the tears. And then a deep breath.

For about three weeks when I got back, I needed a sedative to be a passenger in a car that went through a roundabout.

Roundabouts are the devil’s spawn.