IN 35 years of driving, I thought I’d seen it all – however, and sadly, I’m nowhere near.

I am amused on an almost daily basis by those using roads around The Common, St Briavels – and I am not referring to just the poor old motorist.

I regularly encounter an elderly runner, grey hair, grey running outfit, coming at me out of the dense, grey fog.

We have the horse riders, two abreast, on mobile phones with their dogs running alongside – and the ‘Ninja’ runner, in the dark, head to foot in black, pushing a jogging buggy with toddler therein.

But recently I was blessed. I reversed to let a lady pass on a narrow part of the lane.

She wound down the window and said: ‘bless you, I can’t reverse’.

The same lady, a few weeks earlier, had repeatedly smashed her vehicle into the hedge in a futile attempt to get to a passing point a few metres from the rear of her car.

She was, however, not the lady who stopped in my drive and asked me to turn her vehicle around. The reason? She had not yet done ‘reversing’.

Neither was this the lady – and I’m not getting at female drivers, it’s just the way it is – who exercises her dogs by letting them out of her car and encourages them to chase her vehicle down the narrow Common lanes.

My favourite, though, is a neighbour who, having just missed my car, screeched to a halt, skidding and hitting a hedge in the process.

The reason? ‘Sorry, I’m wearing big (snow) boots and can’t find the pedals’. Seems more than reasonable to me.

My plea to motorists: slow down, don’t rush and if you can’t control and manoeuvre your vehicle, get off the road.

To other road users – this is not a camouflage test area, wear something bright and reflective.  

Please be seen and be safe – and give other road users a chance.

– Fed up, St Briavels.