MAGIC ROUNDABOUT IN SWINDON

Magic roundabout in Swindon?

How about the miracle escape from Bath?

For starters, Bath was flooded with fans coming in for the music festival weekend, which some tourists see as a positive, some a negative.

To balance the scale, more fans came in for the rivalry rugby game.

What could go wrong?

The music festival may start on Saturday, but Friday was full solo guitar players all over town, including a solo trumpeter playing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah in front of the Bath Abbey.

The Back Wood Redeemers closed out Friday night with a cross between Bluegrass fiddle, Appalachia dance moves, and growly-English voices singing This Train Is Bound For Glory, This Train.

The rugby crowd showed up Saturday morning in force, but before mingling with them by the Pulteney Bridge I had my own tough match to play.

We were leaving town after two nights in a place near the Pig and Whistle, breakfast included.

It was clean enough for an old building, but the carpet have seen action.

The rug looked like a decade of beer stains scrubbed to the verge of carpet disintegrates, which I’d put at another five years of rugby fans boozing it up like they were doing Saturday morning down by the river.

It was the sort of room on a busy central city street that goes for $140 on Thursday, $270 on Friday, and $400 on a Saturday night.

The highlights were location, location, and a great breakfast. I had porridge Saturday morning before leaving the rent hike.

After eating I had to decide to get my car out of the long term parking, collect our bags, and find another place. Or?

Or, walk our bags up Broad St, across on Gay St, then onto the winding Charlotte St that begins as Queen St. and leave the car where it was until we were ready to leave.

The great compromise: I made one trip out and back. One was enough.

Our friends from Beaverton were driving over from Swindon for a walk-around, so we put the rest of the bags in their trunk.

Thank you, Barry. Thank you, Phyllis.

A few hours later we’d seen enough, and it was a lot with the music acts in full howl and rugby dudes chugging beers before they rioted and cheered, we piled into their car, drove up to the Charlotte Car Park, and squeaked out of town.

I say squeaked due to all of the up-close driving.

But that changed in Swindon out there in the country. Right?

No. That’s when I first heard of the Miracle Roundabout.

Like some kind of urban planning nightmare, the Magic Roundabout is traffic control theory with roundabouts off of every exit of the cental roundabout.

Will I be a better driver having navigated a magic roundabout, or up altogether? I’m no quitter, at least not yet.

I thought about it during dinner while watching my companions enjoy their drinks while the bartenders poured sparkling beer into tall glasses.

With the Magic Roundabout laying before me and arriving safely to our destination, I would meet the challenge as sober as a, well not as sober as rugby fans.

Those guys were getting hammered.