Wherever you need to go...

My friend The Pundit’s Apprentice sent round an essay by Michael Gartner about his parents’ driving history. It’s a nice recollection and an easy read, so I recommend it.

Part of the essay includes Gartner’s father’s advice on how to live a long life: don’t make left turns. You can turn right three times and get where you would have gone had you tried turning left.

The Pundit’s Apprentice commented, “Three right turns to make a left is true of a lot of French secondary highways.”

And that got me recalling one of the things I love the most about driving in France: every town large enough to get lost in has “Toutes Directions” signs to help you get out of it and headed towards wherever it is you want to go.

This has to be one of the country’s greatest contributions to civilization; along with Montaigne, Daumier and Champagne.

Think about it—you’ve been driving about in some rabbit-warren of medieval streets that were claustrophobic 700 years ago, and you’re on your way to the next historic stop on your itinerary and worrying if signage is one of those secret weapons in Europe the way it is in Northern Virginia, and wondering if you’re ever going to manage to blow this croissant stand.

And then you see it—the “Toutes Directions” sign. And you know that—no matter how lost you’ve been or what boneheaded maneuvers you’ve made—you’re going to get to where you need to go. You can get there from here.

Because it’s telling you that all directions are possible. It’s like starting out on the Yellow Brick Road in Munchkinland. Wherever you need to be, you’re going to get there.

In practicality it means that there’s a ring road of some sort, and that once you’re on it you’ll find whichever road required to go to your destination. That removes all stress from driving, because—even if you miss the exit you need, just stay on the damned road. It’ll come around again, like “Alice’s Restaurant” does on the guitar.

I once drove a couple of times entirely around Caen; first because I went past the exit to Bayeux, and then because I, you know, could.

It was so liberating.

And it beats the hell out of three rights make a left. Although, of course, that works, too.