Well it’s that time of the year again, the annual invasion of the binnelanders! They start arriving from the first week in December peaking round about now and like the great Serengeti migration it’s an annual event and unstoppable.
They arrive in their thousands, filling our holidays resorts, clogging our beaches, paralyzing our shopping centres and jamming our roads.
Funny enough, I can generally live with most of that, I give the beaches and malls a miss at this time of the year and the roads? Well I know my way around well enough to miss the main thoroughfares and traffic jams. It’s their driving that gets me!
Everything has to be done at 100mph, weaving in and out of traffic, racing to the next traffic light or stop street, tailgating, rush, rush, rush. Why? For Pete’s sake they’re on holiday, relax!
The whole aggressiveness of it makes me well, slightly aggressive myself.
Which reminds me of a discussion I had perhaps 10 or 15 years ago (obviously not during the summer holidays.) In a queue at one of our banks, in front of me were two ladies, one of similar age to me and the other I assumed to be her mother. As I recollect it, I overheard something like this.
“Lovely, the roads are so quiet, I haven’t had a problem with parking, the shopping centres are a pleasure to walk around, the people are so friendly and look at this, only 3 people in front of us”
I tapped the lady on the shoulder, interrupted her conversation and said “excuse me, please don’t tell anybody else, keep this to yourself, we like it this way.”
Boadicea's Chariot 
Sorry, can’t find a sensible translation for binnelanders – other than the title of a soap. 😦
Howzit Bearsy.
Binneland – inland, internal.
Hence binnelanders – people from inland. Come to think of it, probably an English/Afrikaans slang mix mash. I remember the TV programme, never watched it 🙂
We have lots of tourists in Henley in the summer. We all end up fighting for parking spaces: can be a bit annoying, I agree.
Hello Soutie: We have them too, they seem to swarm to the water here just like those Wildebeest in your picture. All gone here until the Spring. They seem to fall into two groups when driving, I call them “thirty overs” and “thirty unders”. The speed limit is pretty much the same nationwide but it seems people from Pennsylvania have uncalibrated speedometers. On my daily drive to breakfast (9 miles) I may not see two vehicles in the Winter months. It’s a delight.
Don’t even talk to me about ‘summer complaints’
OZ
Bring on the crocodiles, Soutie!