From The Kingdom of Hamlet to the Kingdom of King Lear – Part II

What a weird feeling it is to sit in the driver’s seat of a car and feel that you’re in motion but in fact you’re not driving anywhere. It gives me a slight feeling of nausea. I can’t explain it. You have to tell your brain again and again: “Yes, that’s right, we’re moving, but the car is switched off, the handbrake is on, and still we’re moving forward.”

At the start of the ride the train itself is fully lit, and on the concrete walls outside there are lights flashing quickly past narrow windows. But when the sea covers the train, the little windows go black and inside the light is dimmed, and you feel the movement only in your body. About five minutes into the ride you start feeling the air pressing a little more against your skin but especially in your eardrums. The diaphragm, which relaxed for a second, tightens again. I say to myself: “Put your seat down, lay back, close your eyes, breathe, try to relax and rest…” Well, as my mother says: "Es vet helfen vi a toiten bahnkes"—in other words, “it will help about as much as cupping a corpse.”

The channel tunnel

My hands are gripping the steering wheel, my eyes are wide open, and of course I am not breathing.

On the one hand, the thirty-five minutes it takes the train to cross from one side of the Channel to the other feels like an eternity; on the other hand, quite suddenly, the flashing lights outside the little windows reappear, the train slows down and very quickly stops, the doors and shutters separating the cars are raised, and once again real people, wearing orange reflective vests, signal to us to start our engines, release our handbrakes, and move forward. Within seconds the exit lights vanish behind me and I find myself on a very narrow bridge, with torrential rain lashing the windshield so hard that even with brand-new wipers moving across the glass at top speed, I still can’t see a thing. And then—whoosh!—I’m on the M20, that is, Motorway 20, which leads to London’s orbital road, the M25.

Motorway 20, the highway that runs directly out of the Channel Tunnel and leads to Motorway 25, the highway that bypasses London.

I don’t feel hunger, I don’t feel my very full bladder, I don’t feel tired, I don’t feel anything. The only thing I hear is my own voice, commanding over and over: “Keep to the left! Keep to the left!”

Driving towards me on the opposite side of the motorway, huge trucks are blinding me with their headlights; through the mirror, from behind, more trucks blind me as they overtake, horns blaring, honks honking and sheets of water spraying all over my soaking little camper van.

Suddenly I notice, ahead of me, the red taillights of a slower, friendlier truck, and I decide that whatever happens, I will cling to those sweet lights for as long as I can. And so, slowly, I move forward toward Road No. 25—that is, toward London, which I hope to bypass, and then continue a little further north to Toddington, where my dear cousin lives with her English husband.

Exiting the channel tunnel at Folkstone and getting onto the M20, passing London and continuing to Toddington

The rain continues in full force when suddenly the app, in a pleasant Australian accent, informs me that the M25 motorway—that is, London’s orbital road—has been closed due to maintenance work. “What?” I cry out to the calm Australian, while the wipers fling back and forth with all their might and no one can hear me. The app also reports that diesel engines are forbidden in the capital city, and that anyone who dares to drive through it will be heavily fined. Well then? First you close the bypass, and then you threaten me with fines?! Honestly, these English! Clearly, my fear was justified and the beginning of my visit to the Kingdom of Lear is exactly what I feared.

Unbelievably toward six in the morning the rain lets up, daylight begins to rise, the Channel and London are behind me, I’m still alive and I just need to make sure not to miss Exit 12 off the M1 toward the A5120, in the direction of Flitwick. I see the huge sign, and now comes the real test—driving on the left side of a regular road, not on a motorway. I switch on the blinker.

Exit no. 12 from the M1 to Flitwick

Right at the top of the exit from the motorway I come to a huge roundabout. Naturally, I look to the left and then remember I should be looking to the right. The problem is that the steering wheel is on the left side of the car, and in order to see through the right-hand window I have to lift myself off the seat, lay across the steering wheel, and stretch my neck as far as possible just to see what’s coming from the right side of the roundabout. Somehow I manage to merge into the traffic, all the while mumbling the well-known mantra: “Keep to the left! Keep to the left!” From a distance I see my first ever traffic light in the United Kingdom and stop at the red, reminding myself again and again that I need to turn right into the lane furthest from me, not the one near me. I do it and feel an enormous sense of victory. Hip, hip, hooray!

Then another junction, another roundabout, and at last I enter the village of Toddington and find a nice parking spot near a swan lake that looks more like a duck pond. I park the car, stick my blackout blinds on all windows, and without further ado move into the back of the car, crawl into bed, and fall asleep.

A perfect parking place near a pond

At nine o’clock the phone rings, and my cousin wakes me up, asking where I am. She’ll come to get me, and then we’ll just stop by the stables where she keeps a retired racehorse that can’t be ridden but whose stall must be cleaned. Yes, this is a thing with the English and especially with Jewish English: if you want to be considered proper English, you have to have a horse—even if you can’t ride it. Well, I’m both Israeli and a notorious horse-carer, so I immediately volunteer to help shovel out the dung and the wet straw. And of course, after three hours of stormy night driving on the wrong side of the road, the moment I lift the heavy shovel my back gives out. So there it is. I’ve reached my destination in the Kingdom of Lear—and I can’t move.