Deep-fried driving

The Irish and the Scots are similar in many ways. We share the same unfortunate hair, pasty skin, comedy accents, a willingness to deep fry anything edible and a predilection towards alcoholic oblivion. Not to mention a shared loathing of the Sasanach.

But put us behind the wheel of a car, and the whole comparison shebang falls asunder. I speak from experience. Clan Emissions ventured forth recently to bonnie Scotland for a wedding in St Andrew's. Being within weeks of presenting me with my second-born child, Mrs Emissions opted for the drive-ferry-drive option.

Drove from Dublin to Belfast. Like some real-life video-game, the whole way. Cars pinging past us like they were on giant elastic bands. Speed limits extravagantly ignored. No change there so.

But once in Stranraer, all changed. Scottish folk - wonderful people, one and all - drive slow. Real slow. Of course, "slow" is relative. They are slow only in the sense that they tend to obey speed limits, rather than treat them as a challenge, like most Irish motorists do.

"What's this bizarre behaviour?" said I, uncomprehending, as I crawled through another village at 30mph behind a local motorist. "How quaint." I imagine the 20 Irish drivers foaming at the mouth behind me were using less printable language.

It must be said, their sluggishness may be due less to a law-abiding streak in the Scottish psyche than to the fact there appear to be as many speed cameras in Scotland as there are cars. And there's also the roads. Infuriating. No wonder the Scots have the highest incidence of heart attacks in the world.

The people churning out the speed cameras seem to spend their downtime designing roundabouts. From space, Scotland's road system looks like a string of pearls. If it wasn't for the fact that most Scots ignore them completely, driving over the top of them, I'd still be on the outskirts of Ayr.

And then there's the signage. I now know why Scotland was never successfully colonised - all would-be conquerors found themselves hopelessly lost within minutes. Take my father. Conquered many a small nation in his time, my Dad. But Scotland? No chance.

He once arrived in Stranraer without a map. A rational chap, he reckoned - not unreasonably - that he was arriving in one of Scotland's busiest ferry ports and heading towards Edinburgh, one of the country's main tourist destinations. Surely there'd be a sign? Seven hours later, he found his way to Edinburgh, a mere 150 miles away. Fit, as they say, to be tied.

Rant over? Not yet. You nice folk at the Scottish Tourist Board can hold off penning an angry letter for now. I haven't got to the motorways yet. I'm aware we're hardly experts in this particular field - M50, anyone? - but even we have worked out six into two doesn't go. The Scots have yet to fathom this basic equation, as evidenced by their fondness for merging motorways.

Lunacy. I'd like to know what cretin decided merging two of the country's busiest roads into one on the outskirts of one of its major cities was a good idea? You know you're in for a little piece of hell when you see the "queues likely" sign. Roughly translated, this means: "Yes, we know we've made a complete hames of it. But we couldn't be bothered doing anything about it, so learn to love it. We're off for a deep-fried ham."

I did learn to love it. One redeeming factor about Scottish motorways is they build them so close to the grim council estates you can watch people's TVs as you sit in traffic. I got through nearly a whole episode of Coronation Street while trying to get off the M9. As you can imagine, this was my idea of heaven.

Back in Ireland, I was soon reacquainted with our fine road system and its even finer users.

"Ah, this is more like it," said I, as a bumfluffed teenager whizzed by me on the M1 at almost double the speed limit in a 10-year-old Honda Civic with an L-plate over one of the headlamps. Home sweet home, eh? Can't beat it.