This morning, a wintery wolf stalked our house while trying to blow it down. On incautiously stepping outside into the gloom, I was immediately slammed back against the door, throwing a shape best described as “involuntary star jump“. A swiftly hosted internal meeting was won over by a strong claim, by my enlarged frightened gland, that a cheeky crosswind topping 30 knots was not ideal cycling weather.
Swapping barn keys for car keys confirmed this concern as a ton of grippy metal was tossed about in the manner of a frisky salad. The whole “pass me the red shoes and call me Dorothy” experience was ratcheted up beyond surreal when an expensive suit hiding a tiny brain opened up an umbrella. His instinctive – if largely suicidal – reaction to a squally rain shower instantly transported my imagination to tales of tornado collected Texan cows being windily transported to the next state.
Well, if this fella was lucky, he’d touch down somewhere in the next county. If not, Belgium.
Honestly, what next – the Von Trapp family aurally eulogising over the harmonics of some Nazi filled Austrian hills? Sadly this was a fable too far and the only sounds were those of second hand tinny iPods, plus the twig like snapping of New Year Resolutions.
Steeling myself for tornado alley – London Style – I mentally trimmed my sails and adjusted my helmet to a piratically jaunty angle. And for what? The result was anticlimactic in more ways that one. I wheeled out into what could, at the fibbing end of charity, be called a stiff breeze. This is just another reason why London is rubbish – it can’t even do bad weather properly.
It can do murder though. Those drivers living with the disappointment of not receiving that dead cyclist for Christmas, had stuck one as priority one on their New Year’s list. My boredom with commuting has begun to breed a dangerous mindset; so when some fucknugget ambles across three lanes – one of which I was legitimately using – I am about <---- far from just smashing right into him. Because - and I really do mean this - because it’d teach the knob-bracket a bloody good lesson.
And tonight a taxi indicated, using that orchestral favourite of horn arranged for vigorous hand gesture, that a cyclist’s proper position is – both socially and geographically – in the gutter. He tested his theory with a deadly side swipe which I avoided using weary commuting autopilot. But sufficiently vexed by his actions, a feeling of irritation occupied my mind for the mile and a half it took to catch up with him.
At which point, I politely requested his immediate attention with a brisk tap on the window. I followed that up with a spitting line of invective which, had it been anywhere close to a proper sentence, would have gone something like “No Dickweed, my proper position is in front of you flicking the finger just like this” “Oh and you’re a total C**T”
I’ve got to get out of this city before it kills me.