A bit of bike rage

Monday morning on the Vauxhall one-way system

Living in London can be stressful and traversing across London to in rush hour is a twice-daily, migraine-inducing, teeth-gnashing battle. In a bid to make it less stressful, I decided to swap my Oyster card for cycling shorts and travel to work by bike instead. The benefits seemed endless - the fresh air, the freedom, the joy of the open road, the toning of the bottom, the saving of money and best of all, 40 minutes without some sweaty man in a cheap suit elbowing me to the ground so he can park his fat arse on the last remaining seat in order to smugly read his bloody kindle. (And don't get me started on those.)

What was I thinking? Open roads? Fresh air? I seem to have swapped the jostling massed underground for the jostling masses overground. If I'm not running the gauntlet with blinkered bus drivers, I'm dodging pedestrians as they wander blindly into the roads like confused sheep in country lane.

And in between all that, I am astounded by how much verbal abuse I get. Usually from people who walk out without looking/cut me up on a roundabout/try and leg it across the pedestrian crossing just as the lights are changing to green.

This morning was a prize example. A young boy of about 12 had decided to walk to school in the road rather than with all his mates on the pavement. Maybe he thought this would increase his credibility. "Look at me walking towards oncoming traffic - aren't I cool?"

All well and good, but my problem was I would have to swerve around him, into the path of two lorries and a bus, to avoid mowing him and his attitude down. I loudly requested that he get out of the way (admittedly, I might have thrown in an eff word for added ferocity), which he ignored, as he continued to walk towards my speeding bike. As I swerved to miss him, he loudly shouted SHUT UP in my left ear.

Lovely. I hope the school bully flushes his head down a dirty toilet later.

But my journey got even better. My final stretch to work is a long road with traffic lights positioned at six feet intervals. It's ridiculous. This morning, as the 100th traffic light turned red at a pedestrian crossing, I slowed to a stop to let the man with the wheelie bag cross.

And astonishingly, as I waited for him to trundle across, he looked at me like you would maybe look at your shoe upon discovering it was caked in a still-warm dog turd, and he said:

"It's not your green light."

I said, "I know, that's why I've stopped."

"Yes but you should have stopped sooner."

Eh?? Oh I'm sorry! Tell you what, here's my phone number, why don't you give me a call when you are about to leave your house, and wherever I am at that moment in time, I will stop, so that you have plenty of time to drag your overweight carcass in your slip-on shoes over the huge, gaping chasm that is six whole feet of pedestrian crossing. Will that do?

That's what I wish I'd said.

Instead, as he inexplicably CONTINUED to rant on at me for obeying the lights, I took influence from the 12 year old I'd encountered earlier.

I said, "Oh will you just SHUT UP" and cycled off.