Red Mist a la Rue

I think I am beginning to be severely affected by all-encompassing road rage. Sure, everyone hates buses and taxis but, in a shocking lack of solidarity with the usually close-knit cycle commuter community, I have found that I now abhor nearly everyone on the road, full stop. Arriving at work today after my usual 6 mile commute through the idyllic dales of south east London, I was struck by the realization that, in a kind of red mist, my thoughts the whole way had consisted only of whether I should tell other road users to 'GET TO FUCK' or, more succinctly, just to 'GET FUCKED' should they carve me up, push me into the curbside gutter, walk out in front of me, or simply drift into my 2 square metre personal space. I have never known such rage as when a service vehicle blindly turned left off a public highway with plenty of notice given that I was cruising down the inside lane. This lead to intense gesticulation followed by shrugged gestures of disgust and heartbreak as my middle-class upbringing prevented me from screaming profanities and/or shattering his windows with a well aimed d-lock.

I vehemently believe that anyone who drives in zone 1 who could be on public transport should be tarred and feathered and made to live rough in Covent Garden piazza at the height of the summer holidays (so, so many French schoolchildren). Pedestrians are really just as bad; I was once having a perfectly adequate time whizzing through Brixton on a winter's eve, only to have a woman consciously dawdle out across in front of me, throwing me over my handle bars as I attempted not to total the cretin. Incredulous looks abounded as I waited for an apology, which were met only by her intoning that "that's God telling you to slow down". Thanks, God.

And of course pinstripe business prick-looking obese men with combed back hair, who NEVER FUCKING LOOK when they step out into my path. Rage at situations like these is fine. Encourageable in fact. What is more unreasonable is the fact that I now hate pretty much anyone in my peripheral vision whilst commuting. Of course, we have the Guardian-identified Summer morons who find it acceptable to simper along the Embankment at 8.30 in the morning like it's rural Normandy in the dusky haze of a spring's eve. But it's everyone else as well. The fools with matching team lycra suits. Almost anyone with gears, and certainly anyone without a helmet. Girls on dutch riders who are slow out of traffic lights. The man on a single speed with too-full panniers this morning who was flailing like a maniac and still not going all that fast. Anyone who looks like they're going to change into a suit when they complete their journey. The criteria for my hatred is in fact so wide that it threatens, in a Rick Springfield-esque example of surreal self loathing, to encompass even me. This will, of course, never happen though, as like every other stubborn London commuter, I consider myself superior to the stinking idiots around me.

Couriers are fine of course. No helmets, or often brakes, but they are lunatics so it is sort of justified. Plus, they know how to deal with troublesome drivers: recall the infamous, possibly apocryphal, yarn of the messenger who, when clipped off his bike by a particularly irate and foolhardy business man, subsequently picked up his crashed machine and smashed it through the knave's window screen, a la the cover of the Clash's 'London Calling'. Commendable move. TH