I have a confession to make: I've let myself down. Let me elaborate. Recently, after a hard day at the office, I hopped astride my trusty red bicycle and headed, huffing like an asthmatic walrus, into traffic. It was as frantic as a wildebeest stampede.
Nothing out of the ordinary there. This day, however, I snapped. In my defence, by the time of my moment of madness, I was a man on the edge.
I'd narrowly avoided being decapitated by an SUV wing mirror. A motorbike courier had tried to Ben Hur my rear wheel with his footrest. A pothole the size of Luxembourg had nearly swallowed me, bike and all.
And then, to top it off, I almost broadsided a taxi-driver who had pulled into a yellow box for no apparent reason other than he was an idiot. Had my veins not been filled with raw adrenaline and my reflexes pantheresque by this stage, I would have been truly scuppered. The boxsquatter stared at me apathetically, then launched a massive ball of phlegm in the direction of his window. Much to my surprise, not mention disappointment, he wasn't stupid enough to forget to open it first.
Eventually, I reached my turn-off. I needed to be in the right-hand lane. From my position in the gutter, I began attempting to edge my way across.
A chap in an Audi chugged along beside me. Too lazy and angry and belligerent to follow the same procedure of indicating my attentions manually, I just dipped my shoulder and went for the gap. But each time I swerved towards the space between him and the car in front, he accelerated. Finally, after four tries, I thought I had him. I was halfway through when he lurched forward, nearly hitting me. A foot further and I would've been gelded by my handlebars.
Then, the final nail. He beeped at me. Twice. Bad move. I stopped dead. Turned around, stared at him, checking him out. Deducing he wasn't the type to get out and dismember me in front of a hundred witnesses, I shot him a glare malevolent enough to melt a volcano.
Unbowed, he stuck his bespectacled head out of his window and intoned, in perfect deadpan: "The official State-endorsed regulations stipulate that cyclists must use the appropriate hand signals." It was as if he had a copy of the Rules of the Roadtattooed on the inside of his eyelids.
He was, of course, right. And I knew it. And he knew I knew it. But my being wrong didn't automatically make me a legitimate target for pulverisation. So I wasn't backing down.
"Where, exactly, are you going in such a rush?" said I, gesturing theatrically at the line of 30 cars lined up in front of him. Expression unchanged, he just repeated his mantra.
Exasperated, I'm ashamed to say I lost my cool. "You want a hand signal? Here, try this one," I barked, simultaneously extending one of my middle digits vertically in a simple gesture that left nothing to the imagination.
I instantly regretted it, hated myself for having recoursed to coarse guttersnipery. My upper hand had lost me the upper hand.
With my helmet steaming like an angry kettle, I hopped back on my bike and pedalled off into the distance. My nemesis passed me on the left as I stood at the junction, waiting to turn. His Smugness shot me a victorious look as he passed. Typically, the withering put-down that should have been used to dismantle his artifice of aloofness didn't materialise in my brain until I was half a mile away, cowering under a toxic cloud of self-loathing. Too late. I had lost.
So, if you were that pompous, horn-happy, little jobsworth and you are reading this, I owe you an apology. I'm sorry.
