He settled himself into the front seat for the short five-minute journey. His mind was busy, busy, busy and the contents of it flowed freely out into the world, courtesy of there being no re-process department… and no working on/off valves… between it… and his gob.
“Coming over here, nicking our jobs…”
He gave no substance to anything he said… just seemed keen on dishing out a judgement-level label, then returning to the same phrase.
“What do you do for a living? I genuinely enquired.
“Don’t work now… Can’t work now.” Was his outcry, followed, without hesitation, by a list of ailments, all of which came with a common theme of being attributed to the fault of someone else, somewhere else.
“Not a cripple” He declared.
“Don’t get all these benefits that the cripples get given to them…” He drivelled on.
He had the ability for a relentless flow of toxic babble, with out-of-date, ill-informed and completely un-evolved judgements about other people outside of his world (seemingly everybody). The only relief was that this person seemed content with a monologue, meaning no more engagement was required from me.
He babbled on… I glazed over… “shields up”, said my mind… and my mind, for its amusement, quietly tuned into its own thoughts:
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“Never argue with an idiot. They’ll drag you down to their level… and at their level, they can beat you, simply by experience.” My dad once announced.
“Ooooh, I like that one,” I replied, gazing at the embers of the wood fire.
We’d watched the Weetabix adverts on tele, of dad and son, off on outdoor adventures and here we were camping by a lake, in a woodland for a weekend.
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Back to the now, I ‘un-glazed’. My mind re-tuned… “shields down”.
…. and instantly… toxic babble splattered straight into my left ear.
“… I’m not a raciest… (wait for it)… BUT…”
Ummmmm, “shields up”. Glaze-over re-occurring.
My mind contemplated the temptation to speed up… get to the destination… we’re here… goodbye… after which, reasonability could be resumed.
… but I just continued… drive smooth, drive safe.
Concentration is primary at the wheel… Everyone harps on that speed kills… It, itself, does not…. Everything that moves has a speed… in physics, speed is distance divided by the time taken to cover that distance.
A snail on the move has a speed. Every car on the road that is moving has a speed. As every moving car is not killing someone… it means, a speed, in itself, is not a killer.
Being a twat behind the wheel of a moving car, however, has no such defence through physics and no justification on our roads.
Too much speed for the situation ahead is dangerous in itself, but not concentrating sufficiently (drink, drug, tired, texting, in-car distractions, etc) on the road ahead is dangerous to all and everything, at any time… no matter what the speed.
Having said that. Accidents occur. Accidental accidents occur… and without any argument… a slower speed, gives a better reaction margin… and in any collision, will cause less damage, not just to vehicles… but more importantly… regarding living beings. Sooooo slow is smooth and smooth is good.
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I can recall two near-death situations.
Both of them occurring at very low speeds. Between just 5 to 10 mph.
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Wicked Witch (spelled with a B) of the West
Cars were parked on left and right and the space in between was just too narrow for two oncoming cars to pass by each other. The oncoming car here was waiting and so I progressed slowly up through.
The sad situation came from the pedestrian up ahead, walking in my direction on the nearside pavement. I could only see her head and shoulders moving along because the pavement was behind the parked cars.
From her gait, it seemed she was pushing something as her head bobbed, but her shoulders didn’t swing freely.
This bit of subconscious observation was just about to come in handy.
The whole event occurred in an instant. Without warning, she continued walking but turned to cross the road… stepping in between the parked cars… and without hesitation flowed to the outer edge.
Not a problem situation for an upright being… happens every day… but if the upright being is pushing something… it places ‘the-something’… the pushed thing… out in front… into the roadway.
The brakes were stomped on in earnest.
At 8 or 9 mph, the car jolted violently… but it got the car zeroed to stationary within just a few feet.
The front of the car surged downwards under heavy suspension loading and I got my first look… at a child in a pushchair… sticking out in the road flow, fully in front of the car bumper… whilst… the wicked witch (the utter bitch) of the west remained inside the edge of the parked cars.
It took a few seconds to get my heart back to its place. The evil grown-up and the innocent infant… just continued across the road.
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The Cat Frozen in the Air
We arrived in the housing estate, whilst the dispute was in full swing. Two local cats were screaming at each other, chasing and fleeing at a fast pace… so much so that you could tell their location and their rapid movements between locations… by the Doppler effect… the effect where sound changes pitch depending on whether the source… be-it racecar, ambulance… or in this case, screaming cats are moving towards you or away from you.
Down the road. Up the road. Across and under a trailered speed boat… through the hollyhock bushes… and then at full speed and wholesome voice, one shot out from under the dismantled camper van ahead… and straight towards our rolling front wheels.
“Oooooooooooooher” my front-seat customer exclaimed.
I had shared her alarm and had dabbed the breaks for a sudden stop.
At 4 or 5 mph, the front of the car dibbed down, our heads nodded forward…. and then it happened…
The car boinged back up, our heads boinged back up… and up ‘boinged’ the cat… It hadn’t got struck, but it did get a tad frightened, then just leapt into the air…
It shot vertically up in front of the car, straight in front of us, facing us and just hung there, seemingly freeze-framed in mid-air.
This was not just any cat, it looked like a still image cartoon sketch… Legs fully out-stretched. Fur pointing straight out, all over, like it had been electrocuted… and the expression on its huge face… wide eyes, popping out, staring straight at us… wide screaming mouth… stuck with a frozen mmrrreeeeOW.
After hanging, for what seemed like minutes… real-time returned… and it dropped out of sight.
It was all over.
“Its face,” said my passenger, in between fits of laughter.
“Eyes on stalks” I replied.
She paused in amongst the giggles. “So relieved you didn’t run it over.”
“Yeh, me too… ruins the tyres.”
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The five-minute journey has been smoothly completed and we are at the destination. I ‘un-glaze’ and re-tune, back into the here-and-now and… as expected… he is still ranting on monologue.
“… and they bluuddy overcharge.”
He’s now apparently rabbiting on about foreign taxi drivers. I’m alright, though. With my Kent accent, I’m “one of us”… “We’re ok”… according to him.
The car stops and the fare is quietly announced.
“That’ll be two hundred and fifty pounds, please.”
“What the hell???????”… Then, on seeing me just short of hiding a ‘mischief’ smile, he clicks.
“Oh Drives, you’re a laughs. It’s usually just a fiver, Drives.”
“Yep. Fiver it is.”
“Drives, you near, hads me go-ins.”
“Well the sooner you ‘get-go-ins’ then, the better”… my mind said.
Out of the car he gets and struts off into the backyard. The toxins from the monologue leave with him.
I open all the car windows… not sure why, but for some reason, it has affect.
All vented… all good… ok, next customer.
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