Indicator on, I check the mirror. Take a second to wipe drizzle from my visor, check the mirror again. Look over my shoulder. No, even though this is the longest slip-road in Britain and the outside lanes are totally unoccupied, the arsehole in the artic still isn’t moving – just sitting in the inside lane, apparently intent on either running me down or preventing me joining the main road.
If I was in a car I’d have to slam on the brakes. But I’m not – so I open the throttle harder and get out ahead of the idiot in the truck. Who has the nerve to flash his lights. Just how stupid is he? How hard is it to let another vehicle onto an empty road? Especially when that vehicle been in sight with its indicator on for probably ten long seconds.
Further down the road I spot the lowest of commuting lifeforms, the 50mph right-hand lane hog. This one’s in a Citroen Picasso, half-a-dozen smaller cars strung out behind it like the tail of slow-moving a comet. Two miles ahead, actually travelling faster in the left-hand lane than the Picasso, is a caravan. Never mind. Pablo’s happy holding everyone up.
I try to be good. I do. I really do. My willpower holds out for at least half a mile before, a vein throbbing inside my lid, I snap, move to the left of the driving lane and slink past the queue at a crisp 70mph. I say “slink”, but by this point my fury has mounted to the point that I want a megaphone on the bike so I can shout “Get in the correct lane” at the idiot in the Citroen. Who’s on the phone. Of course. It’s possible that as I pass I suggest, by mime, that the driver likes not one or two but three types of beans in his coffee, like Gareth Hunt. Hunt. Hmmm.
Getting off the main road does precisely nothing to improve my temper. Farmer Giles has tracked filth from a field all over the road and suddenly my visor looks like a lapwing’s speckled egg. So I helpfully smear it into an opaque brown mess, effectively robbing myself of the sight in one eye. Idiot.
Naturally, that means I don’t spot the grandmother of all potholes on the way into a left-hander, thumping into it so hard one hand comes off the bar. Bloody hell – that felt bad enough to buckle the rim. Is the council ever going to do anything about these roads, or are they waiting until it takes men with ropes to winch the bike out of these craters?
I arrive in the office ready to murder someone. Anyone. Ideally Picasso-driving, HGV-licensed highway-maintenance workers who live on farms. It wasn’t that long ago I used to love commuting on a bike. What happened? Oh yes, that’s it: winter. The season where road manners and surfaces crumble.
My blood pressure can’t take much more of this. Summer can’t come soon enough…
Simon Weir
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