Anger Management

I wanted 2017 be a good year compared to the debacle that was 2016 but so far it is proving to be as bad – if not worse.

I won’t elaborate yet but suffice it to say that I am struggling to contain my anger as well as the other negative emotions that are vying for position.

The good news is that I have a new framework for controlling them – but boy is it hard sometimes.  I want to focus in particular on anger, arguably the most negative and destructive of these emotions.

I have recently been driving to my hometown of Walsall quite a lot and this has been one of many sources of anger and frustration. The distance between Manchester and Walsall is approximately 75 miles and motorways cover all but about five of those miles. On a good day, in the past, the journey has taken me about an hour and fifteen minutes – which doesn’t seem that bad – does it?

The problem is that the main motorway that joins Manchester and Walsall is the M6, which is the worst motorway in the world – or at least in the north of England (if I’m honest).

When I am driving between the two places, the motorway tries to make it as difficult as possible by pushing every single one of the hot buttons that make me angry when I am behind the wheel of a car.

The ensuing road rage is a sight to behold, particularly if you are watching from a distance. If it were a movie, you would grow fat on all of the popcorn you ate as you watched me devolve into a ranting Neanderthal version of myself.

Let me take you through some of the hot buttons.

First, there are major roadworks for four junctions near to Manchester, resulting in the speed limit being reduced from 70 mph to 50 mph. There are 17 miles of this nonsense. During this tedious distance several things happen. There is no hard shoulder so if a car or lorry breaks down or a car has an accident then the whole motorway grinds to an absolute standstill. The motorway is usually busy anyway so we all end up sitting there immobile for what seems like hours on end. Equally frustrating, cars and lorries overtake each other at approximately 35 mph sometimes slowing everybody down completely.

The M6 on a good day!!!

I have crawled along every single mile of that damned motorway at 10 mph! I know every bloody square inch of that motorway in intimate detail!

Next, the M6 is full of lorries. You have never seen so many lorries on a motorway. Some of these lorries travel at 55mph, which isn’t a bad thing until another lorry, just behind, decides to overtake at 56 mph. When this happens, some car drivers lose their minds and swerve into the fast lane without really looking. Others decide to overtake the overtaking lorry at 57 mph thus blocking the motorway for those of us who are in a hurry and travelling at 70 mph. This behaviour causes instant congestion and, depending on how busy the motorway is, can lead to irritating lengthy tailbacks.

Next, the M6 brings out the dick in many drivers’ heads turning them from normal human beings into complete dickheads. For example, there I was in the fast lane overtaking other cars in the other two lanes when Mr Dickhead came up behind me. I was travelling at around 70 mph and this moron roared up at 90 mph and got so close that I thought his car was trying to mate with mine. In my rear view mirror I could see him bashing his steering wheel in frustration. He started flashing his lights.

So where the fuck was I supposed to go? Next to me in lane two were lorries driving nose to tail. I couldn’t have pulled in if I had tried, at least not without causing a major collision.

Did he think my car was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and could take off just to let him pass?

And these dickheads always seem to be driving a Mercedes or a BMW or an Audi. Is it a prerequisite of buying such a car that you have to mutate into a total dickhead when you get behind the wheel?

And then there’s the person who was in lane two approaching a junction. I was in the slow lane. Suddenly, he realised that he was going to miss his turn off and, without even looking went to shoot across my lane to escape the insanity of the motorway. Except I was there and this pillock was inches from side-swiping my car and causing a major accident. Thankfully, he realised at the last minute and swerved back, missing his junction and making my heart miss several beats.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg, dear reader. This post could have gone on for days and days but I think I had better rein myself in.

The journey generally takes at least an hour and a half with the record being two and a half hours, which included being stuck in the same place for 45 minutes while the emergency services cleared up an overturned caravan.

I am somehow managing the anger because I have my music (a useful tool for dissipating rage as described in my last post) and when the traffic comes to a standstill I tend to escape into a calmer place with mindfulness techniques.

Also, I can rant on this blog post – that’s a great anger management technique.

The Hypocrite

I have a confession to make and it’s something that regular readers know already.

I am a hypocrite.

There, I’ve said it.

I’m not a total hypocrite and it isn’t a natural part of my personality. It’s just that, sometimes, I find myself behaving in a way that I criticise others for.

I have a few examples.

Probably the best example is the transformation that occurs when I get behind the wheel of a car. When I am not in the car, I am a reasonable and happy person who is friendly and approachable. I am the personification of patience and empathy.

Yet when I turn on the ignition in my car and start to drive down the street it’s almost as if somebody has given my brain an enema, flushing out all of the goodness. I sometimes mutate into a totally unreasonable and impatient arse. I am aware of this and try to stop myself but I simply can’t help it. It gets worse when I am in a hurry and when the roads are busy. The worst time is when I am driving to and from work simply because I am desperate to get the office to get started so that I can leave early, and then I am equally desperate to escape and get home at the end of the day and, to add to the trauma, I am stressed and keen to wind down with the cats and Mrs PM in my safe haven. To make matters much worse, I drive to and from work during the rush hour along with thousands of equally frazzled commuters.

When I pull up at a junction I expect other drivers to let me out as soon as possible, snarling at those who don’t. Yet when I am in a position to let somebody else out, I actually find myself talking to an empty car: “There is NO way you are getting out, sunshine!” I snarl.

See? A total hypocrite. It would be easy and generous to let a person out; I would probably only add another minute or two onto my journey.

I also look down upon boy racers, the type of person who likes to put his foot down and enjoy the speed of the car. Yet on an empty motorway (a rare thing in Britain) if I get the chance, I will put the peddle to the metal and enjoy the acceleration with my hypocritical horns growing out of my hypocritical skull.

I am equally intolerant of cyclists who pull out in front of me to avoid drains and potholes, slowing me down by another microsecond. Yet if I am on a bike myself, I find myself snarling at drivers who glare at me for doing exactly the same thing.

My dad used to say “Don’t so as I do; do as I say”.

I have lectured my sons on the dangers of excessive alcohol, knowing full well that when I was a student, I over-indulged on more than a couple of occasions.

My dad was the same; “Don’t ever let me catch you smoking,” he once said to me with a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. When I questioned this, he used the phrase above as if that somehow made it okay.

Other examples are my proclamation on this blog and to work colleagues in particular that I love to travel. Yet when asked to go abroad for work, I rant about how I am sick of going to site. You may forgive me for that though, because when I say that I love travel, I really mean that I love travelling for leisure and pleasure rather than going abroad to a place I don’t really want to go to, where I am expected to work long days with no time to actually go out and see the place.

I also rant about people who seem obsessed with their smartphones, choosing to fiddle with their devices instead of having a conversation with me. Yet I have been known to do exactly the same when my phone buzzes in my pocket. “Oh, it’s an email from Wally,” I will say grinning to my conversation partner who, in my opinion, would be justified in saying “You bloody hypocrite. Put that bloody thing away.”

I moan about the Royal Family hogging the news and the limelight but I am the first to pop to a street party when two of them decide to get married.

I claim to hate Mrs PM’s music yet I sometimes play the odd song that she likes because deep down I like it too.

To be honest, I think that everybody has a hypocrite inside them fighting to get out an embarrass them. I quite often get caught out but when I do, I am fairly honest about it and admit the truth, just as I have done here.

It doesn’t make me feel any better; it’s just a fact of life.

Are you a hypocrite, dear reader?

Have you any examples of your rampant hypocrisy?

Are you as bad as I am?

Grumpy Old Man On Board

On my way home from work, I pulled up behind a car at a red traffic light and started to rant to myself, thus shattering yet another successful stint of being a mild-mannered Plastic Mancunian instead of the raging grumpy old git that I have become in my old age.

So why was I ranting?

Had the driver in the car in front driven like a maniac? No!

Had the driver of the car in front violated a traffic law? No!

Had the driver in front been an inconsiderate arse and pressed the road rage button in my brain? No!

Had the driver done something stupid? Well – depending on your viewpoint – yes!

I squinted at the rear windscreen and saw a sticker. The sticker was a small yellow diamond with tiny writing on it and a picture of a baby’s dummy (or pacifier if you live across the pond).

This was the sticker:

I’m sorry but this sticker has annoyed me ever since I started driving. 

Why? 

It seems innocuous enough, doesn’t it? Why should it make me pull out my soapbox and make me rant to myself mercilessly? 

Because it is totally and utterly pointless and assumes that random drivers are psychopaths. The problem  is that, while there may be psychopaths on the road, a stupid and pointless sticker is hardly likely to make him stop and think “I won’t smash into the back of THAT car! I'll choose ANOTHER one without a baby on board.”

First of all, the sticker itself has writing on it that is so small that you have to drive almost up the backside of the car before you can read it. 

Furthermore, if I really did have a crazy urge to smash into the back of the car in front, do you really think that when I was a yard away from it and looking forward to destroying both of our cars in a thoughtless act of road violence, seriously injuring or maybe killing both occupants (including myself) and, that a tiny sticker would make me think twice because there was an infant in the car?

There is only one sticker that makes me rant more – and it is this one:

I may be determined to destroy your car and my car even with a child of unknown gender but will definitely back off if it is a little girl.

It’s ridiculous! I just don’t get the reason for making the stickers so small. If anything they are more likely to make a driver think “What does that say” and drive closer than he would normally. I have driven my car with two young children in it and if anybody had dared to buy me a Baby on Board sticker I would have hurled it into the nearest bin.

That pointless sticker wasn’t the only one that irritated me. As I drove on, I turned away from the Baby on Board car, which was a good thing, but then I found myself behind another car with an equally ridiculous sticker in his back windscreen.

I was on a roll now. I ranted to driver in front, even though I knew that he couldn’t hear me.

“What do you mean Jesus I Trust In You? Are you expecting Jesus to drive up behind you and say “Thanks”? Are you just being smug and think that you are better than me because I am not religious enough to boast about my bond with the Son of God? Do you think anybody cares?”

Personally, I don’t have any car stickers because I simply don’t see the point of them. Some of them are vaguely funny but once you’ve got the joke why bother?

Here are a few examples of what I mean:

Yes, they bring a smile – once! See what I mean? They too are pointless –utterly pointless.

I’d rather have a nodding dog – and I hate those too. At least some of them are cute. Thankfully, they are few and far between these days:

And do you remember furry dice? What was the point of those? Do people actually buy them now? It seems they do:

I think a lot of people go overboard when it comes to pointless car accessories. I mean who in their right mind would buy headlight lashes?

Thankfully I have both taste and common sense. I don’t have a nodding dog and no stupid stickers will ever find their way in or on my car. 

The only thing I need is a music machine of some kind so that I can allow myself to drift into song instead of ranting at Baby On Board stickers.

To any readers who think they serve a purpose – they do not. The chances of them preventing a psychopath from ramming your car are miniscule. 

And they annoy people like me!

Mind you, if you like seeing grumpy old gits like me rant to themselves in a car, maybe you can get a perverse kind of pleasure from it.

I think I like my own sticker at the head of this post, actually. Maybe I will print it off and glue it to the back of my rear windscreen. It will certainly be accurate.

What do you think?

Pay It Forward? No Chance!

A few years ago, I was on a long haul flight to Hong Kong and watched a movie called Pay It Forward starring Haley Joel Osment (the kid from The Sixth Sense). It was a mushy tear-jerker that I didn’t really enjoy at all.

Having said that, I quite liked the idea behind the film, the basic philosophy, if you like. When somebody does a favour for you, don’t return the favour; instead pay the favour forward by helping three other people instead.

I have been thinking about this a lot in the last two weeks while driving in Oman.

When I arrived in Muscat, I had a choice: either I get a taxi to and from work every day or I drive. Having been to the United Arab Emirates last year, and seen how inconsiderate drivers can be there, and having heard that in Oman they are just as bad, I opted to travel around by taxi instead.

I arrived with a colleague who doesn’t mind driving and during that first week of our trip he was happy to take on the Omani drivers. Every day he offered me the keys to the car and every day I declined.

Why did I refuse, I hear you asking. Three reasons:

(1) Drivers in Oman are at least as bad as drivers in the UAE.

(2) In Oman they drive on the wrong side of the road (the right side as opposed to the left).

(3) Muscat is a maze.

Sadly, that colleague has now returned to the UK and left me with a hire car. My manager asked me if I wanted to take over driving for my final two weeks. I decided to take my chances with taxis.

But that is a problem too. The place I am working is a construction site and it is not easy to get a taxi back to the hotel. Worse, taxi drivers here, while very nice people, are very keen to, shall we say, take advantage of foreigners. The trick is to barter with them before they set off and agree a price. I am not a fan of bartering.

At the hotel, I jumped into a taxi and told him where I wanted to go.

“10 Rials, he said.

 “Last week it cost me 8 Rials,” I said.

“10 Rials,” he persisted.

“8 Rials,” I argued.

“10”

“8”

And so it went on for a good five minutes until finally he said “OK – 8 Rials”.

When I got to work, I paid him and boasted to my work colleagues about battering the taxi driver  down to 8 Rials.

“From your hotel it should only be 7 Rials,” one of the guys said.

Now I know that the company will pay for the cab, but that annoyed me. And I really didn’t fancy having to go through the rigmarole of bartering for every taxi ride for the next two weeks.

After careful consideration, I reluctantly told my manager that I would drive. It would be more convenient and I could come and go as I pleased without arguing with taxi drivers.

Sadly, however, Muscat is a maze to me and with the inconsiderate drivers and the struggle to make sure that I do not inadvertently career head first into oncoming traffic by driving on the wrong side of the road, I have had a lot of fun negotiating the route to and from work.

After a week of this I have a well established route – not the best route but a route that works for me.

It has not been without pain though.

Three times I have taken the wrong turn and found myself heading in totally the wrong direction, thanks to the maze of Muscat. My colleagues who have driven have told me that it is impossible to get lost in Muscat. Believe me – it is very easy to get lost in Muscat.

What has made it more difficult is the inconsideration of other drivers. To them, the road is theirs and they can do with it what they like. There is absolutely no way that they will pause to let another car out. Worse still, there is no way they will slow down to let you leave a motorway at your required exit.

A day or two ago, I was driving along the motorway, searching for my exit and I spotted it just a little bit too late. In the UK I would have slowed down and indicated and most other drivers would have flashed to let me in.

Not in Muscat.

I started to indicate and edge over but just behind me in the lane was a huge truck that simply refused to budge. In fact, rather than slow down slightly to let me in, he sped up started honking his horn (a favourite pastime here in Muscat). The car behind the truck also refused to budge and I ended up being forced to stay on the motorway.

In the UK I would have succumbed to road rage.

In Muscat road rage was vanquished by fear.

I had no idea where to go. I had no idea where I was.

“What the phaarrrkkkk do I do now?” I screamed to myself.

I ended up coming off at the next junction and after driving around aimlessly for ten minutes, I found myself heading back towards work instead of the hotel. Luckily, I spotted a road that I recognised and managed to get back on track, arriving at the hotel about twenty minutes later than I had anticipated, all because this bozo wouldn’t do me a favour.

And this is where Pay It Forward comes in.

Unlike that arse of a truck driver, I have decided to slow down and allow other vehicles to pop into the space in front of me, thus showing Omani drivers what it is like to be an extremely considerate driver. If I am optimistic I figure that for every car I let in, the driver of that car will do the same for three other drivers at least.

And if my plan works, next time I come to Muscat (which is in April) I will arrive in a city where driving is a pure pleasure; a city where arseholes driving trucks that force innocent foreigners to miss their exit from the motorway will be no more; a city where even taxi drivers (who are a law unto themselves) will drive with due care and attention.

Sadly, looking out of the window of my hotel, which is on a busy main road, and seeing maniacs fighting for every square centimetre of space, I doubt it.

I have my work cut out.

I think it will be tougher than managing to watch the whole movie Pay It Forward without vomiting into a sick back or ranting at the sugary-coated treacle that is the plot.

It's All Over The Front Page - You Give Me Road Rage!!

I want to attach a huge gun to my car. I’m not talking about the kind of gun that fires bullets. Instead this gun (or as I prefer to think of it “paint bazooka”) will fire huge globules of paint, mainly at cars whose drivers piss me off – that would be most cars then. I want this gun to sit on top if my car and to automatically rotate on my voice command and eject a massive blob of paint in a direction of my choosing and onto any adjacent car that causes me to descend into road rage.

I am normally a very placid and laid back guy, a man who tries to smile in the face of adversity. I am relaxed and, apart from the odd rant, I am a happy chap.

However, put me behind the wheel of a car, ask me to reach my destination quickly, throw in a little traffic congestion (just for a laugh) and then fill the roads with moronic drivers and pedestrians and you will see me mutate into a monster, a little like the Incredible Hulk but without the muscle and green transmogrification.

Why does this change occur? I don’t know. I’ve asked myself this question repeatedly. I am a very patient fellow and can normally cope with most situations. Yet put me into the middle of a traffic jam with inconsiderate arses on either side and I want to crush, kill and destroy.

A deep primeval rage surges from within and I become a ranting monster; I turn into “Road Rage Man”, the Mr Hyde to my normal Dr Jekyll.

So what annoys me about driving? Well under normal circumstances – nothing! It is the stupidity and selfishness of others that annoys me. Driving on at the weekend is sometimes a pleasurable experience and I sing and smile as I pootle along the roads without a care in the world. It’s when those thick drivers encroach on my happy driving experience that I lose my temper.

Here is a list of things that truly make me mad:

(1) Tail-gating: Joking aside, tailgating is one of the most dangerous bad habits that any driver can have. I sometimes wonder whether certain drivers take their brains out as soon as they enter a motorway slip road. When the motorway is busy, what usually happens is lane one is full of lorries and lane two is full of cars overtaking those lorries. If I drift into the fast lane to overtake those cars, I usually find myself behind a steady stream of other cars all travelling at the same speed. So when Mr Tailgater looms up behind me, there is usually absolutely nowhere to go. The lane inside is busy and full of traffic with little or no space to move into and in front there is another car, a safe distance away, who is the same distance behind the car in front of him. So when Mr Tailgater approaches my car, driving less than a foot behind me at 70mph, flashing his lights to try to force me over, I tend to lose my rag. Mr Tailgater typically drives a top of the range BMW and is a high powered businessman – you know the kind; the kind of man who screws up a company then escapes with a golden handshake. Well if you are reading this and you tailgate I have one thing to say to you: STOP IT!!!!!!

(2) Hogging the middle lane: Mr Hogger probably considers himself to be a safe driver. In the UK it is illegal to undertake, particularly on a motorway. So why does Mr Hogger continue on his merry way, driving at 60mph in the middle lane when there is absolutely no traffic in the slow lane? Now I’m sure Mr Hogger would argue that he his perfectly within his rights to do so and he may even say that he is travelling in the middle lane to save him from pulling out again when he encounters the car on the inside lane that is about a mile in front of him and in most cases travelling faster than him. I say to you, Mr Hogger, that you are driving dangerously. Why? Well, there are people like me who probably aren’t as sensible as I am who will lose their tempers with you. And to teach you a lesson, they will undertake and gesticulate at you, or they will shoot out behind you, crossing two lanes, and then cut you up as they return to the slow lane. But you probably won’t even notice will you? So if you are reading this and you hog the middle lane: PULL OVER!!!!!

(3) Sunday Afternoon Driving: Mr SAD is usually an old person who owns a car that can break the land speed record but drives it like it is a milk float. He is usually a pensioner and wears a hat in the car. WHY DO YOU WEAR A HAT???? Furthermore, Mr SAD will drive in a 30mph zone at 20mph ALL THE TIME. Why? When you are driving in a conurbation there is only one lane so people have to pull out facing the oncoming traffic to overtake you. If it is busy people can’t do this so you hold up traffic. And again, those with less patience than me will pull out and risk a collision with oncoming traffic – I’ve seen it happen – I’ve been the oncoming traffic. So if you are reading this: DRIVE FASTER AND TAKE OFF THE BLOODY HAT!!!!!!

(4) Dithering: Picture the scene. You want to turn right onto a main road (for Europeans and Americans this will be left). The traffic on the main road is fairly busy but there are gaps. At the front of the queue to turn right is Mr Ditherer. This careful driver takes an absolute eternity to pull out. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been stuck behind Mr Ditherer. I’ve wasted probably a year of my life screaming in frustration as I’ve watched him dither for what seems like an eternity. Even when cars have slowed down on the main road and flashed to allow him to pull out, he has dithered and dithered – and I have wasted another five minutes of my life. Three cars could have drifted out and he sits there dithering. So if you are reading this Mr Ditherer: TAKE YOUR TEST AGAIN!!! YOU CAN FAIL FOR DITHERING!!!!

(5) Bad Parking: Have you ever parked at a supermarket and returned to your car to find that somebody has parked right next to the driver’s side leaving about a millimetre for you to open the door and get in? Do these people have no sense of distance? Mr BP is either totally inconsiderate or just hopeless at parking. I have to go round to the passenger side and climb in usually injuring myself on the gear stick as I clamber into the driving seat. One time, I returned to my car to discover that Mr BP and his brother had parked either side of me. I am not making this up. I could not open either door and had to open the hatchback door and climb in through the back. Mr BP is also incapable of parking his car in an empty car park, usually straddling two places. This is fine until the car park fills up and you are driving around looking for that elusive last spot. So if you are reading this and you are a bad parker: PRACTICE AND HAVE SOME CONSIDERATION!!!! THE CAR PARK IS USED BY OTHER DRIVERS!!!!

(6) Extreme Road Rage: OK I may sound like a hypocrite here but I suffer from passive road rage – i.e. I rant and rave in the car and my screams of frustration are usually drowned out by Metallica or Judas Priest. However, there are certain people who take it a little too far and either bang on their horns or actually get out of their car and use threatening behaviour. I have encountered such a person who quite literally exploded because I didn’t pull off the second the light turned green. He drove right up behind me, shaking his fist, beeping his horn and flashing his lights. So if you are that person and are reading this: CALM DOWN!!!!! YOU WOULD HAVE SAVED ALL OF TWO SECONDS IF I HAD MOVED THE MICROSECOND THE LIGHT TURNED GREEN!!!!

(7) Failing to Indicate: The purpose of indicators is to tell other drivers where you intend to go. If you want to right you indicate right and if you want to go left – guess what? Yes that’s correct – you indicate left! You do not indicate left to go right or vice versa. One mistake that Mr Directionless makes is that he assumes other drivers are psychic! We are not. If you do not indicate, we do not know where you intend to go. The number of people who fail to indicate and then move without looking astounds me. Do they have a death wish? Mr Directionless, I implore you: USE YOUR BLOODY INDICATORS!!! I CANNOT READ YOUR MIND!!!! AND LEARN WHICH DIRECTION IS LEFT AND WHICH DIRECTION IS RIGHT!!!!!

(8) Dazzling: There is nothing more irritating than driving on a dark country road at night time and then having Mr Dazzler loom up behind you with his lights on full beam. Worse than Mr Dazzler is his friend Mr Lorrydazzler. Lorries have higher headlights so they illuminate the inside of my car entirely and blind me completely, as well as giving me a terrible headache. Mr Dazzler: TURN OFF YOUR BEAMS!!!!!

(9) Overtaking Lorries: On the motorway, lorries tend to travel slower than other vehicles. Sometimes they overtake each other, but when they do, they do so extremely slowly. A huge articulated lorry struggling up a hill on the motorway will be travelling at less than 50mph in the slow lane. So if another articulated lorry decides to overtake him travelling at 51mph, it will take an absolute eternity, cause congestion and give Mr Tailgater the chance to intimidate people like me. To the drivers of lorries: PLEASE DON’T OVERTAKE ON BUSY MOTORWAYS BUT IF YOU MUST, WAIT UNTIL THERE IS NO HILL!!!!!

(10) Stupid Pedestrians: I am particularly annoyed by youngsters who walk out in the middle of the road very slowly as I sit there waiting for them. I’m talking about teenage kids with attitude problems who glare at me as I glare at them. They assume that I won’t move and run them over. Believe me lads, the temptation is almost unbearable. And those pedestrians who are in the middle of the road as you turn left or right. They are usually crossing the road but appear like startled rabbits as you approach them, wandering whether they should move or go back. They end up standing there like idiots, waiting for me to run them over. JUST MOVE!!!

(11) Cyclists: I have cycled on a road and am aware that traffic can be very dangerous for cyclists. I try to be careful so that I don’t end up smeared over the bonnet of a car. However, there are cyclists who think they are invincible and weave in and out of slow moving traffic. Worse, there are cyclists who ride in the middle of the road oblivious to the queue of angry drivers behind them. Even worse are those idiots who cycle at night wearing no reflective gear and without lights. There are numerous occasions when I’ve only noticed these pillocks at the last minute and had to slam on my brakes to avoid crashing into them. Other cyclists pull out to get round parked cars without checking how many faster moving vehicles there are behind them. A message for cyclists: IF A CAR HITS YOU BECAUSE OF YOU STUPIDITY YOU WILL BE INJURED. IN A FIGHT BETWEEN A CAR AND A BIKE, THE CAR WILL ALWAYS WIN!!!!

(12) Finally, the most annoying people of all. These people make me furious even when I am not in a car. Picture the scene; you’re walking down the street when you suddenly start to feel the ground shake. You look around expecting to see buildings moving and then it appears about half a mile away: the dance car, usually driven by a complete arsehole. As the car approaches, the incredibly loud thumping scares local creatures and shakes houses to their very foundations. You see the driver, usually a young buffoon, moving his head in time to the dreadful dance music played at a volume that would make Ozzy Osbourne’s ears bleed. As the car passes, you see that he has a complete sound system occupying the rear of the car, with speakers that Metallica would think twice about using for a concert at Wembley Stadium. I can only surmise that these morons are deaf. If you are in a car it is much worse – because you can’t escape them. I have driven along listening to heavy metal at a fair volume and had one of these loons behind me playing music so loud that I have heard it above my own. No volume in my car is loud enough to drown out the sound of the dreadful crap coming from their car. When I arrive home I am deaf myself. I have two things to say to these guys: TURN THE BLOODY MUSIC DOWN!!!! PLAY SOME ROCK MUSIC INSTEAD!!!!!

That’s’ enough for now – I’m losing my patience just reliving the episodes of my life where I’ve encountered road rage.

I need to take a chill pill now as I am quite worked up. Breathe deeply, Dave, breathe deeply. It’s Sunday tomorrow – I could go for a nice drive. And if I encounter anybody in a car wearing a hat I might just cover his car in red paint fired from my new multi-directional paint bazooka.