ROAD RAGE

I walk a lot. I walk to work, home for lunch, back to work and then home at 5:30 most days. I like the space, and as I mentioned a while ago, taking Shanks's Pony and putting your best foot forward is a whole lot more enjoyable than driving. I'm old fashioned in that way.

I often find myself walking quite slowly, especially when the weather is so glorious. I believe the world is there to be enjoyed. As it happens, my route home takes me past the train station, where hundreds of commuters gather in stuffy suits to be carried home in a hot metal box. It's quite amazing how quickly some people walk to get there in time - click-clacking heels, long strides, suitcases rolling and smart brogues pounding the pavement.

I've got to be honest, I do get a bit of road rage at being overtaken. I don't know what it is but sometimes I feel like the overtaker is tutting at me for not being tall enough to walk as fast as he or she obviously can, or perhaps they're just angry at me being scruffily in their way.

Overtakers usually have headphones in and they don't bother to look in your direction - from either side, there are no rules, they just appear in the corner of your eye and then waggle off down the road in front of you, leaving you in their dusty wake.

I feel obliged to confess that I often want to trip them up. Ooh go on then, one quick swipe of the umbrella and... isn't that terrible?? Thankfully, there's a gulf between thinking something and doing it. Not that the thinking of it is OK either of course; that ugly little thought has usually been taken captive by the time the overtaker is just a car-length away.

It happened today actually, at lunchtime (overtaking, not the umbrella thing). I have to cross over a very busy road at lunchtime and it involves waiting for a gap between fast moving vehicles approaching from several directions. If you time it right, you can judge an opportunity just before it arrives and slip through the busy traffic. Today, I got annoyed because a young man (smart trousers, sunglasses, white iPhone headphones) saw such a gap, crossed the road with effortless safety, and left me waiting for the next break. The old road-rage kicked in for a second or two. Then I realised that I was getting stroppy about someone else... achieving the crossing of a road without getting run over - you'll agree, it's a pathetic thing to get stroppy about.

Why are we like this? For me, bigger things are sometimes less of an issue! As the Smidgens of Doubt evaporate out and I'm left with the choice of finding-a-way-of-being-OK-with-it or letting-it-fester-like-an-open-wound I realise that I'm comparatively capable of choosing the best option. Big stuff's usually obvious. It's the small things that seem to trip me up - just like an ambling technical author with a shifty look in his eye and a long umbrella.