While walking round the corner towards the office door this morning I heard a huge crash behind me and the kind of thuddy crunch noise a person makes as they fall off a bike in the road.
I turned round to see a thick set eastern european guy holding his arm - and saying a delayed “ouch”, and a woman sprawled out across the ground, holding her head and staying completely still.
I walked straight over - along with everybody else nearby - and crouched down to see if she was okay. She wasn’t.
It became obvious pretty quickly that the thick set guy (who also sported stitches across his forehead from what must have been a spectacular fight) had walked straight into the road with no warning - into the path of the cyclist. Once he realised what he had done, he started defending himself…
“You damn cyclists - all you do is pedal, pedal pedal - you don’t look where you’re going”
The woman on the ground woke up now. “You just walked out in front of me!”
He had no answer for that.
When she got up off the ground her right eye had almost closed up, and an impressive egg had formed on her forehead - along with a huge graze. Everybody was acting as good samaritan by this point so I wandered back to the office. As it turned out, one of the people in the road was from the same building anyway and they walked her in to sit down for a bit.
I can still see the wound on her head now - and the memories have come back to me all day about the close shaves I have had travelling to and from work - of cars behaving like I’m invisible (I cycle to the office near home - several miles through the school run traffic - hundreds of massive 4 wheel drives invariably with one female occupant).
The day got better.
On the way home I was quietly sat minding my own business on an underground train (and marvelling at my luck of finding a seat) when I became aware that one of the two scotsmen stood to the right of me was starting to complain to his friend that his legs were tired, and that somebody should give up their seat for him. It was obvious he had been drinking, and his friend tried to calm him down (not very hard mind you).
The complaints grew more consistent until he started to quietly insult everybody nearby in turn. The black guy next to me got called a lazy *, and I got called a posh ** (I’m censoring this because it was pretty extreme and I don’t want to land in hot water).
He finally wound himself up enough to ask the black guy for his seat. If he had just asked to begin with, any of us would have given our seat up, but we had sat through a few minutes of wingeing and insults that he didn’t think we could hear.
“Laddie - give me your seat please - I’m an invalid - I’ve broken both my knees, and my jaw in six places”
What on earth did his jaw have to do with him not being able to stand up?
His next act beggars belief. Because nobody would surrender their seat, he leaned across (while swearing profusely) and pulled the emergency stop lever for the underground train. A thousand travellers ground to a halt because of one incredibly selfish, stupid, unthinking drunkard.
“You’re in trouble now laddie - you wait until the police arrive, and you’re thrown off the train for not letting me have your seat- all caused by this one idiot. While defending himself to the station staff outside, we just caught “as the Ace of Spades” - and the black guy sat next to me finally snapped.
The funny bit (if you could call any of this funny) was the number of businessmen who now crowded into the train doors threatening to do all sorts to the scotsman… the victims had now become the bullies - a vengeful mob.
Luckily a train rolled in on the adjacent platform going in the direction we should have been going and they all ran for it. I stayed put and made smalltalk with the lady next to me, who was now positioning herself as the mouthpiece of middle-england in the carriage.
Almost unbelievably the scotsman was allowed back onto the train. He had no disability. We all shook our heads in disbelief - apparently you can hold a London Underground train to ransom and not be arrested for it. I seriously considered taking his photo with my camera phone and going to see the police at Paddington.
I didn’t.
The net result of the adventure is my working day (from door to door) extended to about 14 hours today. Just to cap things off I got caught in a torrential thunderstorm on the way home from the station too.