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@dooks
ah it's hard. in theory i totally agree with trying to stay calm but i can't always manage it. i'm a very easy going guy most of the time but when i'm cycling in the centre of town i have to say i lose my rag on a fairly regular basis. i probably yell at someone most days. i just get incandescent with rage. i think a lot of it has to do with adrenaline. cycling hard though heavy traffic is physically and mentally intense. your heart is goinng, you're brain is racing and you're generally wound pretty tight. more often than not you're running to a deadline and have in any given journey let dozens of others off with minor indiscretions. by the time someone does something that actually causes you to crash, bail or even have a near miss i tend to properly boil over. ESPECIALLY if they or anyone then tries to give me any shit about it. back when i was pedicabbing in the late 90s i remember actually pounding with my fists on the windscreen and bonet of a minicab who'd just pulled out in front of me.
it does work both ways though and i'm pretty sure lot of abuse that pedestrians hurl at cyclists is driven my that same "fight or flight" response to having had a nasty fright. It just baffles me how they don't seem to expect that when stepping blindly into the road. anyway, a while back now i was heading down st john's street towards smithfields going pretty fast and in front of a stream of traffic. this guy steps out into the road talking on his phone without looking at all. i saw him just in time but had to swerve hard to avoid him and i'm thinking - shit he's going to get mowed down by the cars coming up behind me. i did what i usually do in these situation and yelled panicky wordless warning to him something along the lines of "Oi-oi-oi-oi-oi-oi!" - i swerved round the swaggering blokey cock standing in the middle of a busy road blindly yakking into his phone and he turns to me as i pass by and shouts "PRICK!". it really isn't like me to square up to anyone (let alone a swaggering blokey cock clearly much bigger, harder and more aggressive than me) but i was so insanely furious at the injustice of the situationthat i slammed on the brakes, took a deep breath and bellowed FUUUUUCK YOU! at him. he thought about it for a bit and hollered back a sneeringly dismissive-"CUNT!" i realised then that despite having the moral high ground he'd comprehensively out manouvered me in debate so i saddled up and rode off literally shaking and dizy with fury.
sorry i've rambled there...