One off the wrist

I have written before about the travails of my walk to work every morning but it took on a new, sinister turn this morning ... well it's all relative.

If you are not au fait with my walk to work, let me elucidate: the last 600 or so yards are on a road with no pavement which is busy with people travelling to work at the offices of East Hants District Council.

I'm no string bean, therefore if I'm walking on the road, facing incoming traffic, cars often have to slow down to allow traffic coming from the other direction to pass before pulling out to overtake me.

Quite often they don't look too happy about it. And understandably so: the extra five or six seconds it takes probably means they have to park one space further away from the main entrance.

But this morning one man decided he wasn't prepared to wait. With a look of grim determination on his face he actually accelerated towards me in an attempt to get through before the opposing vehicle. He did not veer out at all and clipped my wrist with his wing mirror.

I was so shocked I didn't have the nous to take down his registration number. I almost forgot to mouth the word 'tosser' after him as well, but somehow regained my demeanour in order so to do.

This shaven-headed moron - you know the type: probably keeps a Staffordshire bull terrier in order to make up for the fact he has the intellectual capacity of a tub of cottage cheese - has made a rod for his own back.

If I see him coming again in the next few weeks I will ensure he hits me square on - at 20-plus stone I'll do some damage to his car plus I have the number for Ambulance Chasers Direct programmed into my mobile.

Your days are numbered muppet!

Getting to work is an adrenaline rush

I walk into work these days. And so I should, it's only just over a mile as the crow flies or a little bit more than that the way a lardarse ambles.

That's not to say I don't arrive at the office a steaming, sweaty mess, like a jogger. I do. But it's not just down to the fact I'm fat, sweat a lot and my thighs chafe if I walk more than 100 yards without splaying them out sideways.

It's also nervous tension, because for a large part of the walk I'm on a road with no pavement - or sidewalk if you're one of our trans-Atlantic cousins.


The suggested policy for this is, of course, to walk on the side of the road facing incoming traffic. That in itself should not pose too much of a problem. But I have discovered that most of the incoming traffic using this route - I've included a dodgy map, above, for real anoraks or people who are familiar with Petersfield - appear to be heading to work at the East Hants District Council offices and are subsequently in quite a bad mood.

Hence they object to a fat bloke waddling down their side of the road and forcing them to brake if there's a vehicle coming in the other direction. Some of the looks they send in my direction could send a lesser man scurrying into the adjacent undergrowth.

They appear to be suggesting I should walk off the Tarmac and instead wend my way through the knee-high grass, nettles and soft-drink cans, like the squirrels and badgers do. I do keep to the side but draw the line at turning in David Attenborough merely to get to work.

And keeping to the side's not easy. There is a distinct camber on the road which means I walk as if I have a club foot, dragging it behind me, giving the uneasy impression of a psycho leaving the scene of a murder as quickly as my disability will allow.

The only way to keep my feet on the same level would be to face into the road and walk sideways as if I was keeping close to a wall, like a prisoner-of-war attempting to evade a camp searchlight. And that, quite simply, is just not worth the embarrassment.

No wonder some of the drivers mouth obscenities at me for having the audacity not to trust my journey to the internal combustion engine.

I'll think I'll get myself a Lambretta ... and maybe a fish-tail parka.