Road Rage

Oh ... my ... goodness.

Ok, where to begin? Yes; this will be a rant. But oh such a good and well justified one.

First of all, my Dad needed the car today for work. Since mine bombed two days ago and is now RIP Clio for good this time, I have been using the Previa to get into work. So he lifted me in this morning, which meant getting up earlier and a whole fiasco, since I didn't get to sleep until 1 am and was very tired waking up, blinking as Ken shoved tea under my nose.

The trip in was aweful. Firstly the tank was empty, so I had to take a route away from my usual one to work, just to get petrol before the car stopped running on us. After filling up at the Esso in Keynsham, we then made our way towards my place of work on the usual route. By this time, I was late already and in a bad mood.

Most of the way it was averege going. Once reaching the Willy Wicket roundabout however, I was in the righthand, outside land going around it, and then merged to the left as I turned right off the roundabout, into a fast stretch of road.

Suddenly and from nowhere, the guy BEHIND ME who was also in the righthand lane (I think...) appeared and shot past me on the righthand side, whilst I was still merging with the left, and riding the middle lines !!! I couldn't believe it. If anything coming the other way had struck his car as he did this death-inviting manover, he would have baled right into the side of me in my car, crunching my leg probably.

I honked him and growl-snarled the entire rest of the way. Only it was to get worse yet.

The queue going through Winterbourne villiage was terrible. Caused by temp traffic lights on the road up into Bradley Stoke much farther down from us, our little lane was trapped behind two others feeding into the chocablock road itself. We must have been in that queue something close to 40 minutes - maybe more. I stopped paying full attention to the time around the time that upon reaching the first merge point with another minor traffic lane, and finally getting in there, the lady behind in her salon car bumped stiffly into the back of me and my Dad.

I just could NOT believe it. Then my Dad goes and tells me that one of the brakelights is out currently. But we still have one working AND she could clearly see the traffic in front, so she was 'without excuse'. She hit US, and at the end of the day, if you go into the back of somebody, it's YOUR fault. This is something that I personally found out the hard way.

I by this time was pasted giving two, flying damns about anyone who wasn't God Himself landing on the car bonnet. I ignored her and told Dad that she'd hit us but there was no sense in getting out to have a look. After all as he pointed out, she must have hit the tow bar that we have. Our car is high, big and chunky - plus we do have a large bumper and a towbar. She must have struck the towbar which would have meant any damages would be to her car at that low speed, none to ours. Her fault, her damages - I didn't care anymore. If she had come over and started any, I think I would have grabbed her throat and finished it.

Gripping the wheel and snarling loudly, I simply proceeded down towards Bradley Stoke through the standstill traffic, ignoring her. She did nothing, except threw up her arms as though to say 'what the hell happened?!' and then sat there looking poker-faced.

In the end, we made it into town. I stopped off at Tescos though I was already late, realising that if I didn't, I wouldn't get any breakfast or lunchbreak today.

Finally getting in, there was no parking so it's a good thing that I was being dropped off!

Having made it in, I am now sitting and just resigning myself to the fact that until they let me go from this place (and yes, I have resigned), I will have to suffer whatever happens to get in here.

When going through hell, keep going.

In the words of Mick Foley, "I will never, never say 'I quit!'"