Courtesy Car

I never thought I’d say this, but there’s such a thing as a driver being too polite. The car in question – and it was a 4X4 too – stopped at the junction with another road so there would be plenty of room for me to pass. The problem was that he was also at the top of a hill, and I was still at the bottom. Not a huge hill, but big enough and the kind that I would usually want to take in my usual, steady, doggedly plodding style. But he was waiting, so I had to get out of the saddle and accelerate up, smiling gratefully through gritted teeth. It’s not as though the road itself was all that narrow – a tractor had already squeezed past me without too much inconvenience to either party. I wonder if this wasn’t in fact not a courtesy at all, but some sort of a mind game instead – the car driving equivalent of this, perhaps.

Meanwhile, in other news, I have discovered that when it comes to insect ingestation, the one thing worse than swallowing a fly is inhaling it. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go cough up a lung.