Cyclists, Motorists, etc.....

The story seemed fairly routine, a 'cut and dried' case. A Woman playing text tennis with her ex husband whilst driving, mows down a cyclist. Bang! Send 'er down! Except there are a few details that wiggled out with the story and are currently nagging at me like a sore tooth. Like the fact the rider wasn't helmeted. Now, I'm no lover of these things, if ever a device was designed to make you look like a tit, it's the cycling helmet, but surely if you're going to take to the roads on a bike, it should be something of a pre-requisite, no? This, to be honest is just an observation and not my main beef. When I go cycling I don't wear a helmet....... No, what caught my eye was the fact that the rider had gone through a red light. I know little of the details as to how the accident happened, and as such can only go on supposition, but what this suggests to me is that the cyclist decided that the red light did not apply to him and ultimately paid the price. I also would have thought there may also be a problem with linking the text the defendant received, to her 'inattentiveness' at the junction. I'm assuming witness statements pretty much did for her though, as did breaking the speed limit...... The argument goes that simply put she wasn't paying attention and it could have been someone slow to cross the road or a straying child that she hit. When you put it like that, 4 years is a little harder to argue with, even if she wasn't distracted by a mobile. I see them every day, foot down, brains in their arses and an accident waiting to happen............ Back to the cyclist. Some cyclists can be a massive fucking problem. I say this as a pedestrian who has to deal with them every day and will, one day, call one of the bleeders to a halt and attempt to cram their two grand-front and rear suspension-disk brake mountain bikes up their jacksies. (If ever there was a cycling equivelent of the Chelsea Tractor this is it... ) I understand why children cycle on the pavement, but grown men and women? Use the road, take a course in cycling proficiency and read the Highway Code if it all scares you a little, BUT DO FUCKING NOT cycle along the pavement at about 20 mph and shout at people for getting in your way, DO FUCKING NOT hop from road to pavement and back again at your own convenience and for the love of God, don't trundle through red traffic lights thinking the world magically stops just for you.............. You can't legislate for drivers being distracted by mobile phones, by something on the radio, by a passenger,by something they saw on the road quarter of a mile back........... The problem with cars is that they induce a sense of security and comfort, they remove a layer of consciousness that cyclists and bikers simply cannot shed. It's sad, but it's the way it is. What the lesser spotted trick-cyclists can do is stop treating the highway and it's environs like a BMX track, what they can do is realise that in the abscence of comprehensive cycle lanes, main roads are fucking dangerous places that require absolute concentration. A great many motorcyclists will tell you this for nowt, and they have to take a test and pay road tax. Oh, and for all the good it might do you, if you're gonna be mixing it with heavy traffic on a day to day basis, it might well be worth looking a bit of a tit in a helmet. I'm led to belive they are genuinely helpful in reducing head injury risks at low speeds. Whether a crash hat would have helped Mr Wickington though is debatable, that looks to have been one of those situations that was always going to happen, given the prevailing attitudes of two different sets of road users.......... **None of the above applies, of course, to cyclists who know how to ride the roads. Just steer clear of lorries, they're hell......

Laugh You Bastards!!!

A lorry driver is taking 200 penguins to London Zoo when his lorry breaks down on the motorway. The driver gets out of the cab and he's looking at the engine when a second lorry driver pulls in behind him and asks if he needs help. The driver of the penguin lorry explains that he's taking the penguins to the zoo and asks if the other man would take them there instead. The other driver happily agrees. Some hours later, the 2nd lorry driver drives past the first one, who is still waiting on the motorway. The penguins are still on the lorry, and seem to look quite happy. "I thought I asked you to take those penguins to the zoo," shouted the first driver. The second replied, "I did, but I had some money left, so we're going to the cinema now."

A Shot In The Dark

I've entered a short story competition. It's No.42 on the list.

Basically one has to write no more than 250 words using a picture of a bare tree on a hillside as a form of 'inspiration'. I'm not at my best in those situations, but it's a good exercise. With some punctuation corrections, it'll pass muster though. I think I'll need to do better next time, there are some pretty good writers in there.

The Pigeon Of Weekend Joy Alights Upon My Window

You Don't Like Goat Boy.........? (Once More For Luck!)

What happened there? Floating about the net at lunchtime today, I saw something a bit askew with last nights post and decided to go in and ammend it. I don't usually do this at work, but thought nothing of it. I made the correction, published it, refreshed the page and bang! It was gone. What the fuck? Who stole my Goddam post? Where is it you fuckers? I spent about an hour and a half writing that last night and it's gone, just like that.................. Some of you might have read it this morning. Some of you with photographic memories might be able to remember it verbatim and quote it back to me, I don't know................ It was a piece about the late Bill Hicks, who died on the 26th of February 1994 of Pancreatic Cancer. It was ok, short and sweet, though most of the time was taken up, as ever, by writing then editing out various rubbish bits. Anyway, above is the only bit of the post I can retrieve, the Youtube clip of Hicks in 'Goat Boy' mode at the Dominion Theatre, London in 1993. Enjoy!

How To Disappear Completely

None of you will be surprised to know that I both crave attention and like nothing more than being left alone. It's a real fucker, I tell thee. Oddly enough, I generally tend to have my requests for peace and quiet granted to me. In fact I rarely have to ask, which is nice..... It's a bit harder when I want everyone to look my way, so I suppose that's why I blog. Then I can combine the two disciplines. I can act the arse to a small group of people AND be left in peace to listen to music, tend to my plants, wash the dishes and play old Spectrum games on my PC.

Anyway, it came to my notice recently that the Inland Revenue have no idea that I'm working.

Woohoo!

Recently, the company I worked for was taken over* and since the tax bods were doing a wee audit on me anyway with regard to unpaid taxes (easy Duff, I'm still PAYE, I won't be sharing a cell with Lester Pigot and Ken Dodd just yet), it came to their notice that I was no longer working for Solicitor 'X' and for whatever reason, my new employers hadn't updated them on the chaos that they were about to unleash. You do realise it would have been months or years before they caught up with me had my dear old Ma not been residing at my previous address........

This leads me to my other disappearing act. Over the past few weeks, the whole Glasgow operation has been having it's email/operating systems changed over to those used by the new company. Quite apart from realising that we've actually gone back to the dark ages with regard to how Windows works (I swear, my old Commodore 64 was more user friendly), they've also been kind enough to fuck up my email so that all emails sent to the Glasgow offices in general avoid me, and me alone. 'Im also unable get in touch with anyone else, unless they happen to know my new email address. To all intents and purposes, I might as well not exist.........

So, there you have it, I'm 'The Man With No Name', 'The Outlaw', 'The Fugitive', 'The Black Rider'.............I shall bring the company to it's knees from within! The Silent Assasin will strike without mercy!

..........as long as it doesn't affect my holiday allocation of course.........

*Technically speaking, it was 'merged', but then technically speaking Guido Fawkes is a journalist.........

Spinny wind vane thingy at North Berwick.

Test Post

Just trying out the Blogger Video option. Not bad, as long as the file isn't too big. This was taken coming back from a football game at Livingston on the Partick Thistle Supporters Bus. It's not meant to be anything, just me farting about with my camera to relieve the boredom, pointing it out the window at the street lights. It was the shortest thing I could find. It has a sort of hypnotic feel to it I suppose..........