More car shenanigans
Not quite road rage but car-based lesson teaching (or just plain wankerishness...).

I used to drive a rather knackered old-model (mid-90s) Astra. It was crap: heavy, underpowered, clumsy -- and ugly too. Anyway at the time I was living in Slough (yeah, yeah) and one day I was driving said car around a large, multi-lane roundabout which had traffic lights on it (it's the one you see in the opening credits of The Office). I was stopped at one of the sets of lights waiting for them to change, when some young chav in his pimped-up hatchback pulled alongside me on my left, looked over and revved his engine, grinning.

For fuck's sake.

Basically we were both aiming for the same exit: it has two lanes but one immediately filters off to go down the high street while the other carries on out of town. He wanted to jump ahead of me to go straight on, a fairly common manoeuvre on this roundabout.

All the time he was edging forward bit by bit, still looking over and revving like this is going to be race of the century. So I waited patiently for the lights, and when they turned I floored it, so that I was alongside him as we pull away. Somehow -- I must have caught the gear changes just right -- the poor abused Astra managed to stay alongside (and upright during the sharp-ish turn off the roundabout) all the way, forcing him to pull off onto the pedestrianised high street while I carried on.

Childish, me? Fuck yeah. I hope his ego was fatally wounded.
( reallywittyname veraciously conspues lexiphanicism on, Wed 2 May 2007, 15:11, Reply)