Incitement

We were driving through to the in-laws caravan on Sunday, along the A811 which is a typical windy country road when, as we approached a blind bend, some idiot in a red Honda Civic decided to zoom up behind me and overtake, causing me to brake to let him back in – lest he be left in the wrong side of the road as, say a large tractor came round the corner and ran over his silly little car. I spotted him starting this maneouver (in some disbelief from both Louise and I given the short distances involved) and voiced my displeasure with an elongated blast of the horn as he zipped past me and narrowly missed the nose of our car.

Of course he took great umbrage about this, slowed down and made a sign that looked like he was auditioning for those old Nescafe adverts, you know, the ones where they put the coffee beans in their hand and shake them. Or he was trying to signal that I was wanker, I’m not entirely sure. I laughed it off. As we drove on, with him “stuck” in front of me, we ended up stopping at some lights. I could see him staring at me in his rearview mirror, and he started with the hand gestures again. All very boring but I felt he’d made his point so I gave him the “hands out shrug” to indicate that he could stop this nonsense any time he liked. I shook my head a little as I did this.

Seemingly this further incensed him, as he spent the next mile or so alternating between braking suddenly and those coffee bean hand gestures. Most tiresome and it was quite obvious that this was a young lad in a high powered car (it was a sports edition) who fancied himself as a BMW driver or something. Yawn.

As we approached our turnoff, I flicked on the indicator. Lo and behold he suddenly turns in, very aggressively, where I was indicating to go. Bugger that, I think (I’m no fighter I don’t mind admitting it) and I flick the indicator off and keep driving. This caused some mirth in our car. We round the next corner and are brought up short by some roadworks. I look into my rearview mirror and round the corner, behind the two cars sitting behind me, comes the little red Honda. Slamming on the brakes he screeches to a halt. Oh dear. I’ve made him angry.

The lights at the roadworks change and I’m now trying to figure out where I can turn around as, frankly, this is very boring. Next thing I know a red blur whizzes up behind us. Now I’M beginning to get hacked off. However he holds his ground, I don’t get any more gestures and as we turn in towards Drymen he flies off up the road out of sight. We turn round and head to the caravan in peace.

Rather than pondering on what could have happened, we decide to laugh it off, especially the inspired “fake turning” manoeuver which I’ll have to remember for the future (I also wonder if he has conceded that I’ve tricked him fair and square and that he was being a bit of an asshole.. but I seriously doubt that).

As for the silly little man in the red Honda, I hope he wraps his silly little car around a very large tree, although I will feel some sympathy for the tree involved.

Comments

  1. I was looking for some info on what hand gestures mean in different cultures and I came across this! Thank you for reminding me just how entertaining British people can be.
    Hope you have had happy motoring experiences since then.
    Honda man is no doubt signing away at anyone who gets in
    his space. Thanks again for the laugh. I’d like to share
    this with my communications class at university.

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