Frustrations

I knew it was very early when I drifted awake this morning, so I was happily dozing waiting for sleep to return. Bzzz Bzzz… the neighbours’ alarm rang clear and loud in my bedroom. 6.15am, and I am paying through the nose for a flat in central London to avoid sleepless nights and early mornings. An alarm that loud would wake the owner up, you’d think, but no. This isn’t a medical emergency, as I might naively have supposed 5 or 10 years ago if it had happened to me. This is someone who deserves to be one. After 15 minutes I hear a tired stomp of someone going to the loo. How do I know that’s what it is? I can hear the plunging waterfall almost as loudly as the alarm. I can compare the volumes because the neighbour decides to enjoy the soothing buzz of the alarm rather than turn the infernal siren off.

And then goes back to bed.

After another 15 minutes the alarm finishes its final call. It’s a bit like an imam calling the faithful to prayer, except that instead of instilling virtue it makes us all pray to the devil for revenge. I hope that my neighbour will experience eternal sleeplessness when he goes to hell, which we ask that the devil makes happen as soon as possible, although perhaps after a bit of earthly suffering too.

After being kept awake for so long it’s hard to get back to sleep, but I do wake up at 8.11, so I must have managed another 45 minutes or so, meaning that Noisy Neighbour only managed to steal an hour and a quarter of my life. Of course, it’s quite an important 75 minutes, as I will be sleep-deprived the whole day and won’t be at my best for anything.

Speaking of which, I’d normally get up quite quickly, but I’m now feeling woozy from my disrupted sleep, so I begin to run short of time. Sleep deprivation makes you hungry, and I’m ravenous enough to wolf down a tasty pastry I’d been saving to be breakfast for two in a couple of days. So much for staying slim and healthy. It feels so good, though, and I needed something to feel good on this rotten morning.

The other great effect of sleeplessness is on the immune system, and I am definitely coming down with a cold anyway. I might have ridden it out with just a snuffle or two and a slightly harder time in the gym, but I cough and sneeze all morning now. No gym, for sure.

Anyway, all these things are whirling around in my mind as I realize I don’t have time to remonstrate with the idiot upstairs this morning. I’m in severe danger of being late for work. I set off at 8.47am, and 6 seconds after starting my cycle ride I encounter the first idiot in my way. 6 seconds! Not bad; I’ve had worse cycle rides. This time it’s a mother and children standing on the corner I need to turn out of, but standing in the road right where I would be cycling, watching the cars on the other side of the road. Those cars must be superpowered to be so hypnotic. I check if some sort of Bugatti or Ferrari is going past which would drag a mother and children into the road like maggots to rotting meat. No, she’s just a moron.

Another hundred metres and I’m over the next junction, stuck behind a car that thinks that the best thing to do if the road ahead is too narrow for another car to pass is to drive right into that narrow bit and then brake suddenly and sit there admiring the still scenery. Of course, we wouldn’t all be immobile scenery if the gormless buffoon weren’t holding everyone up. My new brakes proved themselves up to the task of avoiding his rear bumper despite the  recommendation that I avoid heavy braking while they bed in. Lucky brakes get to bed in. I get neighbours with alarms.

                After the next junction I’m still stuck behind the incompetent driver, who has improved slightly, and chooses to drive the narrow part of the street at a racing speed of 5- 10 mph. I manage to overtake him when we’ve passed all the parked cars.

                On which subject, why is it alright to dump a tonne of your metal on a public space? Which god-awful combination of selfish voters and imbecilic councillors thought that blocking entire streets should be a free service they provide to everyone else in the area? If you want the space, buy it at London prices. Just a thought.

                And another thought: even if you think that the fast-moving arterial roads are too slow for you, don’t get angry with the cyclist leaving his flat in the quiet residential road you’ve chosen to try to whizz down. If residents get so much say over the local public space that they get to dump their cars in the way, I’m pretty sure a cyclist owns his local roads enough to use them even when an angry driver would prefer to be the only human in existence. We all would prefer Angry Driver to live in a literally different world, as well as metaphorically different. Somewhere like Venus, in sulphuric acid at 462 degrees.

                Anyway, I made it to the main road. It just so happens that a few cyclists are passing by as I get there, so I have to stop completely and wait...and wait. That’s frustrating, but at least no-one’s at fault. I overtake them a few seconds later.

                There’s a massive puddle up ahead in the cycle lane. I suspect it’s going to be there for the next few months. If a lake formed in a road someone would send an engineer round pronto to protect those poor innocent cars from splashing mud on their paintwork. Mud, by the way, that is actually a delightful combination of their brake dust and exhaust fumes.  But since it’s in the cycle lane it’s not a problem. So all the cyclists join me in the bus lane. Another angry driver makes a rude gesture. He wanted to use the bus lane to overtake the cars in front, and is outraged that we’re preventing his criminality. Untomensch like cyclists should wallow in filth where they belong.

Fortunately for me, I do get to wallow in filth where I apparently belong, despite cycling round the puddle, because his dirty mouth leaks an obscenity so loud that I hear it through his closed window. I suppose if you have s*** for brains the filth will sometimes seep out. Good riddance, I think as I fly by.

                One of the slow cyclists who also went round the puddle rings his bell at me. Yes, I’m aware that you’re there. The cycle lane is wide enough for two of us, as the two lines of cyclists up ahead show. As I coast up to the red light at the next junction he pedals hard so that he can pull in front of me. Is he turning right? No, he’s just scared that I will hold him up when the lights go green. After all, I’m in work trousers, polo-shirt and tatty running shoes, whereas he is a proper cyclist in, um, slim-fit pinstripes and brown brogues. I overtake him before we’re over the junction. One speedy devil from the front of the line holds out for a couple of hundred metres before I say goodbye to him too. Proper cyclist my a***. Which, coincidentally, is now what they get to see.

The next half mile goes well. The pedestrian crossings are miraculously green, although normally they’re perfectly timed to turn red just as traffic starts to flow again across the junction. I think it’s the cunning delay set by the road planners combined with the not-so-astonishing lack of foresight of pedestrians. Traffic comes and goes in waves, depending on the lights at the major junctions. When there is no traffic, a pedestrian will be stolidly tramping towards the crossing, displaying all the initiative of a lobotomized foetus. Could you cross the road when it’s empty? Goodness no! You must cross at the crossing, where you get to enjoy the only power most of us have in life: the power to make other people’s lives worse, in this case by holding them up.

                Then the pedestrian will press the button when traffic is flowing, but the traffic planners have a cunning plan. Probably why they’re called planners. They have installed delays in all the crossings, so that the lights wait through the traffic, through the empty period, and go red just as traffic is starting again. If the planners are very good at their jobs, this disrupts traffic so much that it holds people up at the main junction too! I’m sure they pop open the bubbly every time they manage such a stupid set-up. No, only joking. Of course they don’t. They’re too stupid to realize what they’ve done. No-one enjoys it, and no-one benefits. No-one has thought ahead to work out how things might work best. That would be asking for too much from, er, planning.

                And coincidentally, the next set of junctions turns my mind to the Planning Department too. Within the space of 300m are 4 sets of traffic lights. The first 3 are linked so that traffic could flow freely… except that the junction at set 2 is always blocked with selfish drivers who regard red lights as suggestions only, and the 4^th set of lights is wonderfully timed to turn red just as traffic from the 3rd reaches it. This ensures that no matter how freely traffic would love to flow through the first 3 sets of lights, only a few cars at a time get through.

                Today the junction is its usual frustrating self. I roll up to the first set of lights behind a rental bike. This cyclist had pootled along at walking pace but decided that the best thing for slow cyclists is to turn themselves broadside on at the front of the cycle box. This way as many people as possible are delayed when the cyclist fails to move off promptly. Although today it works out well. I know that the cyclists get a green a bit earlier than the main traffic, so while she’s staring at a red light I slip between her and a pedestrian pottering about in the road (as they do) and get away first.

                I don’t blame pedestrians too much at crossings like that. It’s the cretins in Planning who make the red man come on for most of the crossing time. Pedestrians stand there gawping at how the lights seem to be red for everyone and they take just the length of the lights to decide to jump in front of us. But if we had countdown lights like in a civilized, sensible country, everyone would know what was happening. Where we do have countdown lights they’re almost as bad, counting down to some arbitrary moment which bears no relation to when traffic gets the green signal. When I’m walking I know that I have time to cross the road between when the countdown has finished and when traffic moves.

                Anyway, set 2 of the lights is crammed with a lorry, a van and sundry cars who’ve turned into the road. Or rather, who haven’t turned into the road. They’re still sideways-on, having believed that the inch of space up ahead was somehow big enough to fit a few multi-tonne vehicles. Unless you’re Dr Who or a neutron star, which should be pretty easy to determine, you can’t fit that much mass into that small a space.

                I suppose I should let the physicists know that all their millions of pounds of equipment is wasted. Why bother studying how neutron stars millions of light years away squash matter into tiny spaces when Mr Bloggs can do the same thing on the main road?

                All us cyclists are in the process of manoeuvring around the obstacle course across the junction when traffic starts flowing because of the perfectly-timed lights. Some of the cyclists are visibly unnerved by the prospect of having to navigate these tight spaces while the metal walls shift around them, but I’m on the outside, knowing that set 3 of lights has deemed cycle-lane-users to be inferior citizens who need to wait a bit longer before going straight on. So I’m cycling in the main lane, right behind a van. Set 4 of lights is green, and if I can put on a burst of pace I’ll make the right turn. Except van man has a better idea. Why stick to one lane when by straddling two you can hold up people behind you? He does finally work out what an accelerator does, but only once the lights have turned red. Seems a bit pointless to accelerate into a red light and then brake hard, but I suppose he’s hoping it adds to the emissions the cyclists have to breathe. Why save money when you can pollute the planet?

                Of course, we all know that he was pretending to be a racing driver deliberately, because he didn’t want a cyclist in front of him. It would be terrible if someone who knew what he was doing was allowed to go his way unimpeded!

                I wheel my bike across the junction with the pedestrians, because otherwise I’ll have to wait the whole sequence. I get a few scowls. They walk in a straight line, showing no awareness that our paths might be crossing; nor any interest in adjusting their direction slightly to let me move too. And if they’re not interested in compromise, nor am I. I walk fast, and if I get to a spot first, they have to walk round me. You reap what you sow. At least no-one shouted at me for daring to walk on a pedestrian crossing this time. Oh the horror! Someone else might exist and not make way for his supreme eminence Mr Head-up-Bottom! I’m required by law to wheel my bike on pedestrian areas. Hardly a shouting offence.

                So, set off again. A couple of pedestrians jump out at me. If I were like any of these self-absorbed nincompoops who’ve already disrupted my day I might imagine I’m some sort of celebrity, since people are so keen to leap into my path. I’m not. They’re just atavistic d***heads (yes, the women too). This particular duo sees me, and stop on the nice smooth part of the road to kindly let me cycle past over a pothole. Charmers, the both of them. I even get a nice smile from the man, proud of this immense favour. I want to yell “Get out of the road you moron”, but I ignore him instead. His small mind won’t understand, and I can’t be bothered to explain exactly how delightful it is to have your crotch pummelled by a hard object due to a lack of suspension, although I am tempted to use him for a physical demonstration of the subject.

                Slowing down for the pothole allows a van to get in front of me, and like the last van, this one is pretending to be Lewis Hamilton. Probably not actually – I expect he hates the idea of a black man. But he does do his best to cut me up by driving  up against the left kerb even though the road is wide enough for a cyclist to go past a lorry (I’ve done it before). I manage to put the brakes on and then take him on the inside of the next corner. Out-raced by a cyclist. Some racing driver he was. P***k.

                There’s a lollipop man at the next pelican crossing, waiting for the lights to turn red. The cars and lorries are all stationary, and I can whizz past at a decent lick. He gestures at someone in the traffic to stop. Then he gestures again. She jumps in front of me anyway. She can’t realize how much energy it takes to accelerate to 20 mph. I hope she finds out soon when all that energy is transferred to her in one glorious impact next time she jumps out in front of someone.

                The next crossing is orange as I go past. The sprinters were all set at the start line, and some of them have more acceleration than Usain Bolt. As I weave past the enormous potholes at 25 mph I barely have time to glance at their disapproving faces. Amber isn’t illegal, and I’d like to see any of them try to brake hard on that bumpy road. Their faces will look a bit different when smeared across what passes for tarmac and their skin is replaced with road grit.

                I do soon have to brake, as a bus and van are side-by-side waiting for the lights. Or rather, the bus is waiting for the lights; the van is admiring the open space in front of it and pondering the enormity of being. No, seriously, I don’t know what scintillating philosophising he was doing in his cab, but it must have been truly absorbing. The dawdling bu**** soon collected a few cyclists behind him. If he’d have moved forward we could have filtered past the two wide vehicles, but not when they were next to each other.

                I manage to squeeze past the other side of the bus just in time for the lights to turn. Of course, this is another junction which people believe is actually a free car park. None of the other vehicles in lane with me can move because a bus has plonked itself firmly across the very middle of the junction. And to show willing, the driver has pulled so close to the car in front that there’s not enough space to cycle through. Another topic of study for our intrepid physicists: how a 30-foot bus can move into 2 feet of space and miraculously vacate the junction.

                I go round the back of the bus, taking my turn with the motorbikes. The lights up ahead are green, so I pedal hard. Some people try to cross once the deafening roar of the over-revved motorbikes is over, but they’d do better in life if they also used their eyes. Luckily I’m so close behind the motorbikes that I’m safe, but a distant screech of brakes tells me that someone else wasn’t so fortunate.

                Almost at work now. Nothing especially eventful disrupts the rest of the journey: only a dozen or so pedestrians look before they leap, which is pretty tame. At the final junction the lights turn just as I’m arriving on the left in the cycle lane – and I need to be on the right. For once a pedestrian serves some good, as she’s still crossing and holds the bus up (it’s in the cycle box so I can’t see her until I’m right there). I can jink in front of the bus and get in lane.

                And that, my friends, was my quick and easy morning routine, leaving me relaxed and awake for work.