Hooligans

Where I live, which most would regard as a rural setting, there are three kinds of drivers – fast drivers, tractors and horsists. The horsists are generally marked out by a) being on a horse and b) there being a trail of horsey pooh from at least 2 bends before you encounter them. The tractors are similarly marked out by them a) being big blue or green things, and b) there being large lumps of mud laying on the road as if asteroids somehow broke through the US defence system I know from films to be manned by Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith.

There’s a new breed entering the area though. Like all ‘class’ of driver they too have clear signs to distinguish them from other motorists. Meet ’37mph man’. 37mps man generally drives a mid-sized hatchback in a fetching, but importantly non offensive, pastel shade. The kind you find on the dulux kitchen range tester card. He will possibly have a nodding Churchill dog on the parcel shelf, but without exception has a straw boater or panama hat thrown nonchalantly in the back window.

This man has an amazing ability to live life at constant 37mph. Going down a road with the national speed limit? 37mph man will be travelling at 37mph at least 2 feet from the kerb. He does not brake for corners, horsists, bikists or any other obstacles. Then you reach the 30mph zone and you expect to slow to a crawl. Not so for Mr 37mph man. Here he lives life in the fast lane, continuing at his hard-wired 37mph. So too alongside schools, over speed bumps and across roundabouts.

It’s almost as if his car has no gear box or accelerator. He opens his garage (complete with non-offensive pastel-shade door no doubt) and blammo – 37mph. Perhaps shot by a canon, or some planetary force of constant velocity.

I daresay as he sits at his solid pine breakfast table he sits alongside his aga, reading his copy of The Independent, spreading his marmalade on his toast in perfect parallel lines with his knife moving at a constant 37mph, his brain has a thought every 37 seconds, and he reads at a steady 37 words per minute.

Ladies and gentlemen, 37mph man. Grrr….


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