Driving home tonight at around 11pm, a dirty grey car cut me up pretty badly and forced me to brake. I banged my horn at the reckless driver but he obviously didn't care. He'd done it on purpose, thinking (maybe correctly I don't know) that he was king of the road and could behave how he liked, relying on others to prevent an accident.
I drove behind him for a while and there was something faintly ominous about this unwashed and unsurprisingly dented car. Four shadowy figures were inside and somehow even in shadow form and from behind managed to exude menace. It struck me how at the mercy of (non-existent) fate you are when you are in a car. If you are walking in the street and see a gang of menacing men approaching you can usually take evasive action. But in a car you have no idea who you might bump into. Had we had an accident then suddenly my lives would have entwined with the occupants of that car. Our lives would probably never have crossed under any other circumstances. Yet at the very least we'd have had to deal with insurance claims and all that stuff, but if my fertile imagination can be trusted (which clearly it can't. It thinks that I myself am haunted remember), then I would also probably have become embroiled in some kind of mafia-style vendetta (even though the accident would have been their fault). At the very least it might have been four big men who would shout at me and push me around for damaging their already damaged car with my already damaged car (even though the accident would have been their fault).
To be honest, it was probably a mini-cab driver rushing to get three passengers home. I've certainly been in many mini-cabs with drivers as bad as that. But the point is, were it not for my excellent road awareness and driving skill my life could have changed forever, in a way that can only happen when you are in the anonymity of a car in the night.
It would have been a much more interesting Warming Up if we'd crashed. You know, unless they'd killed me. In which case it would probably still have been a slightly better Warming Up.
