Bike Rage

The Edinburgh Festival brings people in their millions to this
relatively small city during August, and it's certainly noticeable.

Last night, cycling through a busy part of town I was surrounded by
hundreds of human livestock, herding endlessly through the streets
stopping only to wipe the drool from their chins and seemingly too
enraptured by some Jeremy in a jester hat trying to get them to go and
see his pathetic university play about what it's like to be a suicide
bomber to bother looking when crossing the road. They were in my way,
basically and I wanted every last one of them to instantly contract
rabies and die frothing atthe mouth, their spines snapped under the
force of their own convulsions.

I was secretly quite enjoying hating these people. I don't really
have anything against tourists at all (in fact, I quite like the fact
that people travel just to come and see this city), but I do rather
enjoy swearing in my head. In fact I just thought of several very
rude words and nobody heard me do it. I'm dead subversive, I am.

Just as I was really getting into a good brain-rant, I noticed that I
had a plastic bag caught in my bike wheel. Great, I thought.
Something else I can hate the interlopers for.

The bag was properly stuck, giving me ample time to revel in my
internal bile-spouting as I wrestled it from around my spokes. Some
useless gawping moron was to blame for this, littering MY city with
THEIR crap.

Then, a hand appeared out of the blue instantly releasing the bag from
the wheel for me and depositing it neatly in a nearby bin. As I
uttered my thanks to this stranger, he replied in some foreign tongue,
instantly replacing my anger a sense of gratitude and the realisation
that no matter where you are, even in a crowd of gawping buffoons,
theere are nice considerate people. The bastards.