My beloved MG
If you have been following my Grand Touring in Great Britain blog you will know I have just picked up the wonderful 1969 MGB GT that I will be driving around the country. If you have not (why not?) then you can find the site here. Well, I picked the car up a couple of days ago and drove it through pouring rain to the garage where I am keeping it in South London. Today, I had a number of little tasks to do on the car and as it was such lovely weather I thought I would take it for a little spin too. The joy of having the sun roof open and beetling along in such a lovely car was something I find very hard to describe but on the Grand Touring blog you will probably see me try it on a number of occasions.
With time pressing on I decided it was time to take my beloved car back to the garage. One of the things I plan to do is film parts of my journeys around the country and put them online to show the wonders of driving when you avoid motorways. I was trying out my camera mount today as one of the little things I needed to test. I had turned the camera to point to the left so that rather than focusing on the traffic on the roads you could better see the buildings and other roadside architecture. I had no intention of publishing any of todays film, it was solely to test out the camera and then play around with my editing software. I was pulling up to a cross-roads with two lanes for traffic going my way. As I would be turning left I pulled into the left lane and the traffic lights were red so I pulled up behind a transit van that was half into the lane. The lights turned green and I let the van complete its turn into the lane and I pulled off when suddenly the Vauxhall Corsa in the right hand lane violently accelerated and cut in front of me. I had to do an emergency stop and I hit my horn (I was taught that the horn should only be used to warn another road user of a potential accident, which driving into my car seemed to fulfil). The lights went red and the driver of the Corsa leapt out and started yelling at me. Now I do not want to reinforce stereotypes but when I think of someone who can not control their temper I do tend to think of a yonug-ish male (20s or 30s), shaven headed and not someone who is going to be troubling Mastermind with an entry any time soon, so imagine my surprise when the driver turned out to be a young-ish man, shaven headed, who in the brief tirade he aimed at me showed limited vocabulary as well as even more limited understanding of the highway code. The one thing I had not accounted for was the can of Red Bull he was waving around. I can not help thinking that perhaps he did not need that extra energy the drink was giving him but then he did not seem the type to drinking a can of Horlicks on his way home from clubbing baby seals or whatever it was he did for a living. Ironically he was going straight on and could therefore be in either lane and I was going left I would not be getting in front of him, which seemed to be his main concern. However, as it turned out our paths crossed again about half-a-mile down the road, which enabled me to get his car and his number plate on camera. In case you can not read it in the clip it is VN05 NWU and attached (for the moment until he hits something) to a silver Vauxhall Corsa. The one thing that did amuse me was the Baby on Board sign but it was not nailed to his forehead, which was surely the correct place for it to be attached.
I have uploaded the video here for your amusement (apologies for the F word but I am sure you can understand) and if anyone knows Mr Bullethead perhaps you could quietly suggest he goes to a) an anger management class and b) a driving school so he can refresh himself on the highway code and perhaps even c) a race track where getting in front of someone is a legitimate activity. Oh and you should also suggest he lays of the Red Bull.
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