Dawn of the Drunk

Saturday night was poker night at a chum's place, so I went over and promptly managed to lose £5, reminding me never to bend my policy on gambling for money again. On the plus I managed to last 3 hours in the game and won my fair share of hands despite misremembering the rules.

More interestingly the game finished at 1am, and saw me driving back home. Getting into my car I saw a lone figure staggering down the street, moaning and walking in a distinct zombie-fashion. Some wifie had obviously had a skinful and seeing a car with its lights on at 1am assumed it was a taxi.

Now, if you've been paying attention to my photo blog you will notice that a lot of the residential areas of Leicester include narrow streets, some of which open out onto the main road, some of which don't. This one didn't and the only option was to somehow get past this wifie. Which involved reversing. Unfortunately when she was me reversing she tried to get behind me, which is nice and dangerous. When I went forward she tried to get collapse in front of the hood. When I tried to turn she was banging on whichever door was nearest. I even tried lowering the window and telling her to move it, which she took as an invitation to try to get into the passenger seat, which I had thankfully locked when I saw the way the wind was blowing.

Eventually I had to resist the temptation to go through her, knocking her down if need be and go all the way down the dead end, wait for her to catch me up and reverse at a ridiculous speed back up the road, turn, and zoom off, leaving her stood in the middle of the road.

However this had obviously vexed me, and affected my concetration as I nearly plowed straight into a taxi when I tried to do a U-Turn past the speed cameras in the left lane of a dual-carriageway. The taxi appeared from nowhere on the brow of a rise doing 50 mph (reasoning that past the speed cameras its fair game to drive at ridiculous speeds) while I was doing a mere 10-15 mph. It was kind of a check the mirror, slow down as I angst over whether I want to do a U-Turn or wait for a roundabout, decide there's no chance in hell of a roundabout because I am looking for one, remember the road was deserted 3 seconds ago so it's ok to full lock without a signal, have minor heart attack whilst thinking where the hell did that come from?!!

Personally I consider a miracle the car was not damaged, much less me.

I don't even remember swerving out the way of the taxi - I did feel a jolt as the wind generated by this errant and excessively fast taxi nearly blew my car over whilst I cursed having my steering wheel on full-lock to the right as this thing flew past me in the right lane.

Basically it felt like a forcefield went round my car and absorbed the impact, but I think more than likely I was just tired.

I went to bed, lay awake thinking about a near-death experience and convinced at the very least all the paint work on the car was gone. To add to the general pleasant atmosphere I was rudely awakened in the wee hours of the morning by a lightning storm. The bright flashing lightning really cheered me up.

So there you go - a story of conversing with the dead and nearly joining their ranks due to my tiredness and someone else's hurry to get their next fair. Joy... and the story of my 3 day weekend ain't over yet.