Trumpetiquette

Today I drove. 

I have done this occasionally during lockdown, but I've never seen so much traffic on the roads as there was this morning. The roads themselves are in a shocking state: drivers swerve around potholes, or crash through them, suspensions twanging. Roundabouts, once invented to make traffic flow more smoothly and presumably reduce emissions from engines idling at traffic lights, are being converted into non-roundabouts, where queues of traffic wait with their engines throbbing, pouring vile stuff into the atmosphere. 

Goodbye, Old Street roundabout! 

Hello, stuck buses and angry white van drivers all lined up in fury. 

Goodbye, Highbury Corner roundabout! 

Hello, suicidal delivery bikes and honking big-guy megacars vying for first place in the queue, and secretly thinking they can simply ride or drive right over the competing vehicle to Get There First.

And the driving! From the Trump playbook, it's anarchy out there. I have never seen so many impatient U-turns, exercised without caution and without apparent awareness of the direction of traffic flow. 

Red lights? Pah! They're for sissies! Roar through them and push everyone else out of the way. Every single one!

Road rules have been burned on the bonfire of regulations that we don't hear about any more since Grenfell. Manners are a thing of the past. The louder your car-voice, the more important you feel in your rudeness and the higher your status. 

Forget #MeToo: this is the age of #MeFirst!

I returned home a trembling and exhausted wreck.