Philobiblon

Cycling up Upper Street and the Holloway Road last night, I had cause to muse on a new gadget with which every bicycle should be equipped: a small slingshot on the handlebars, which could be loaded with a rotten tomato, a mouldy orange, or, for days when you’re really in a bad mood, a rotten egg.

It should have a simple trip switch fling forward the item, to land with a satisfying and messy thud against the windows of drivers who decide to turn left straight across your path.

I had that happen to me twice on Upper Street – once by a woman in a newish Volvo with no identifying marks, and once by one of the over-branded Foxton’s Minis, who forced me particularly dangerously on to an uneven stone decorative strip across the entrance to the convention centre. If you’re going to indulge in such branding, perhaps you also need to train your staff not to behave in such a manner.

The same message goes to Marks & Spencer – one of whose truck drivers was behaving like a thorough road hog a bit further up Holloway Rd – that I was stopped in a line of traffic in the middle lane (the left lane being left-turn only) appeared to infuriate him, and he sat behind me revving the engine, then when we took off tailgated me, still revving idiotically, for a couple of hundred metres up the road. His M&S id was JLL 0988 ENFI, should anyone from the firm be reading…