Na Bitte! - There You Are!

So, there you are at the roadside weighing up your chances of death or serious injury should you attempt a Frogger-style dash across oncoming traffic, when you start to wonder why. Of course! It’s all about saving those crucial few seconds that could make the difference between, well, actually nothing and nothing. For me, walking quickly and saving every possible second is just what I do. Commuting to work on foot means every extra minute between leaving the house and clocking in is effectively diluting my pay. While it may only be fifteen minutes each day were I to ease up a bit, over a week that’s more than an hour that could be better spent watching rolling news or sitting. Or both. Or even standing and just staring at the wall. Whatever you’re doing it doesn’t matter because it’s your time before you set out, after which every step taken is one working for the man. Or woman in my case. I’m really not a very patient walker, especially when other pavement-users are completely ignorant of general pedestrian etiquette. Or they are aware and just choose to be dickheads. For example, two people walking side-by-side should always yield to an approaching single walker. It really angers me when I have to step into the road for the sake of a pair of loved-up, hand-in-hand tosswits. The same goes for groups of slowbies who amble along at crippled-snail pace, taking up the entire sodding pavement. I get the urge to kick them to the ground and cave their faces in with a big yellow fire extinguisher a la Irreversible. But then that’d only delay me and theoretically end up costing more money than the resulting bloody mess and murder conviction is worth. Other foot-based offenders include wankers that gormlessly step out of shops without looking and wonder why they’re being trampled to death, and those absolute dipshits who stop suddenly and then have the audacity to get annoyed with you for clipping their heels or touching their penis. There’s so much irritating bipedian behaviour that TV channels should drop programmes featuring bad drivers and just get Sheriff John Burnell or Tony from the Bill to narrate pictures of dangerous walking practices on city streets across the globe. “Hold your breath as a careless teenager exits McDonalds without due care, forcing passers-by to tut loudly, adjusting their paths in the nick 'o time to avoid a bone-crunching pileup. Their quick thinking averts certain disaster…” And so on. If nothing else it might help convince the government that all people should require a licence to walk in public, clocking up points for any irresponsible legwork. For serious offenders, instead of being banned, they’d just get kneecapped. Or have their feet sawn off. No joke, it needs to happen now before it gets any worse. Remember: good walking saves lives. Actually it doesn’t, it just sounds good. Actually it doesn’t, it sounds shit. Like every other idea I had for ending this piece. Oh well.