Village Idiots aka Other Road Users

At last, time for a proper rant. If you are offended by any form of mis-directed nastiness or semi-coherent raving, steer clear of Fox news. Otherwise, read on.

Soo, I was sat at my desk at 7:30 this morning. At 18:00, without a dinner break, I stumbled tiredly to the UthMobile and slid into the driving seat, plugging in my trusty TomTom, even though I've done the drive multiple times, as it is really fun to watch the 31 miles tick away one by one.

Setting off I noticed the weather was a little unpleasant. The water wasn't clearing off of the windscreen, and occasionally there would be a reasonably large puddle.

Then I headed further away from civilisation, and off into the forrrrrrrest of Dean. Road got a little crapper, lots of blind turns and people driving on the other side of the road with full beams on. I've done it a lot, no worries.

After twenty or so miles I took a right turn to where the road got crud-tastic. Lots of mud, horrendous downpour, so I slowed down from 50 or so mph to 40.

And that's when the Village Idiot arrived. He or she (but most probably he) was under the impression that given the driving conditions the best way to avoid an accident was to drive sooo close to me I couldn't even see his lights over the spoiler at the back, although his hi-beams were perfectly visible as they seared off of my side mirrors into my tired, stressed eyeballs.

For ten miles, ten miles, ten f*cking miles this malformed brain-stem stayed directly on my tail, even when I continually hit deep puddles and slowed rapidly.

Some part of me says it was good driving on his part. The part of me that is thankful I made it home.

So my question is this - I was at my (second) speed awareness course (37 mph through a speed camera. At 5:40 in the morning. On a bank holiday. In the middle of nowhere. Hence why I had a speed awareness instead of a bumph to my insurance costs) and the concept of 'what do you do when someone damaged by years of gluesniffing is trying to hitch to the back of your car' came up. The response was 'slow down'.

But that wouldn't have worked today - if I'd slowed this person would have run into me, and I'm guessing I would have been blamed.

So what can you do? I contemplated sticking my hazards on, slowing to a stop and beating the following driver to death with a copy of the Highway Code.

I like to think he or she was rushing home to a loving family, but I'm a bit of a romantic. Another part of me thinks it was probably the ghost of some 4x4 driver cursed to travel the roads of Herefordshire until he passes on the curse of stupidity to someone else.

Anyway, cathartic rant over. I've glowered the snow away, I now need to turn my brainwaves towards drying the county.