On yer bike

A prevailing narrative right now is that we’re living in a polarised society. It’s not generally what I’m feeling day-to-day. But then I’m not online much (basically not at all) for the purposes of public discourse, tribal confrontations or trolling, however I hear podcasters, politicians and journalists expressing concern about polarisation and hate speech, a lot.

Truth be told, I haven’t entered debate, based on assumptions about how someone thinks for a while now, because I had my fingers burned badly, you know, with Brexit. Which if nothing else demonstrated how we all assumed too much.

But recently, I’ve really seen the vitriol of the internet spill out into the real world streets. In a matter of weeks, I’ve been shouted at by that most opinionated of sub groups – cyclists, of all ages.

OK, so technically they could have argued I was in the wrong – treading that tricky line between a de facto pedestrianised street and what the Highway Code says it is. But still, these cyclists were instantaneous in their abuse, in varying degrees of sarcasm and personal insult. Thankfully as a wordsmith I called upon an excellent set of words to come back at them. None of which can be published here. Seems like polarised responses are in my wheelhouse too.