Yesterday, whilst cycling along a particularly leafy corridor in Pollokshields, I hear the revs of a speeding car approaching from behind. I know this road well, and I know that it is notorious for young Asian drivers who think they are on a Formula One race track. The council has noticed this too and so has put up traffic claming measures in the form of traffic islands which prevent overtaking at certain spots. So I hear this car behind me, and I know that it is speeding simply by the sound and its approach. I know also that it is going to have to slow down as it rounds this bend and sees me and the traffic island beside it. I slow my pace accordingly so that as I approach the narrowing of the road he is right behind me, having had to slam his brakes on at this blocked narrow pass. I slow to a crawl to emphasise my point. As he passes me he slows down and opens his window to shout dog's abuse. I shake my head, give him the finger, stop and turn right into the street that takes me home. He continues straight on (not out of choice but because I had just given him the slip), but I get the feeling that he isn't finished with his fury. I know where I am and I know where I'm going, and I know that there is a short bridge over the motorway just at the end of this street. I factor this in and the possibility of his u-turning and chasing me. I've seen faces like that before, and I know that they mean trouble. As suspected, I hear a car horn pumping furiously. It must be some several hundred metres away behind me. Maybe he's giving me a warning, telling me that this time he's just going to run me over. By the way that horn sounded, I wouldn't be wrong. But, I've got other ideas. As I turn left, I momentarily disappear from his sight. Up ahead, on the right is a tiny opening for that motorway footbridge. I know what to do. He turns the corner as I approach the entrance to the footbridge. He doesn't know it's there, but I do. And as he speeds towards me (I can hear rage in those revs), I swing to the right and up onto the footbridge at which point I can hear brakes squealing and then a voice screaming. I turn around, now on the footbridge some hundred metres away from him, and wave to him, like the wave I remember seeing as a child when my father snuck me in to see The French Connection, the slow, measured wave that Popeye Doyle gives Alain Charnier on that empty bridge. Except here, I'm the one escaping.
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