Friendly Fire

It's a rare thing when I nudge someone on a bike or when I accidentally brush a pedestrian when cycling, but it does happen albeit as an event as rare as Haley's comet. Take this morning for instance when I (lightly) collided with a man's shoulder as I was rounding a narrow bend on an even narrower foot-cycle path in Elderslie. I had done this before not so long ago, this time with a woman, who simply refused to budge out of my way as I hollared 'coming through' from 100m away. This chap did try to move as I shouted to him with plenty of warning, but he actually moved into my corner and not away from it. As I brushed his shoulder he quickly said, 'Sorry' before I did, realising his mistake, but it was no big deal, just a case of 'friendly fire'. Yet it is amazing how many people I see out and about who are so caught up in their own egos (it's a rare thing to see a person walking without any modern technological crutches or pets) and unaware of what's coming at them. Even when they do see me coming they seem particularly inept at getting out of the way. This may well be a Glasgow thing - 'am no moving' intransigence - but it may just be that people are becoming increasingly inept in their own bodies having outsourced most of it to machines that destroy its capacities and capabilities. As a cyclist I see everything, but particularly how people are now so inept at walking - people waddle, they no longer walk. Walking after all, much like cycling, is a form of waking, and if you're not awake then you're not walking but involved in just another egofest that destroys your awakeness. And so the gentle skelp, the friendly fire, is there to tell you this, in the hope that you yourself will realise how primally inept you are and do something to remedy it.