I was driving back home the other day, towards that big roundabout near Newport Pagnell the other day - you know, the one just up from J14, where you have a choice of Olney, Wellingborough, the great N. Pag itself, or the northern side of CMK - when I noticed the sticker in the back window of the car in front.
"My car is smoke-free. Is yours?" Well, there was plenty of smoke in my car after that. Coming off the flames I was breathing. I was the only one in my car, after all. Burton Dasset had come up to Olney with me to see what real ales they had in the offie, but I'd thrown him out at Emberton and told him he'd have to walk home.
But how dare these people go asking me questions about the smoke-free (or smoke-infested) state of my car? It's not their car, it's mine. And my lungs, as well, should I choose to pollute them. And the duty on cigarettes, it strikes me, is well capable of paying for the NHS treatment of smoking-related illnesses. Obviously, I don't smoke - what sort of daft habit is that, to be taking up? But I demand the freedom to smoke, in the privacy of my own car, as long as it doesn't impact on my control of the vehicle or - like Burton's pipe - create such visibility problems that you shouldn't be moving.
I was so angry I forgot to look what I was doing, and drove straight into the back of her when she stopped at the roundabout.
So it strikes me that, on a strictly risk-based assessment, having smug stickers in your car is more dangerous than smoking. In a recursive and paradoxical move, I've now put a sticker in the back window of my car. It says "my car is sticker-free. Is yours?"
I'll see if anyone follows my example.
Perhaps her being a puritan, she got the just rewards by being rear-end shunted.
ReplyDeleteIt's all very well the government being the 'nanny state' we don't need citizens giving them a helping hand.
And, of course, when you drive the sort of old banger that I do, it's the car that's smoking, not me.