Walking past the Big Issue guy in St Andrews today who looking very angry reminded me of an incident that happened just before Christmas in Oxford.

I was walking down the main shopping street in Oxford, Cornmarket Street, a few weeks before Christmas on a Saturday and as you can imagine it was fairly busy! Bicycles are not allowed on the street and knowing this when there was a bell ringing at me as I was walking along it took me a little while to get out of the way of the cyclist behind me trying to get past and nudging my legs.  There was hardly enough space to move.  Anyway, he rode on, and that was the end of that.

Or so I thought…

About 30 seconds later I saw the man throw his bike down and start striding towards me.  I imagined he must have dropped something but before I knew it I had this guy right in my face telling me ‘What the fuck is your problem, is it because I’m homeless that you wont get out my fucking way, you better fucking apologise otherwise I’m gonna smash your boyfriend’s face in’  As you might imagine, this took me a little by surprise! They guy really thought that I had some kind of issue with him! Some people really think the world revolves around them.  In any case, I did the classic, walk on and ignore move that I learned from going to a school full of neds.  My school might not have taught me long division but at least I know how to avoid trouble on teh street.  It seemed to work, and the boyfriend still has his face unsmash, good move methinks!