Stop me if you’ve heard this one.
I was driving. Which is to say, I was taking part in that national pastime where everyone pretends the rules are suggestions until proven otherwise.
Two-lane carriageway. I was in the offside lane. An articulated lorry sat ahead in the nearside, doing precisely what lorries do: moving just quickly enough to make overtaking feel like a moral commitment. Further back, also in the nearside lane, another car lingered, unremarkable and apparently content.
I had the cruise control set. I was gaining on the lorry gradually, lawfully, with the quiet assurance of someone who still believes anticipation counts for something.
At some point, the driver behind decided this arrangement was unacceptable.
She accelerated. Not because there was space. Not because she was in a hurry. But because the idea of being behind me had become personally offensive. The intention, I assume, was to nip past me before I completed the overtake. A small, imaginary contest conducted without consultation.
The difficulty was that I had already committed.
She checked her mirror. We made eye contact. She could see I was already marginally ahead of her rear quarter. This information was received, acknowledged, and then politely ignored.
She pulled out anyway.
I braked sharply. Not theatrically, but firmly enough to register the moment as one that would be replayed later, usually while lying awake. Adrenaline arrived on cue. My response was immediate and entirely unpolished: a two-finger salute.
Her response was worse.
She gave me a little wave.
Polite. Airy. Dismissive. Serene. Almost royal.
The sort of wave bestowed, not exchanged. The gesture of someone granting absolution rather than seeking it.
This was more aggravating than open hostility would have been. A proper gesture back would at least have been honest. It would have said, “Yes, I cut you up. Yes, I know. No, I care not at all.” That has a certain integrity.
The wave carried something else entirely. A soft authority. A civility deployed as insulation. Aggression, but refined. Sanitised. Elevated just enough to make objection feel gauche.
Send me back to where I learned to drive. There, discourtesy was direct. You knew exactly where you stood. There was no performance of manners to obscure the exchange.
Here, offence arrives smiling, confident that politeness has rendered it unassailable.
It is probably just as well that the car I was driving bore no company markings. Had it done so, I would have been obliged to exercise restraint. And restraint, I find, is far easier to advocate for in theory than to practise when one has just been cut up and waved at as though receiving a benediction.