Thursday, June 17, 2010

Eggs

Some years ago in the rather distant past, some friends of mine and I decided to go for a drive to Isleworth to visit the London Apprentice.
It was a glorious hot summer's say and we were looking forward to lunch and a cool drink, and the only downside was that it appeared everyone else in London had had the same idea about heading to Isleworth as the traffic on the A4 was pretty heavy for mid-week, but we didn't let that get us down and we played I-Spy while we waited for the traffic to move.
Eventually it did and we turned off the main road, Isleworth bound and even more thirsty.
The road was clear with no traffic signals or pedestrian crossings ahead of me, but I still kept an close eye on the road and stuck to the speed limit, in case anything felt the urge to run out in front of me.
I sometimes get a feeling like some one's warning me to be extra careful for some reason, and this happened to me right then, and a good thing it was too as next I knew, this old man aged about 90 stepped right out in front of my car.
I managed to brake in time and drew to a halt about a foot or so away from him, and to my amazement, he turned to me a began to swear loudly.
I in turn asked him what the f*&£ he thought he was doing stepping out in front of my car instead of walking further along the road to where there was a crossing, and his rejoinder was to point at the box he was carrying and shout that 'Couldn't I see he was carrying eggs?!'
Still ranting he slowly walked away and I carried on driving.
As I did, we all began to talk about what had just happened and whether or not there was some strange law in Isleworth that exempted people carrying eggs from jay-walking, but then I looked up and saw a sign above where he was heading towards.
In big, bold letters it read, 'Psychiatric Unit'.
The incident became rather clearer after that, but I still take extra special care while driving that route even now.