"Wanker!"
Of course, riding an odd looking bike through a conservative city's inner suburb is always going to elicit a range of wild and imaginative comments from the public. The perceptiveness of different age groups is quite interesting to note, given that my usual attire in the lessening sunshine of a late afternoon in September is frequently a nonspecific black. Black socks; grey and black shoes; black shorts; black fleece, perhaps enlivened with a hint of a shocking pink or muted blue t-shirt lurking underneath; black even is my headwear which may equally involve polystyrene or a microfibre cotton-poly mix. Eyes formerly hidden behind reflective sunglasses now plainly observe the world through UV-A and UV-B rated polycarbonate with 85% light transmission. Small children on their way to school, accompanied by their mother or father keenly restraining any bemusement, express mild wonder in their unabashed enthusiasm for the lady on the funny bike. The need to keep one's side up, however, in the cut-throat internet- and Big Brother-educated worldly socialism of both pre-teen and teenage cliques and social circles rides roughshod over any such earlier innocence and, it appears therefore, the ability to tell boy from girl. The w-word, my foot.
If such playful misidentification wasn't enough, so many times while commuting and in hot pursuit of no-one in particular, I find my onlooker to be posted on the other side of the road. I find that most annoying, in fact. In the hustle and bustle of traffic and with me moving at anything from 10mph to 30mph, it is rarely a simple matter to jam on my brakes, mirror-signal-manoeuvre, and swing around in a glorious U-turn of canted-over control of tyre versus road. And even if I could, my retort of instant, withering wit would surely and inconveniently desert me in my moment of triumph. In today's otherwise ordinary ride through an ordinary city street, a street perhaps a little worse for wear in its grubby stonework, its tracksuited, shopping bag carrying denizens and its cut-up tarmac displaying a once-proud red painted cycle lane, on a low brick wall there lay in wait a threesome of grey-clad twentysomethings. I wondered, as my head flicked around upon that single shouted word to be met by three toothy, vacant, beer lubricated grins, if they were new to the area, for Victoria and I were certainly no stranger to those parts. But, my great inertia carried me onwards without a moment's hesitation even as I held their gaze for a second longer.
I held my tongue, too, not entirely out of politeness but out of the immediate failure to conjure up that deadly verbal barrage, contrived precisely to penetrate the slow thinking mind with a short, sharp expression, while simultanously retaining a suitably supercilious delivery aimed squarely at the bows of said physically unlikely suggestion, and designed to confuse and embarrass in equal measure.
Once home of course, and with all the time in the world for such fancies, my mind started constructing the proverbial arrows.
"Feck off!"
That most endearingly sanitised insult still sits somewhat uncomfortably as a rather unbecoming turn of phrase, and would do little to further the benign reputation of a majority of road users. However, such concerns might be moot in the present company, and one must certainly admire its minimally syllabic pointedness and the effectiveness of an almost unrivalled speed of articulation.
"Tosser!"
Right back atcha! One would however still be plumbing the depths of good taste, and with articulative speed no better than before the receipient would be equally far back along the road. However, the extended û sound of the last syllable provides for a splendid lingering delivery as one speeds away.
"Takes one to know one!"
Too commonplace I think; impossibly clichéd, and even in jest would be intimating fault where in my surely holier-than-thou manner none existed. Through its everyday manner any desired insult is diluted beyond reasonable effect, and it borders on a delivery time that may be measured as 10 metres or more of tarmac, by which time the guilty party is already long gone, hidden by later vehicles and falling off one's immediate attentions.
My mind started working on effusion instead, incorporating half-remembered snatches of comedy sketches involving a man coming to repair a harpsichord, and an adaptation of litarary greatness that would have Jane Austen herself blushing furiously.
"Fair Sir, I fear not. I do find however that a strap-on is quite unable to deliver the same wonderful sensations with which I'm sure you yourself are so intimately acquainted."
Traffic lights notwithstanding, I would be quite tested to carry my voice 160 metres for the final words to my most expressive acquaintance. In the heat of the moment, I decided that in order to minimise further reaction time I should merely direct at him a look combining amusement and superiority, and thus the half-smirk, half-glare was created. The effectiveness of this approach is highly debatable, yet as I continued on my happy journey I detected no subsequent laughter.
Except mine.
