I don’t get irritated too often. However, some things do rub me entirely the wrong way. My pet peeve, as anyone who has seen me negotiate the sidewalks of Edinburgh during Festival season will know, is bad walking. I dislike it even more than bad driving, maybe because it’s so much less potentially fatal. (That makes sense in my brain.)
Here, then, is a rare Proclamation of Religious Truth from the Holy Church of Leon (God and true-King-of-France).
Venal walking sins:
Scenic walking
The sinner is more interested in looking around himself than in looking where he’s going, and he isn’t trying to minimise his impact on other pedestrians. Scenic walkers stop unexpectedly and generally move slowly, which can cause minor traffic disturbances on a low-usage pavement and severe clotting on a busy pavement.
Text veering
The sinner is so busy texting that she doesn’t realise she’s moving in a diagonal, until she does, when she overcompensates and starts moving in the other diagonal. Repeat at unpredictable intervals.
Jittering
The sinner is weak of spirit and freaks out every time he realises there are other human beings also walking in the same area. Can be counted on to move the wrong way when approaching someone, to pause an inordinately long time when turning a corner into someone’s way, and generally to make everything hard for everyone by trying not to bother anyone.
Mortal walking sins:
Slow-downing
The sinner is walking along at a reasonable pace, and then she slows down a bit. Then she slows down a bit more. Then she slows down a bit more. Then she finally comes to a complete halt. Throughout this entire exercise, she never once looks behind to see if she is inconveniencing anyone. On a busy pavement, where overtaking can be difficult, being stuck behind a slow-downer is very frustrating indeed.
Erraticising
The sinner is all over the place. Changing speed, changing direction, turning unexpectedly and without checking for other people. This sin combines unpredictability with a complete disregard for other pedestrians. Erraticisers are the leading cause of pedestrian collisions, which you’d think would teach them to stop their erraticising, but somehow this doesn’t happen.
Wide Pavementing
Taking up the entire width of a pavement without being aware of people moving faster than you is walking’s greatest sin. Usually this takes a group of people, but narrow pavements can be occupied by one person with a bag.
This sin is most often committed by the slow. A particularly frequent sinner formation is the husband-and-wife wide-bottom no-awareness pair, but also common are the three-blind-old-ladies, the seven-clueless-teenagers, and the two-arrogant-bastards.
If anyone ever has to step into the road to get past you, then you have committed this terrible sin, and you WILL go to hell.
17 thoughts on “BAD WALKING”
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Amen brother.
Goddamm those Wide Pavementers. Mostly I get stuck behind the Two Arrogant Bastards and I hate them. I hate them a lot.
Yesterday when I was walking home, someone just behind me was keeping pace. Thinks I, “Sa ha! They would like to pass,” it being quite a narrow footpath, yet twice I found a slightly wider bit and stepped out of the way so that the follower wouldn’t have to go on the road. She just stopped and waited for me to get going again.
Two words. Pavement. Rage.
It’s one of my pet hates too.
I love it when people are walking towards me in a group, taking up the entire footpath, and refuse to move to one side or disperse but instead expect me to walk either onto the road or into the wall so they can continue walking four abreast.
The fact that they are usually Grey Power age is no excuse. “Respect for your elders” my arse – it takes a lot more than avoiding the Grim Reaper for 60+ years to earn MY respect!
Senile pricks. I shoot them with my meat gun! (You can bite them with your attack womb, if appropriate.) (This is a Transmet reference, not mere scatology.)
You’ll get locked up for shooting old ladies with your meat gun in public.
Who said they were ladies?
Not strictly a walking sin, but I once keyed a shiny people carrier that was parking broadside across a very wide footpath (outside a Catholic church, what’s more!) forcing me + pram + then baby Rebecca to walk on a busy main road. This was in the UK, so naturally people I told of this episode were horrified. But I’d do it again, I tell you! Muahahahahaha!
i do all of those things and don’t care because I LOVE WALKING. my favourite way to walk is with my arms out and head looking up at the stars. call me a sinner.
Particulary good style for a beach HP
I too feel the rage, but usually at walkers who are walking the 10k course that overlaps with the end of my 21k running course. Move your (predominantly fat ass) aside fast people comming through!
I hate mountain bikers who ignore the “no mountain bikes” signs on public walks, and create huge troughs in the middle of dirt walkways with their stupid wheels.
I hope they all get their sensitive bits caught in the spokes. That way mountain bikers might stop breeding, leaving the world safe for us sensible and considerate walkers.
God, we’re all getting old and conservative… 😛
Conservatives don’t walk on dirt tracks.
Conservatives walk on concrete, as God intended.
I had the misfortune of walking behind a slow-downer down Willis Street last night at about 5:30. Between Munns and the bus stop outside the chemist they slowed to a complete stop before presumably stopping for their bus. Did they choose to step back into the waiting area along with all their fellow bus-sers? Of course not. They stood in the middle of the busy rainy footpath and decided to inconvenience other people.
Another time I saw a woman outside Eagle House (also on Willis Street) with a little suitcase-on-wheels, walking back and forth (maybe waiting for a cab). She never looked around her for other pedestrians and a guy deliberately walked into her suitcase to point out her folly.
Hey, next post can you catalogue the kinds of car drivers who piss pedestrians off?
Yeah, like drivers who honk their horn and yell at pedestrians for crossing the road they didn’t indicate that they were about to turn into?
I always used to think that indicators were to say “Hey, I’m about to turn,” but general use seems to imply that they mean “Um, I’m already turning actually” or even “Woah, I just turned!”
The ones that really annoy me are those wide-pavementing ones who upon seeing you walking towards them laden with heavy bags still insist that it is you who move out of the way for their path to continue. J-U-S_T I_F-U-R-I-A-T-I-N-G.