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<\/b>. I dislike it even more than bad driving, maybe because it’s so much less potentially fatal. (That makes sense in my brain.)
\nHere, then, is a rare Proclamation of Religious Truth from the Holy Church of Leon (God and true-King-of-France).
\nVenal walking sins<\/b>:
\nScenic walking<\/i>
\nThe 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.
\nText veering<\/i>
\nThe 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.
\nJittering<\/i>
\nThe 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.
\nMortal walking sins<\/b>:
\nSlow-downing<\/i>
\nThe 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.
\nErraticising<\/i>
\nThe 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.
\nWide Pavementing<\/i>
\nTaking 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.
\nThis 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.
\nIf 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading BAD WALKING<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-69","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}