There's a ribbon in the willow and a tire swing rope

That Canadian trip, that was some good shit. I did not entirely fuck up my various wedding speeches, using the age old technique of picturing my audience naked and masturbating each other. Father Finbar was clearly less nervous, but somewhat more absent-minded, briefly forgetting the existence of myself and my sister. His subsequent squirming beneath the outrage of my not remotely evil stepmother Janice was a joy to behold. My brother Pinkfloydsucks, having undertaken the disposal of six bottles of unused Merlot by use of his mouth hole alone, then 'accidentally' set fire to a tree in the family garden. Harry, my other under-married brother, decided that a dramatic dousing with champagne was the only solution. Ah, the excess. Three firefighters looked on, unimpressed by the inferno but amused by the attempts the cope with it. I am unsure as to whether their commitment to off-dutyness would have stretched to a burning house, but I like to think that it would. The bride remained radiant and completely flame free throughout.

There was cycling, natch. I climbed for two hours to a ski resort on a somewhat unsuitable triathlon bike, forgetting that ski resorts are quite high up and thus really, really fucking cold. My flimsy short-sleeved jersey failed to deal with the sub-zero temperature and my descent, always destined to be dodgy on an umfamiliar and unwieldy frame was transformed to death-defyingly treacherous by my uncontrollable shivering. The logging trucks weren't a great help either. And yet I lived to B.C. bud it up, see Othello (the black guy gets it), and beat my baby sister at pig basketball. All in all a wonderful week.

And that is why I don't send postcards.

I study him for the cuts, the scars, the pain no time can erase, I move hard to the left and I strike to the face

Let me throw you a hypothetical folks. Catch it if you can on the outside it's Brinker and underneath the Brinker, it's shit-ty. Say you're driving. Just tootling along, doubtless with the cruise control set to 10k per hour below the speed limit. You see a car ahead, on the right (let's assume this hypodermical is taking place in France) waiting, in stationary mode, to pull out when you pass. You just keep driving. I know. But let's say that there's yet another dimension to this hypochondriacal. You are batshit insane and convinced that every driver is as crap and careless and crass and blind as you and therefore that an automobile waiting in a slip road is almost certain to pull out in front of you, the clearly driving too slow batshit insane guy.

That's our scenario.

Do you:

a) Slow even downer, keeping both hands on the wheel so that you might avoid this potentially fatal collision.

or

b) Speed up, remove one hand from the wheel, and place it on the horn, working, one supposes, on the assumption that a car horn is some kind of highly advanced disintegration ray that targets potential obstacles. And do you do this every single fucking time this situation or anything vaguely resembling it presents itself? And do you also feel the need to announce every single fucking time that anyone is getting into the car "I'm not trying to rush anyone, I'm just getting the air conditioning going." Do you, in fact, announce this over forty times in the space of ten days as if nobody got it the first time?

If you answered 'b', then I am afraid that we are enemies, you and I. Not because of the bullying, the manipulation, the selfishness thinly disguised as selflessness bit. No, not because of those. Because of the air con horn thing.