The traffic was very heavy on the first part of my journey, very slow moving. so I was filtering down the middle of the road, carefully. Ahead of me was another cyclist who was making heavy work of going up a gentle slope, then when we came to a traffic island he went round it on the right hand side. Foolish thnks I. Another traffic island and round the wrong way he goes again. Just after that he turned off to the right, so I carefully continued on. Slowing down for the next island, as I went past it another cyclist overtook by going the wrong way round it.
As we came up to the next traffic island, he moved over to the right to go round on the wrong side again, then realised that there was something large, mostly metal and quite solid heading towards him. Whoops. Oh dear, he doesn't seem to have a plan B. Lots of panic braking, back wheel sliding. Got to let the brakes off as he's now completely sideways. Skidding again. Finally stopping with the front wheel on the traffic island. No damage done to the bike, only his underwear.
The silly thing was that he had space to go round the correct side of the island, moreso when the car that he was alongside stopped short of the island to give him space.
A few miles further on I was going along the Embankment when it got quite noisy what with all the sirens and the low flying police helicopter. Think Apocalypse Now low. Then think a bit lower still. Good job that he had two engines, because he was in danger of hoovering all the leaves from the trees into one of them. Then along came all the vehicles with flashing lights and sirens, and in the middle of them a van that must have contained losts of bad men. The lead car stopped all the traffic at a junction to allow the others through. Once we got going again, after a short distance the traffic stopped again, so I carefully filtered up the inside of the coach in front of me (it was safe, even if it moved there were parked motorcycles to give me a plan B) and when I got to the front of it, there was one of the Police Range Rovers, stopped sideways with the passenger door opened and the copper inside used his finger to signal me to stop, so I did, 'cause in his other hand he had a machine gun, so I didn't want to piss him off - think of the paperwork!
They must have been very bad men.
