Ely is normally a fairly gentle, pleasant place to live, so I was somewhat disconcerted by a vehicular encounter today.
In the middle of town, there is a staggered cross roads with lights controlling the right-left kink as it's not the main road. On the Giant runabout with panniers for shopping, I come up to that point to find two cars stopped at the red in front of me. I proceed to the front taking a nice safe position to pull away. First car in the line, I notice is about half a length over the stop line. As soon as the light turns yellow, he starts revving his engine and hooting his horn. I pull off as usual on th egreen as he tries to overtake me through the right left wiggle (single lane, one way streets) almost taking me out in the process whilst onlookers stare.
Discretion being the better part of "oh no here we go again", I pull into the parkimng zone to the left of the street, only to have Jeep-driving twunt pass me and then swerve in front to block me while he rages through the window mostly seeming to be how dare I go in front of him. A quick shake of the head and I proceed on my way, which seems to enrage him further.
On the third iteration I suggest that perhaps he should read the highway code sections on interaction with cyclists, cyclists taking a safe position at traffic lights and perhaps not attempt to use his car as a weapon. At his response that "i'll do it again next time, you shouldn't go in front of me, I'll fucking have you, what are you going to do about it" etc with added vim, vigour and naughty words, I'd had enough and used a naughty word or two back.
Clearly I wasn't the only one who noticed his attempts at ramming me as a random passer by asked me if I was OK. Thinking back on it, I wonder if, given our location I either looked foreign, or had "remain" plastered all over me as I can't see that my initial behaviour deserved the result.