Get your hand out of my mouth

Yesterday I began week 3 in the slow-cook oven which is my temporary workshop. Someone has turned it up a couple of notches since last week.

Everyone is getting edgy and tetchy in this weather, and even the countries which are used to it have stepped up the tension  in direct correlation to their country's performance in the World Cup.

My short drives to work have become a little more dangerous as people's fuses shorten in the heat. Tolerance thresholds are diminishing in relation to the increase of misjudged manoeuvres - also caused by heat fatigue.

I made one little mistake yesterday and the woman who drove toward me at dangerous speed reached for the horn before she reached for the brake. I increased her blood-pressure by giving her a cheery wave and smile as we passed each other. I deliberately conveyed no sense of remorse or apology in the two seconds available to me.

Just before Christmas last year, I had the head-on collision which wrote my car off and wrecked the front of the one ton van of the perpetrator. I am pretty sure he was using the SatNav on his phone at the time, otherwise he would have seen me in time to brake.

That crash changed the way I drive, even though it was not my fault. I find myself practising with the brake as I approach dangerous junctions, and although I hardly ever looked at my phone when driving, it now stays firmly in my pocket for every journey. One of the reasons for this is because when the van hit me, the impact was so great that the phone shot off the passenger seat and smashed against the bulkhead so hard that it turned itself off. When I managed to turn it back on again it went haywire for five minutes - the very time when I needed to contact the emergency services.

Here is a handy hint for the hot weather when people become unpredictable and erratic with loss of concentration:

You know when you approach a t-junction and cars are waiting to cross in your path to take the turning, and you are not sure if they have consciously seen you or not? Drive straight for them as if you want to hit them, then correct your course in the last two seconds.

It's a bit like shoving your hand down a dog's throat if you don't want to be bitten. All the dog can think of is 'get that hand out of my mouth', and all the other driver can think of is 'Christ - he is aiming straight at me!'

It works every time, but - sadly - not for motorcyclists.