2009-10-08 - The Urban Meanderthal

There is a special place in hell reserved just for those people that I affectionately call Meanderthals. They are thos people that wander slowly and aimlessly down the pavement (sidewalk for our cousins across the waters), normally right in front of you, normally 2 or 3 abreast, normally during very a very busy shopping morning and almost certainly when you need to be somewhere quickly.

Maybe I will mellow as I get older, maybe these things will not annoy me so much as time goes on, but for now I find it the singular most irritating thing in the world!

Bimbling along down a busy street, not paying attention to where you are going, not allowing enough room for those of us with more mobile aspirations to get past, it is even worse when they also belong to the sub-genome of Meaderthal known as Stoppus-Oftenus, the ones that feel it necessary to stop evey 12feet to talk, check in a handbag or tend errant offspring that might be showing signs or normality and marching off in a straight line somewhere.

On the other hand I suppose I should envy them, they clearly have so much free time on their hands that they have managed to achieve all of the weeks goals already and have no pressing need to be anywhere or do anything, which must be why they engage in this most peculiar of pass-times of basically doing nothing but getting in the way of people that do actually need to go somewhere. I personally hate trying to negotiate the weekend shopping crowds, but I can see that there might be a perverse pleasure to be had from being as obstructive as possible to the masses.

I am therefore left wondering if it is a deliberate ploy, whether they do this all the time, or if there is a huge conspiracy against me and that no-one else suffers from this particular affliction of getting stuck behind small groups of people that seem to have the navigational and intellectual skills of a used teabag.

Another one of lifes little mysteries that I suspect I will never resolve...