ONE morning last week I was sitting in a traffic jam enjoying, as usual, listening to politicians on Radio Ulster unashamedly talking in riddles, when my eye was drawn to the car in front. The lone occupant of the vehicle was having a conversation with someone on the other end of his mobile phone and seemed unaware that he was drawing perilously close to the car in front. Powerless to act, I saw his car shudder gently as the front bumper made contact with the rear of the preceding car. Jolted from his mobile, he did what all good citizens would in this predicament; he swiftly got rid of the phone and assumed a posture of innocence.

However, he was little prepared for the reaction of the driver in front. Before I relate what transpired, it is important to point out that the driver of the dented car had four children, at various stages of development, fighting amongst themselves in the back. This was a bad sign. It indicated to me that the man had probably reached the end of his tether long before he was dunted from behind. This small accident could prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. And this indeed proved to be the case.

Watching with undisguised glee, I observed the injured party leap from his vehicle and throw himself bodily onto the bonnet of the car that had interfered with his rear. Pummelling the bodywork, he hurled foul language at the hapless occupant who had taken the precaution of sealing himself in by winding up his window and presumably activating the childlocks. The maddened driver then attacked the other driver’s door with his boot.

To cut a long story short, wiser counsel prevailed in the form of adjacent drivers who emerged from their cars and attempted to calm the maddened man down. Eventually, nearby police were alerted and the fun was regrettably over. I realised that I was witnessing a classic case of Road Rage.

Watching the RUC at work, I was reminded that I was once nearly arrested for doing the opposite. I was once interrogated by the police for committing the lesser known crime of Road Calm. This is what happened. A number of years ago, when the world was young and innocent, I embarked on a routine journey from Stroke City to Belfast driving a 2CV. For those of you with short memories, let me remind you that a 2CV is basically a biscuit tin with an engine. The bodywork is so fragile that if contact is made with any semi-solid object whilst driving at a speed in excess of 30 miles per hour, the driver must be prepared to, as the Americans say, kiss his ass goodbye.

Skilfully negotiating the Glenshane Pass, I couldn’t help but notice that great billows of black smoke were emerging from the front of the car. Naturally, I stopped and lifted the hood whereupon huge flames leapt from the engine. I swiftly repaired to the other side of the street and watched the car burn, returning only to hurriedly rescue a BBC tape recorder from the boot before the flames devoured it. Standing on the other side of the road witnessing the inferno, a car pulled up beside me. The driver leaned out and said, with a typical Ulster understatement: “Wee bit o’ bother?” “Yes,” I tersely replied. “Want me to get the Fire Brigade in Magherafelt?” he offered. “Yes,” I replied. “But tell them to take their time.” I was no fool. I wanted the car to burn properly for insurance purposes.

Disappointingly, the Fire Brigade arrived almost immediately and doused the flames but, thankfully, only a charred frame remained. The firemen kindly offered me a lift back to their base. As I stood in the fire station whistling unconcernedly and calmly wiping the soot from my Standard Issue BBC tape recorder, a young policeman approached me. “You the owner of the burnt car?” he inquired. “Yes,” I replied breezily. He looked at me suspiciously. “You don’t seem too concerned about it,” he said, eyeing me up and down. “Should I be?” I replied. “Nobody was hurt.” He furrowed his brow. “If something like that happened to my car I’d be upset.”

Time for a few home truths, I thought, perhaps foolishly. “Well, I’m not upset,” I replied. “You see, I’m used to it.”Let me explain. I live in the centre of Derry City. Therefore, in the course of the past six months my mother’s house has been bombed, my own marital home was also blown up, I had to run past a primed bomb that was planted in the lobby of the place where I used to work, my local pub was torched when I was standing at the bar having a small malt whiskey, and another house I was living in was burgled and set on fire. The loss of a 2CV is… nothing!”

There was a silence. He gently grasped my arm and said: “I’ll have to ask you to accompany me to the station for further questioning.” I followed like a lamb. I was eventually told that I was free to go. A close shave. The moral of this story? Road Rage can get a man into trouble but Road Calm is not much tolerated either…

Originally published in the Belfast Telegraph