So I was riding back from visiting friends in Preston and pulled into Sandbach Services for a rest stop; I pulled up under a petrol station awning, stripped-off my lid, and swigged some water.

Some distance behind me I heard a honk, and saw a bus heading for the HGV park-up area, being gesticulated-at by a white van man (WVM) who was giving said bus-driver the finger, and a lot of verbal besides. On the road you expect to see that sort of thing a bit, but what you don’t expect is for the WVM to orbit the petrol station, pull up in front of the bus, and start giving the bus driver even more hassle.

This was beginning to look a bit more interesting, so I got my camera out…

…and shot some video; for a few minutes the WVM-troll gave the bus-driver a piece of his mind and was just getting back into the van when his passenger – I think his son – pointed me out with the camera. This was an affront to his dignity; with a loud “Oi!” he stomped over and demanded to know what I thought I was doing, taking pictures?

“Because I can and I wanted to”, was my measured response.

This set him off properly – “you don’t take any pictures of me without my permission, what are you, some kind of fucking nonce, yeah i’ll bet that’s what you are, aren’t you, some fucking poofy nonce, that you like to take pictures of little kids don’t you, that’s what you’re like, you’re nothing but a fucking”… it was all rather tragic and amateurish, really, this little wannabee British Bulldog with his veins bulging out on his neck, staring up my nostrils trying to get at me, trying to get me to swing a punch so he’d get the fight he wanted and yet claim it was self-defense.

I kept cool, unengaged, and kept my arms folded and watched him, knowing (a) how many CCTV cameras got my back, and (b) that I was wearing body armour and he wasn’t. What kind of hyper-testosteroned idiot do you have to be, to want to try something like this?

His son came over – smart kid – and sought to defuse the situation, telling me to “go and pay for [my] petrol” – nice try, alas I hadn’t filled-up and there wasn’t a pump within a 5m radius – so he told his dad that I was “just a busybody”, a label that I was happy to accept and agree with him. I watched him drag his father off and them get back into the van – however that spun it back to square one as – frustrated and still high on adrenaline – he stomped back over and told me not to stare at him, you don’t fucking stare at me, etc, etc…

The whole scenario went past again, more boring this time, but at double speed. The kid extracted him with a “it’s not worth it, he’s not worth it“. They drove off.

If this is any measure of the wider world, you can keep your teenage anti-hoodie ASBOs, it’s not the kids who are the problem, it’s the grown-ups who lack enough self-respect to not go around trying to extract it from others.

If anyone reading this is thinking of write a “what did you think you were doing?” piece, please don’t bother. I observe. It’s what I do. And yes, I did get his license plate.

If it’ll make you feel any better, I subsequently broke down, twice eventually requiring a flatbed lorry to get me the last few miles to my house. I finally got to bed at 2am.

And today, I taught my Dad how to use a mouse, a drag-bar, and the close-window button on a web browser.