Combatants: one 4x4 driver, one young woman on her way to work, and one mysterious male interloper. Please see photo montage. Yes, we know that the man is represented by a Severus Snape doll from Harry Potter, and the girl by Hermione Granger, but it was surprisingly hard to Google images of full-length figures and these were the only ones we found.
Location: The junction of Mount Pleasant Road and High Street, Tunbridge Wells, Kent. The high street is the superhighway of what is known as the village – yes, every town has a 'village', particularly ones where people want to sell their property for more than would otherwise be askable.
The skinny: The young woman was crossing the road when she had to dodge out of the way of a tweedy middle-aged driver behind the wheel of a 4x4 (isn’t that what those high-uppy vehicles so popular in Chelsea/Chiswick etc are called? People in well-off areas love these things. If you go to Sevenoaks you think that some kind of biblical flood is imminent, so high up do the locals sit in their vehicles).
Anyway. The young woman called out some kind of mild protest, the driver responded that there was no crossing there, and the woman replied that the driver had not indicated, which the driver denied.
Then! Some kind of angry maverick in his 30s suddenly appeared and randomly shouted that the 4x4 driver was driving too fast.
Curveball!
He audaciously attempted to turn the argument from “lack of indication or crossing” to “excess of speed”. He’s not a jobless eco warrior for nothing.
There was a bit of protesty-protesty ad libbing between all parties, spiced up by the angry young man briefly walking in the path of the 4x4. Foolish! People who own these things spend a fortune in the hope of one day being able to run someone over.
Level of vehemence, out of 10: 4/10. This was a very Tunbridge Wells dispute of the day, although the man’s physical intervention was fairly racy.
Was it in the modern style, ie ridiculous in all senses? Yes, tempers escalated ridiculously quickly, from zero to a hundred within seconds, and everyone felt righteous.
Who was in the wrong? We didn’t see the original incident so we can’t comment. But the driver.
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