Major roadworks at the Bow Roundabout continue to create long queues of traffic.
They also led to me being assaulted earlier this week.
This is a queue of traffic moving very slowly in brief bursts towards the end of Bow Road. On this particular day the back of the queue was around Bus Stop M although often it goes a lot further. If you remember the seriously wet morning midweek that's when all this took place, just after the brief flurry of falling snow. I was on my way to the supermarket, which I could have done in one stop on the bus to stay out of the rain but because of the snarled-up traffic I knew it would be quicker to walk. This was my first mistake.
The passenger window of one of the cars in the queue wound down and someone threw an empty bottle out into the cycle lane. It was a 331ml bottle of Milbona Banana Flavour High Protein Drink, as sold in Lidl, but I didn't realise this at the time. Instead I was unimpressed that someone had chucked litter onto my street so I walked over to the edge of the pavement and shrugged at the occupants of the car. Not a big shrug, just enough of a gesture to make it plain that I'd noted their misbehaviour and didn't approve. Can't hurt, I thought. This proved not to be correct.
I continued down the street, noting the sounds of muffled swearing coming from somewhere behind me. I then did what I sometimes do in these circumstances which is to take a photograph of the car in question. This is the photo you saw at the start of the post. Don't bother zooming in, I've pixellated the hell out of the offending numberplate, but rest assured I do know what the registration is because that's why I sometimes take photos of offensive vehicles.
I continued down the street assuming our interaction was over. However I had failed to reckon with the roadworks at the Bow Roundabout and this was my second, third or probably fourth mistake. Normally any vehicle would have moved forwards by now, if not as far as the lights then well in front of where I was currently standing. But because of the roadworks and associated lane restrictions this particular vehicle was still behind me and going nowhere fast, thereby enabling what happened next.
A bottle of water suddenly whizzed across the pavement, hurled at speed from behind. Unlike the bottle of banana drink it was still full so spewed water as it hurtled very deliberately in my general direction. Thankfully it missed. Even better it missed by some distance and smashed into a bollard, so despite the unexpected attack I merely smiled. I then walked over and took a photo of the aforementioned bottle. I could have zoomed in but instead I crouched down and framed a shot with the bottle in the foreground and the offending car in the background. Which'd be this photo.
I was quite pleased with the composition. So pleased in fact that I'd entirely failed to notice that the passenger door of the car had opened and a very angry man was stepping out. Don't bother zooming in, I've pixellated the hell out of his face as well as the offending numberplate, but note how perfectly I've captured the split second between the door opening and his foot stepping down onto the roadway.
It took only a few further split seconds for me to realise how incredibly angry the man was and that he was now striding across the pavement towards me in a fit of rage. I can't remember what he was shouting, only that it was loud and getting louder as he made a beeline for me. I was by this point preoccupied with wondering what was about to happen and how bad it might be and whether it would hurt and if so how much and whether there'd be injuries or blood or permanent disability or whether he was instead merely coming over to shout.
And all this, remember, was because roadworks were backing up the traffic. On any normal day the car would have reached the roundabout by now and be driving off towards wherever, but instead it was shunting forward intermittently at approximately walking speed and our orbits continued to overlap. By now the passenger ought to have been a very long way from his original bottle-chucking location but instead he was still close by and knew he had sufficient time to storm over and harass me before his car moved another inch.
They've been busy under the flyover this week, laying the tarmac on what will be the new third lane at the end of Stratford High Street. They're also adding the new kerbstones - chunky near-white cuboids lifted from a pre-delivered stack, all of which must be laid with precision and perfectly flat. The western side of the roundabout also now has a fresh line of kerbstones along its new third lane, plus a curved block on the corner and wheelbarrowfuls of something sandy ready to fill in behind. I blame all of this and the disruption it's caused.
But I digress.
My assailant was in his late 30s and sturdily built, probably a gym-goer. If I'd clocked the banana protein drink bottle earlier I'd have been more sure, and perhaps also even more worried. He was also getting closer at a rapid rate, still furiously, and it is just possible I was wibbling like a small child by this point. It didn't help, he walked straight over and he headbutted me.
Time froze for brief moment and then carried on. Oh good, I thought, I'm still alive. Oh good, I thought, at least he didn't punch me. Oh good, I thought, that didn't particularly hurt so I guess he didn't hit me very hard. He must have made contact because my earbud fell out and my glasses fell off and landed on the pavement. But I was anticipating serious damage and it didn't happen, or at least it didn't seem to have done, almost as if he was an expert in looking menacing and knowing quite how far he could push it without doing permanent damage.
"I hope you weren't videoing me," he said and I assured him I wasn't. I may still have been mildly gibbering at this point but I was interested that video was his default assumption. Now he'd mentioned it yes that would have been a better option, I would have had proper evidence of his wild strop and imminent assault, but instead all I had was one blurry image showing a slightly open door. Next time I'll know better, better perhaps being not to record anything at all.
And then he walked back to his car, climbed inside and initially didn't go anywhere. I therefore suspect he watched me hunting for my glasses on the ground, where thankfully they hadn't smashed or been stamped on, only slightly bent on one arm where they'd hit the tarmac. I also looked for my missing earbud, the plastic cap that ought to have been covering the tiny loudspeaker, but I couldn't see it anywhere. And then I carried on walking to the supermarket.
I worried that the angry car might catch up with me before I got to the roundabout but the congestion was so bad that walking pace was easily faster. By the time I saw them again I was on the other side of the roundabout and they were heading through the last set of lights towards the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road, now in a flow of traffic ensuring they couldn't have stopped even if they'd wanted to. They therefore didn't and it was all over.
On my way home from the supermarket I spotted the offending bottle in the road and snapped a final photo, just before a street sweeper rolled along and brushed it from view. If only I'd ignored it first time round, I realised, I'd never have set in chain the sequence of events that led to me being assaulted in the street. Technically of course the bottle drop kicked things off, but it was my decision to react that caused events to snowball. It sends a bad message that the safest thing to do when someone chucks litter out of a car window is not to respond and simply to let them get away with it.
I checked for bruising on my head and there wasn't any, doubling down on the fact it hadn't actually hurt. I checked the bend in my glasses and it was only minor, not enough to affect sight or stability, merely a small permanent reminder of that time a stranger climbed out of a car and nutted me. And I eventually found my missing earbud lodged in my ear canal, nudged in far enough to make it very hard to remove but thankfully with enough clutchable surfaces that it eventually came out without doing any damage. I'd been lucky.
I'm not expecting to see the black Vauxhall Astra again, nor do I expect the angry man would recognise me in a different context. But it has been a salutary lesson that some people have hair-trigger aggression and you never do know who they are until you set them off. It also showed me that a potentially life-changing situation can flare up in seconds, and all thanks to a misjudged response to a minor offence, and sometimes it'd be much wiser just to let the bastards win.
I'm fine thanks, no harm done. But the roadworks at the Bow Roundabout can't be over too soon.
