She swoops in like a kestrel after a field mouse. Round and round, in and out. She trails her Bag For Life like a pennant on a battleship. She’s on the pavement, mums with prams are but a challenge. Teenagers gawp; I recoil. And she’s off in a waft of Estée Lauder. Is that a smile I see on her face? It’s hard to tell because she’s doing 40 in a 30 zone.
E-scooters get a bad rap. The reason is because teenagers ride them. And as we all know a teenager on a motorised vehicle that goes like the clappers is a recipe for doom. Recently my nephew, nominally a sensible sort, came off one. He was giving his mate a backie, hit a tree stump, flew off and it was Goodnight Vienna. His leg snapped like a lolly stick. There were ambulances. There was ketamine administered at the roadside. And a coterie of worried grandparents gathered around him. The problem is kids are feckless. They’re too close to the womb to know better. Pensioners, conversely, are too close to the sepulchre to care. There is an equality of madness.
