overlap

Thinking of the witty retort you should have offered when you're halfway down the stairs and the moment has already passed is hardly a new phenomenon, but I've had a couple of moments of it this week. Most notably when I was involved in another encounter with a motorist intent on breaking the law and endangering me in the process. I'm big enough to take care of myself on the roads, and in this case I definitely gave as good as I got, but immediately after the event there was a very tiny part of me wishing I'd chased the guy up the road and tried to reason with him about driving more sensibly, though I suspect that would have merely prolonged the confrontation. I's not big, and it's certainly not clever, but happily it is a reflection of my nature that I'm generally slow to react to most stimuli. Partly down to deliberate efforts to avoid the sort of hair trigger temper that is common across the generations on both sides of my family, and partly down to the fact I'm frequently lost in thought or otherwise less engaged in whatever's going on around me. Fleeting reactive moments aside, and knowing what the volatile alternative brings with it, I have no good reason to wish I was any other way. But while I'm on the subject of reactions to circumstances, I should point out that I'm now listening to the new album by the Cosmic Rough Riders, who I saw a couple of weeks ago. Which isn't relevant in itself, except that today I went in to my local independent record shop at a moment where they were playing one of my favourite albums on the shop stereo, and having stayed for over half that album, I had to buy something just so I could get out of there, so I'm not completely insensible to the world I live in!