I am walking down the street, carrying bags. A LOT of bags. Bags slung over my shoulders. Bags in both my hands. Bags heavy laden with all manner of bulky stuffs. Basically, I am more bag than person. You are walking down the street, carrying no bags. Not a single one. You’re walking with a friend. Your friend has no bags. You’re talking to each other. Loudly. I’m walking towards you. You’re walking towards me. We’re walking towards each other. I see you. You see me. We’re getting closer now. I’m still bagged up to the eyeballs. You’re still talking. We’re inches away from each other. We both see each other. I wait for the move. The silent sidestep. The fluid fallback. The effortless act of “we’ll-stop-taking-up-all-the-footpath-so-that-you-can-pass-by-without-being-forced-onto-the-road-or-into-the-nearest-hedge”. I wait for the move. I wait…

Needless to say, I don’t get the move. Not the courteous one anyway. No. I get the other move. The “we’ve-seen-that-you-have-loads-of-bags-but-we’re-not-gonna-move-over-instead-we’re-gonna-bump-into-you-forcing-you-onto-the-road-and-then-we’ll-give-you-evils-for-bumping-into-us” move. Classy.

I get treated to this every time I’m hauling bags back from town. And it’s not just overly vocal locals that elbow me into traffic or hedgerows and then chastise me for walking into them. Oh no. Buggy wielding mums, pavement hoarding cyclists, even the lone pedestrian with no visible distraction at all seem to be jumping on the ignorance bandwagon. I have bags people, and they are heavy. How hard is it for you to move over a little bit so that we can both walk freely along the pavement, without me being mowed down by a bus or ending up upside down in a holly bush? Really, how hard is it? The pavements are big enough for the both of us. Or so I thought. Street wars? Certainly down my street there are. You wanna mess with this? I got bags baby. And very pointy elbows. Bring it!