Learning How to Walk

Can I just ask - one question: why is it, that if London is a 'walking city', Londoners seem not to have an idea of how to actually go about the business of walking? I am sure most Londoners know how to get from point A to point B, using just their feet. But everytime I actually walk anywhere in the city, I am constantly frustrated by the stupidity of pedestrians. For your reading consumption, just a taste of what I find most annoying -

1) People who stop without warning to window shop, in the middle of a sidewalk. Shove off to the side, perhaps maybe even enter the store, or rubberneck it - look and walk. But suddenly pulling up short right in front of me to stop and gawk at a store window guarantees two things: I will run into the back of you and I will probably curse the woman who gave birth to you. Harsh, but stupidity should not be bred....

2) Walking slowly - or worse, standing - four abreast, taking up the whole of the sidewalk. Again, as the name suggests, you walk on it. So that gaggle of teenage girls who have decided that the four, five, etc. of them need to stroll arm in arm, side by side, down the sidewalk, makes me see red when I am behind them. Think of this as the road. There is a fast lane and a slow lane. You want to stroll, pull into the left lane, turtle, and let the bunnies whiz by you. Because if the turtles want to walk side by side, I will make it a game of red rover and barrel right on through. Politeness be damned.....

3) Children who are not on a leash or somehow under control. Ditto for families with strollers full of packages and kids running around in their general orbit. Your child is smaller and lighter than me, and likely to be in my blind spot (i.e. I do not walk, with my head constantly focused on my feet). So, if you choose to let then run amuck, they just might get trampled. And I refuse to feel sorry about your lack of control. More so if I happen to be on a mission, with heavy baggage in my arms. I know where I am going and how to get there; so should you.

I know, I know. I seem like a tractor just waiting to plow through the British public. I am actually much politer on the high street than I seem. But as I said, I often know where I am going, and how to get there. So impediments, like stupid gawking pedestrians or families out for a Sunday stroll on a Friday night down Oxford Circus means that I will be upset. And I will barrel through, shouting sorry in my wake, but not giving a damn, and cursing them all off as 'foreigners'. Even more so that me, who still calls the pavement a 'sidewalk'