Racist Sheep.

Saw some weird shit down the canal this week. 

As I cycled through the misty rain I came level with a field full of sheep. This field had two distinctly different types of sheep in it, one lot black, another load white. The bizarre thing about them though was they way they had sorted themselves into segregated groups along the lines of colour. 

Holy crackers.

The white fuzzy tozzers were all in a big huddle in the middle of the field, whilst the black dudes were all in a line circling about them. It looked like some cack-covered arse racial stand off. 

I was getting my camera out to take a picture, due to thinking no one is going to believe this, when I was distracted by seeing The Kingfisher out of the corner of my eye, flying off down the canal. I forgot all about the racist sheep and rode after the elusive multi-coloured flapper. Unfortunately, His Royal Fish-breath was totally lost from sight within seconds and I just couldn't be arsed to go back to the sheep, who had probably started burning each others churches or something racist like that.

PHOTO  COURTESY  OF GOOGLE EARTH. Lucky the satellite was overhead at that exact moment, eh?

I pedalled on.

Later in my journey I came up behind a grey-haired Lycra-clad Machopath on a preposterous bright blue wafer-thin bike. It looked like at any second this feeble piece of over-engineered expensive bollocks was going to disappear up his massively over-muscled bumhole. 

As is usual, I tinkled my jolly bell and I went go around the heaving sweaty obstacle, but no! He swerved to stop me. I tried again, he sped up and swerved in front of me. I had had enough at this point, after all, I'm just trying to get to work. I blame that sideboard-ed drug-fuelled Paul Weller enthusiast Baldey Wighead, or what ever the feckles his stupid name is. Every twenker on two wheels now thinks they are riding for glory, for Britain, for gold! 

So I did what I always do at times like this; I burst into my own unique rendition of "Macho Man" by Village People, as loudly as is humanly possible.

After about a minute of this the poor arsehat gave up and let me pass, the time-wasting shattle scrangler.

Listen to me sing the song in all it's glory below:

Flies

The beautiful sunny mornings of spring have a awoken many things along my canal path route. Daffodils, Primroses and crocusses Croqueses cockasses other flowers are all lining my journey like a crowd of adoring fans (I wave regally at them as I pass). The sexy twinkle is in the eye of the sheep and cows as they pop baby things out of their front bottoms that scuttle and hop under rocks and into the caves where they grow into adulthood. Birds tweet like they are being strangled by invisible Pine Martins, desperate to attract the mate that will bring meaning to their flappy lives.


But there is one thing, or many things, or lots of the same thing, not sure which, that is/are not very nice thing/things that appear also at this season of the year.


And they are FLIES.


Flies, if you are unfamiliar, are little insects that can fly (hence the name, Einstein) and have no purpose on earth other than to hang about in the air around the canal path. This brings them into direct conflict with me. I, if you are unfamiliar with me, am a bicycle riding misanthrope.


Here are some Stat cards for you to cut out and keep:

So what's the worse thing about these airborne flappers? 

Well, it's not that they fly into your eyes and you have to spend hours when you get home picking their corpses out. It's not even when they fly up your nose or straight down the back of your throat causing you to puke your high-energy bike fuel bars up all over Timmy Toddler out for a fun scoot, scooting about on his new scooter with his scooterless family.

No, it's none of these.

It's the way that they dive, kamikaze style at my lips (I even think I heard one buzz "Banzai!" once). 

"That's not so bad, you effin' drama queen" I hear you scream. Well that's because you don't know the thing that I am about to tell you in the next line of this blog that I am writing now. 

I have to cover my lips in Vaseline so the don't dry out on my journeys and the flies become stuck to it and I end up with writhing fly-encrusted mouth parts! 

Dead flies, half dead flies, ones still crawling about amongst their rotting compatriots, all over my mouth!

I try to wipe them away, but that just pushes the fly/petroleum jelly death mix further into my open orifice. I can feel them crawling about as the struggle in their death-throes, desperate for the release of freedom or death.

People point and recoil in horror, fear and despair at the Fly Mouth Man who speaks in buzzing words of death and relentlessly hurtles passed them at speeds so speedy, only the truly damned would pedal at them.

When I arrive home I have to carefully scrape the crust of corpses carefully from my lips with care.

But I tell you, it has worked wonders for my lips, all that fly goo has left me with luscious, ever-so-kissable smackers. If only I could find some way of bottling it and selling it to posh chumps/chumpettes I would probably get rich. 

Or arrested. 

KISSY KISSY!

Questionnaire: Are you a Predator or Prey?

Do you have what it takes to take stuff and eat things in this world, or are you just some sort of mamby-pamby loser always losing? Do you live life like danger is something that happens to other people when you dish it out, or is danger something that is dished out to you by people who live life like danger is something that they dish out? If you just got mangled by that sentence don't even bother doing the test, you are prey and I am the word predator! Hahahahah!
A-hem, actually please do the test, I would apologise but that isn't what us predatory 80's guys do, we tell it like it is and if a few pathetic sheep get it in the neck then that's how it is.
Anyways, here's the test:


1: You see some hump-sack wangdangler cycling past your tree. Do you:
   a) Scamper in front of their wheels for no apparent reason
   b) Throw your nuts in their direction
   c) Wiggle your bushy tail in a deeply sensual way and tempt the unsuspecting day-glo toogler up to your treetop lair where you then split them open, run your claws through their innards in sacrifice and praise to Squirrethulu.

2: You are a Floppy-eared Rodent and you have to cross the road to get to some juicy carrots growing on the other side. Do you:
  a) Hop slowly to the centre of the road and wait for the inevitable doom that awaits us all.
  b) Get drunk on nettle wine or whatever shit Rabbits use to get effed up on, steal a car and drive across the road.
  c) Wait for someone who looks like an Bloody Hippy Animal Lover to come pootling along in their clapped-out VW camper van and run out in front causing them to swerve dangerously, spontaneously combust, and plough into a Bus queue. 


3: You are a crow. Do you:
  a) Lose all self respect and get Crusty Jugglers to feed you Sugar Puffs (see 'The Tapping of the Crow' blog entry).
  b) Eat the Rabbit that chose (a) in the previous question, narrowly avoiding getting splatted yourself (see question 2 part a)
  c) Chase some woman who has realised your master is the Antichrist, peck her eyes out so she can't see the tanker truck that smashes into her, smashing her all up in a smashed up way (see 'Damien: The Omen II).

Where the fuggle are my sugar puffs, lady?

4: You are a Crust Juggler's dog living a half feral life on the canal path. Do you:
   a) Spend your days looking soppy, getting strokes off the passing people and carefully pooing where no one will step
   b) Stake out a patch of ground with your wee and poo and woe betide anyone who enters your territory of dog hell
   c) Try and mate with anything alive, especially bicycles. 

4: You are a Magpie and your Magpie pal has just got flattened by a car. Do you:
    a) Cry for a while, then tie a load of flowers to a nearby tree with your beak and place photos of Patchy lovingly there as a shrine of remembrance.
    b) Quickly race to Patchy's nest and 'inherit' all his shiny stuff.
    c) Wait till the car has gone and go and eat Patchy's eyes.


5: You have got to get to work but some lay-about good-for-nothing lazy lay-about Crusty Juggler has left all their dirty crud, dogs and children all over the canal path. Do you:
   a) Slow your bike down and carefully pick your way through, saying a merry "hallo!" to the merry folk, as they ambush you and steal your time by engaging you in a 'conversation'. 
   b) Ride as fast as you like, certainly not slowing down, it's their look out, the path is for everyone and just now that means just you!
   c) Stop your bike and start punching stuff.


ANSWERS:


Mainly (a)'s: You are not long for this world. Your 'why can't we all just get along' attitude will not win you any friends in this dog-eat-person-on-bicycle life. It will just win you a one way ticket to No Breathing Land stopping at Pain Town and Victimsville. PREY.


Mainly (b)'s: Not so bad, you certainly stick up for yourself in the face of some serious provocation, but you lack that true killer instinct it takes to be a total arsehat wrinklehanger. NOT PREDATORY ENOUGH (keep it up, you'll get there in the end, just expunge any last remnants of human decency you have left lurking in the corners of your rotten soul.)


Mainly (c)'s: You are the pinnacle of human dick-swinging evolution, you see what you want, you take it, and if any wobble-faced jibber-jabbers get in your way then it's goodnight for them! Some people may consider you a dangerous premium grade tool, but they are just jealous of your deadly get-ahead attitude. PREDATOR.


All done? Great! Now wiz along with total disregard for other internet users to the Person on a Bicycle Facebook page and enter whether you got mostly (a)'s or (b)'s or whatever on the question thingy there and we will find out whether readers of this blog are a blood-thirsty pack of go-get-em top-of-the-food-chain type Alpha types or just a very small gathering of nicely nice people.

Death

I have seen a lot of dead stuff. Squashed dead stuff, twitchy dead stuff, dead stuff at a tube station bleeding all over the platform, dead stuff that had other dead stuff piled on top of it into a massive pile o' death. I once saw a Badger on my way home from work that I thought was sleeping everyday by the side of the road. Every day I would see it and each day it grew fatter. "There's one Badger that's finding plenty to eat each night and then coming back to the same spot to sleep each day!" I would cheerily shout to myself as I passed it. It got to a crazy mental size, then the next day it must have eaten something explosive because it had popped and badger bits were everywhere. Strange.....


BUT! I have never seen something die. Never seen the light, then the brains, go out of it's eyes, well not until tonight I had not, I hadn't.


I was making my way down one of my least favourite roads, journeying home, when I saw a skanky old rodent with big ears hopping about in the middle of the lane of carnage. This bit of highway is very thin, passing for People in Cars is hard as they have to scrape their way past me as fast as they can and narrowly avoid the People in Cars coming the other way by pushing me further into the two and a half metre stone wall that supports the railway running along side of the road. Anyway, this floppy-eared fuckwit was just hopping around like the road was Mr. McGregor's garden. I immediately started to slow so as to not hurt the dopey sniffler and tried to flag the People in Cars queuing behind me down. I'm guessing my random hand-flaps were interpreted in a different way to that which they were intended.


The engine pitch of the car behind me raised to a Nazgul scream and then it Millenium Falcon-ed past me. One of the cars tyres went slippety slappety bang right over the middle of my new best friend. In slow motion Rabbit's eyes widened and kept on widening. Its mouth opened in what I thought at first to be shock, but as it happens it turned out to be the outlet for most of Rabbit's insides. Blood, little though it was, splashed onto my top-of-the-range Gore-tex water and windproof trousers. The car moved on, and Rabbit was released. It's outstretched arms relaxed and it's head lolled to one side. Then the rear tyre went over it.


As I stood there looking down in horror, fear and despair, People in Cars driving past me, some avoiding Rabbit, some not, some beeping me, some swearing at me, I saw Rabbit turn into nothing more than a greasy black stain on the asphalt. Once all the People in Cars had gone and I was left alone, I put my feet on my pedals and rode off.


Boy, that was B L E A K.

Here's a video of a drawing I did with my pens that My Therapist said would be good for me to do.

THE TAPPING OF THE CROW

If the weather is crisp and fresh like a new packet of Golden Wonder (and not a pack that has been in a convenience store for 15 years and you were in such a hurry you forgot to check the sell by date and now you feel robbed and are having to eat bendy 'crisps'), nothing can be better than pedalling along the frosty canal path on the way to work. One such early morning presented itself recently and I saw something rather peculiar on that morning that I just mentioned.


I had just gone around a bend and into a rather secluded area of the canal, when I saw a very ramshackle excuse for a boat floating perilously in the black, thick waters, tethered to the bank. From the front of the boat, which was furthest from me and so hidden from my view, I could hear a strange, hollow, eerie tap tap tapping.


As I drew closer, in a mix of horror and fascination, I saw a large coal-black bird rapping it's beak on the glass at the front of the floating Crusty Jugglermoblie. With hideous trepidation I pulled up alongside of the demonic Crow, which ceased its ceaseless tapping and slowly swivelled it's head to stare at me, with it's unblinking jet eyes. It locked me in its feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic (warm-blooded), egg-laying, vertebrate animal gaze, opened it's beak-like mouth and then uttered what I can only describe as a croaking laugh. 


Was the monstrous Omen star laughing at me? Laughing at my face filled with horror, fear and despair? Laughing at my stupid bike gear I am forced to wear so funt-heads can see me on the roads? Laughing into my very soul, mocking my existence, echoing around the void in my heart?


My questioning was suddenly interrupted by the hatch opening on the boat and a hairy thing emerged clutching a bowl in it's claw.


"There you go, Russell, I've got our Sugar Puffs for you." and it handed the bowl to the embarrassed Crow.
All I can say is that I had the last laugh that day, a full ten minutes of laughing and pointing before the police arrived.

Who's laughing now? Not you, you Budgie banger! It's ME, Person on a Bicycle!

SNOW!

You know that white cack that falls out of the sky sometimes?


No, not bird doodoo, the other stuff, that comes out of those other, fluffy, ominous sky hangers. Yeah, you got it SNOW. Now, some people I know are desperate for it to snow, They think that it is just effin' fantastic, because it can stop them from going to work and breaks up the monotony of getting a constant work grinding.


I, on the other hand (which is covered in a top-class techno-top goretex glove, which cost me a shed-load of wonga), I am less enthusiastic. "Hey, you grouchy cokesupper!" you might shout at me across a busy street, for not liking the White Death, but this isn't the case. I like throwing balls made of the mushy crud, and sliding down hills on an old shower curtain on it as much as any toddler, but when it comes to riding my bike on it, I want to fubb it's shit up.


You see, when it drifts, ever so gently, down from the sky, the first place it settles on is the canal path. It is also the last place it will cling onto well after the rest of it has turned into brown slush puppys in the gutters. When this happens, the path turns from something quite lovely and safe to a wild place, full of primeval horror and ancient fears. Bands of starving Crusty Juggling Canal People maraud through the misty drifts with impunity, their enormous packs of snarling dogs desperately snatching meat where they can.

In snow no one can hear you scream. Well, they can, but no one gives a crap.

Trying to ride your futuristic two-wheeled space-age transport thing on snow is an acquired taste, and I've fallen off more times than I can remember now (due to head injuries), so I am not looking forward as many others to this impending wave of white and icy man-traps.


Going on the road is a total no-no. Last time I tried that my gears froze in first gear, and although I was very good at going up the shiny slopes, the 15 mile tail back of very patient and polite drivers got a bit testy when I could only do about 8 miles and hour on the flat. This led to me being encouraged  out of the clear salted strip of road and into the soft welcoming sludge at the side of it. As I lay there with the soft flakes falling onto my bewildered face, starting to bury me, all I could think of was, "I hope when I am found come spring time, and they try and straighten my frozen corpse, they don't accidentally snap my cock off."

ALL IN MY HEAD, EH?

Last night, as I was nearing the very end of the canal path part of my journey home, where it joins Winsley Hill, an incident happened that falls into the categories Dog Attack and Weird Shit.


The sky was dark, probably due to the sun being blocked out by the Earth itself (that's weird for a start), and the path at this point becomes very narrow, with a tangled hedgerow on one side, and the bottomless pit of miasmic blackness that is the canal, on the other. I have a very, very bright light on the front of my utterly futuristic bike, so even though the night was oppressively dark, my path home was totally illuminated like something lit up with a bike light. The path seemed empty, I say seemed!


Suddenly to the hedgerow side, a savage growling and gnashing of dagger-filled jaws broke out, and the sound of a hound from my twisted nightmares thudding after me came to my shocked and frightened and over-large ears. I could not see my hellish assailant though, due to the inky blackness behind me.


Now, after my previous Dog Attack by Snappy the Staff from the Dog Dispenser (see an earlier post, can't remember when, the days merge into one when you get no sleep), I have taken to wearing a dog whistle around my neck to help protect me from dog-based maulings, but this creates a dilemma: do I reach for my pathetic whistle and to go on the offensive or do I use my hands to change gear and outrun my tormentor?


All I can say is don't try to do what I did: Both.


I ended up with my head bouncing off my handle bars and actually slowing down as my unseen tormentor closed on me. Ahead was the turn off for the road that I needed to take, there I would need to stop and get off my bike to get up to the road, presenting a perfect opportunity for the creature to take some chunks.


But it didn't. 


Why? Because it had vanished! I know that is hard to believe, I hardly know whether to trust myself in my current mental state, but it is true! I scrambled up to the road bridge over the canal and shone my Super-trooper style light beam down the path: nothing! Suddenly I was filled with horror, fear and despair as I realised that I had most probably been chased by the ghost of a dog that may or may not have died on this exact spot 10 years ago to the second or some sort of spooky shit like that!

ACTUAL MIND-PHOTO OF MY ASSAILANT, EXTRACTED FROM MY HEAD BY COMEDY HYPNOTHERAPIST DERREN BROWN.

OVERVIEW MAP

   I thought it would be nice today to give the unfortunate reader of this bleurg an Overview and Map of my journey to and fro, form work and home. I will not be giving away any personal information that would allow someone or something to closely track and hunt me down. 
    I most certainly will not be showing you where I work,

who I work for,

and where I live,

with these people:

I have clearly labelled the Map with a Key to a few key incidents that have occurred during my four years of doing this trip and I will be updating it if anything else happens.

THE TAIL OF ANGLE GRINDER

   When I left work the other night it was a foggy, murky, spectral scene that met my naive eyes. I knew I needed to proceed with utter, total caution, 100% pure, uncut caution. The sounds of the night were strangely muffled, creating a dream-like, almost underwater scene before me down Brassmill Lane. 


As I pedalled slowly, slowly down the hellish road I started to draw near to Flatso the Squirrel's (see yesterday's horrific story) spot of silent vigil. Suddenly behind me, I heard the sudden roar of a car travelling rapidly in my direction. The man driving must have been in some sort of emergency, I think his wife must have gone into labour and he was rushing to the Hospital to be by her swollen sides as many men chose to do nowadays. He sped past me, I swerved to get out of his way, so not to slow him down, but I stupidly hit the curb and almost fell off, silly me! 

Suddenly the car hit a patch of clear air, hideously and dangerously giving him total vision of the road. A cat ran out from nowhere, which was actually a garden by the side of the road, and without a thought to anyone else's saftey it went under the wheels of the car. The car drove on for a while then stopped. The cat, coming out the other side, did something that filled me with horror, fear and despair. It launched silently into the air like someone had kicked it with rocket boots, landed and silently proceeded to describe ever faster, tightening circles. I could hardly beleive my cynical eyes as it ran madly in a whirlwind of doom. It then bolted like a cat on fire to a parked car and hid beneath.


I crouched down on all fours and took a look at the moggy. It's baleful eyes shone out at me, and I could see with hideous primeval  horror that the felines' tail had been bent into some pretty hilarious angles. As I attempted to coax it out with sweet words of comfort I heard a voice above me say, "Alright? I don't think I hit it."


I looked up at a man who I instantly took pity on. His tight curly mullet and denim jacket melting the permafrost around my cold, black heart. "I think maybe you did," I mumbled, "but I think it'll live. Shouldn't you go to the Hospital?"


He looked at me with an expression on his face that was a mix between confusion and fear, much like Angle Grinder, the cat under the car that had now scampered off.


"Nah, I'm fine...." he barely croaked, backed away and got into his car and sped off.


I have that effect on people.

Poor fwightened twisted pussy. RECONSTRUCTION.

FLATSO

I saw something on my way to work the other day that filled me with almost total horror, fear and despair.


I have grown unfortunately accustomed to seeing the small things of this world cruelly, but justly squished on the roads (after all, they really shouldn't be there, they pay no Road Tax after all), their bloody and torn bone-heaps littering my journeys. Avoiding their effed up carcasses can be quite a hazard. Many is the time I've quietly chuckled to myself as I swerve to bypass skidding in badger brains only to get in the busy traffic's way. "Watch out, wouldn't want me to join my flatmates on the road there!" I guffaw  to myself like an insane man.


Unquestionably, the most horrific of these victims to stupidity was one little fella I saw near to where I work down Brassmill Lane in Bath. I could see something small coming out of the road in front of me. Yes, coming out of the road! A gaping mouth (that is a bit of a theme with these guys), and arms outstretched, it was a squirrel that looked as if it was rising from the bowels of Hell itself. Squirrels are kind of grey coloured, as their name suggests I guess, and this chump was no exception. In fact, kind of road coloured. His back half had been so flattened that it looked like part of the road. Like some tarmac-based terminator reforming and then stopping reforming due to death, little nut-kins was frozen in a pose of not-quite-leaping to safety.


And all I could think about as looked down at his sad, confused, frightened, hellish eyes was, "That's one squirrel who's lost his nuts."

More horror than I can cope with. RECONSTRUCTION.

DEER ME.

The dark nights can hide some surprises.


The crisp air, fogged with moisture, clouds many mysteries. Things in the trees whisper secrets to each other and the hedgerows are alive with eyes, watching, always watching. Sometimes, something brakes this cover and that's when the shit really goes down. 

  
One such starless night I was pedalling my merry way up Winsley Hill when I rounded a corner and noticed a large dark lump on the road ahead. It was approximately the size of a small humanoid, but as I drew closer I knew this was no human I had ever seen. 


Out of the strange silhouette I started to describe two large shiny black eyes, a large wet nose, and a tongue lolling from it's open mouth. It was a deer. A dead deer. A dearly departed. I stopped next to it, and looked down on it's corpse. I knew it was dead due to the way the top half was facing in a different direction to the bottom. 


I decided to drag the deer out of the road so it would cease to be an obstacle to all the important people in their cars going on their speedy way home to have arguments and recriminations with their loved ones. The deer was heavy and still warm, but I grabbed a leg and dragged it off the road and onto the verge. It was tough going, and I was grateful for the breeze the cars racing past just inches from my head, brought to my sweaty brow from the exertion.


Once the venison was off the road, I got back to my bike and pottered off. Four seconds later something rushed past my shoulder only a hairs breadth from me, almost knocking me from my metal steed. 


Now, I'm not completely sure, I may have been mistaken, but was it the spirit of the dead deer roaring past me on it's way to antler heaven, or just some careless cakesucking fudwit in a 4x4? 


I will never know. 


Hmmm, spoooooky.

CORMO-RANT

Riding down the canal path today I stopped when I saw a Cormorant atop a dead tree.

It's wings were spread wide drying in the sun. 

As it stared down at me, looking like some huge black fell creature I was filled with horror and despair. 

Then it lost it's grip slightly, nearly fell off and I instantly felt better.

STAFFY AND THE DOG DISPENSER

There is nothing quite like travelling down the canal path, with the sunshine shimmering off the water and the birds staying at a safe distance in the trees. 


The gorgeous mud and majestic rocky peaks of the path itself make it a joyous experience. The wind in my hair, the rain on my back, the flies in my eyes. 


Yesterday as I was admiring the various canal boats with their colourful owners when I passed one that I like to call The Dog Dispenser. It was the turn of a Staffordshire Bull Terrier to be disgorged, the golden light playing on it's glossy coat and teeth. 


It greeted me with a happy growl and proceeded to lightly pound alongside me. On every down stroke on my pedal the hound playfully attempted to lock on with it's mouthful of biker maulers. 


Oh, I could have cried with joy with the pure feeling of being alive, if my soul hadn't actually been filled with horror, fear and despair. 


As the little scamp made one last lunge at my leg meat I thought, "Go on take a bite you psychotic piece of shat, it'll be your fugging funeral! I'll probably end up in a hospital bed having my hair stroked by a sympathetic (and buxom) nurse, whilst your crap-filled head will be developing a close relationship with a police marksman's bullet!"

RABBIT IN THE HATELIGHTS

As I was riding home last night up Winsley Hill, and a car overtook me on the blind turn at the top unable to see that a car was coming in the other direction, I saw a curious thing.

As the road space left to me rapidly diminished and I quickly made my peace with the universe, I had a momentary vision of a Rabbit by the roadside illuminated in the headlight's glare. It's eyes flashed like fire as it's shaking body quivered ready to run into the road. 

It was at that point that I thought, "Go on run into the road, you crazy bastard! I dare you! I will cut you in half if you get in my motherhugging way! I don't care if I orphan your thirty five children! You mean nothing to me, do you hear? Nothing! NOTHIIIIING!"

SWANS

This morning as I was locking up my bike at work, I was surprised to hear a strange whirring and honking noise in sky.

Looking up I saw five massive swans flapping in formation on some sort of low level migration route. Maybe they were a family group, all together heading for warmer climes and sunnier feeding grounds. Long necks outstretched, calling encouragement to each other, they made their slow, but graceful way across the grey misty firmament.

All I could think of as they careered dangerously out of view was how do those fat bastards stay in the air?

DREARY DEER STORY.

I was riding down the canal the other day on my way to work, when a deer came out onto the path ahead of me.

To my surprise it went into the water and swam across. I drew level with it and watched it's ungainly paddle and then it's scramble up the other side. 

It stood there shaking itself dry, then it noticed me and gracefully leapt a hedge. It turned and peeked at me, snorted in what I think was derision, and wandered off. 

What a fugging a-hole.