My knight(ess) in shining cotton

Angus and I were driving a huge load of my extraneous crud to a charity shop in town this afternoon.  There is a certain set of traffic lights - three in succession - that are almost always completely backed up.  They work as a funnel, so that the first one (which has three lanes) feeds into the second (which only has two lanes), which feeds VERY shortly into the third (which only has one lane).  As a result, the left-hand lane is almost always backed up a long ways leading into the first set of lights - usually to a 0th set of lights, in fact.  Today was one of those days, as it turns out that Gloucester RFC had its first match of the season this afternoon (they lost).

I slowly worked my way up to the first set of lights in the lefthand lane, but was forced to stop (despite a green light) because there was no space for me to pull into on the other side of the intersection.  So I very legally and correctly stopped on the near side of the intersection, waiting for either space to appear or the light to go red (the more likely option).  The guy behind me REALLY didn’t like that at all.  He honked.  And honked. And honked again.  And again.  Resolutely I sat.  Finally the light turned red, as both he and I knew it would, and I watched the far side of the intersection clear up as the next set of lights turned green.  (This really is the most horribly-timed set of lights I think I’ve run across in a LONG while.)

While we were sitting, waiting for the light to go green again, I glanced in my rearview mirror.  I was tickled absolutely pink to watch a 70-80-year-old-woman walk up to the passenger window of the car behind me, tap on the window, and then, once it was down, proceed quite obviously to berate the driver for being so obnoxious.  From the gestures, and what little I could hear of the conversation, it was obvious that he was saying that I should have pulled into the intersection, so that both he and I could have gotten through on that set of lights (never mind the traffic coming into the intersection, which would have been blocked); she was just as obviously saying something to the effect that I had done exactly as I should, and that you aren’t supposed to pull into an intersection unless you can continue out of it without running a light or blocking traffic.  The guy got more and more grumpy looking.

I have no idea who the woman was, but I could have hugged her.  Actually, as I said to Angus, “I want to buy her a milkshake!”  I have no idea why a milkshake seemed an appropriate reward for having the gumption to bawl out someone for being a jackass, but it did.