An article on the Guardian website today inquires about the relationship between rollerbladers and cyclists, with the rather preemptive title: Why can't cyclists and rollerbladers get along? Strange that the author, a rollerblader, then goes on to admit that "overall we do get on", partly due to "common enemies on every front", including "bad lighting" and "cracked pavements".
I'm not sure about the pavements - cyclists shouldn't be cycling on them. I'm even less sure about the point of the article, other than to attract readers of course. It seems to follow a familiar Guardian template. Rule number 1 is to polarise issues as much as possible - hence the title and the author's rather cryptic description of a one-off incident that took place on a cycle path along the Serpentine, when "cyclists, lots of cyclists, were coming at me, in front of me and behind me. I kept getting bells chiming in my direction - and they weren't playing Happy Birthday".
Rule number 2 - because it's the Guardian, a slightly nicer newspaper - is to follow up this antagonism with an insufficient dose of moral reassurance; not enough to dispel the faint sense of anxiety resulting from the suggestion that everyone seemingly hates each other, but enough to make the reader feel better about that spurious fact.
For what it's worth, I say well done to rollerbladers for beating the traffic in their own idiosyncratic way. Mind you, blades are nowhere near as good as bikes.
