"I'm NOT an idiot!" - "Are you sure about that?"

I'm still trying to figure out why a certain cyclist believes he is not an idiot.

This happened about a month ago. There I was, leading a walk, when all of a sudden, I saw a cyclist hurtling determinedly towards us. "He's got to stop soon," I thought to myself. "He's got to stop some time." Then a second later, "Why isn't he stopping???" And I cannot remember what I said to the woman walking next to me, but I do know that I used the word 'idiot', which happens to be the same word in German, just with a capital letter, i.e. "Idiot". 

At this, the cyclist finally came to an abrupt halt. "I am not an idiot," he stated. What was said then, I cannot remember at all. 

At one point, however, I looked behind me to see what the cyclist could see and what I saw was this: 17 grown people, two large metal barriers, staggered and designed to force cyclists to dismount from their bikes, a narrow path only wide enough for two people and a slope, since we were on the side of a hill. And this "I am not an idiot" person thought, "Oh, it's okay. I'll just cycle through this crowd of people and metal barriers on a narrow path on the side of a hill."

For the next few nights, every time I closed my eyes, I had visions of the cyclist slipping and sliding into at least two people and throwing them down the slope. Would this "I am not an idiot" cyclist have looked after anyone with a broken leg? Would he have paid compensation for pain or loss of earnings? 

What if we had had a dog with us that might have leapt up as he passed, thus causing him to skid? What if one of us had some condition that meant he or she had jerky movements, which might have startled him - and caused him to skid? What if one of the 17 of us had not seen him coming as they were watching where they put their feet or looking at their phone and stepped in his path?

All this went through my mind as I saw this moron cycle towards us, but he himself saw 17 people, two metal barriers, a narrow path and a slope and thought: "Perfectly safe, I'll just cycle through all this."

What an idiot.

Exploding eggs

You know how they tell you not to put whole eggs into the microwave because they'll explode? Well, I have no microwave - much to the shock of my former Japanese hairdresser who asked what I did with any leftovers of a meal - to which I replied "What leftovers?". No, I don't have a microwave but I have still managed to make three eggs explode within the last week.

And how did I manage that, you may well be asking. Well, I'll tell you. Just put a pan with lots of water and an egg or two on to boil and forget all about it. Eventually, from another room, you'll hear a small explosion and you will realise that, once again, you've let a pan boil dry, which is why the eggs have exploded. 

The first two were still edible, the third wasn't, so I gave up and bought pre-boiled painted eggs from the supermarket. Not so nice as warm eggs, but I won't have to fear the destruction of yet another pan.

The safer option.