HOW’s this for a life lesson – when the going gets tough, don’t take it out on others by losing your blob with a complete stranger…

There I was, minding my own business, negotiating the roundabout by the Tesco store at Askham Bar the other day when an oaf in a white van carved me up big style. Good job the brakes on the old jalopy are fierce enough for the bonnet to take a bow and the boot to stand to attention.

Like you do, I leant on the horn for a fraction longer than a quick parp, which clearly didn’t suit White Van Man (yes – it was he) because he slammed his brakes on too, then wouldn’t budge, straddling two lanes and daring me to try and edge past in what was clearly an angry spasm of road rage red mist.

Talk about feeling threatened and intimidated…

So much so that by the time I got home some 15 minutes later my dander was well and truly up, to the extent that I got on the phone to the company highlighted on the side of the van to complain.

Not one of my better judgements, I have to say. For I was greeted with a torrid stream of vitriolic foul-mouthed invective, was called an effing "moron" and "retard" (how I hate that word) several times and was told as a parting shot that I could stick my complaint up my effing you know what…

Crikey. Someone got out of bed the wrong side that morning didn’t they?

I’m no shrinking violet, as anyone who knows me will undoubtedly testify, but the episode left me more than a tad upset, it has to be said. Someone suggested I should report the guy to the police, but they’ve got far more important things to deal with than some apparent tosspot with a foul mouth carving up a female motorist.

Nevertheless, the Junior Manager took up the cudgels on my behalf, like all good hubbies should do, and rang back the van driver to tell him that I wasn’t in the wrong lane at all as he claimed, and that talking to anyone, never mind the wife, in the way he had done was bang out of order.

And d’you know what? It all came out about how he’d been on his way to St Leonard’s Hospice, how he’d had other things on his mind, and that being parped by me when he thought he was in the right lane had caused him to completely lose the plot because he was so incredibly worried and scared for a loved one that he didn’t know which way to turn.

We’ve all done it haven’t we? Lashed out when circumstance threatens to grind us down, lost our temper at the slightest thing and blown an event out of all proportion because there’s something far more fundamental and deeply more worrying we’re facing that’s threatening to overwhelm us.

So Mr White Van Man, as much as I hated being on the receiving end of your vitriol, I really hope whoever of yours it was needing the attention of those lovely hospice people, that they’re feeling loved, cared for and at peace during what is no doubt a difficult time. And that someone is looking after you too… 
 

EY up! I really don’t agree with that! According to a BBC online survey I will be at my happiest if I live in a place called Elmbridge. That’s near Esher. And that’s in Surrey. Which, of course, is nowhere near Yorkshire…

The predictions in the BBC survey are based on research by scientists at the universities of Cambridge and Helsinki, which plotted the personalities and life satisfaction of more than half a million people over a period of years.

And based on their findings, I shouldn’t be living in glorious Yorkshire at all but in a place full of London-commuting toffs with not a flat cap or a whippet in sight.

Add to that the fact that the place I’d be at my most unhappiest if I moved there is in the suburbs west of Glasgow and you couldn’t find me at more opposite ends of the spectrum, at least from a geographic point of view.

This won’t do. It won’t do at all. Those research boffins need to get back to the drawing board for I’ve always been extremely happy living in Yorkshire and can’t think of a better place I’d rather be. Which is saying something for a Lancastrian….