Two-wheeled cunts

Motorbikes are right up my pet-hate table, high as they are there in the league of all-time straight-to-your-nerve-centre annoying noises, on a par with mosquitos, in-aircraft toddler-crying and Celine Dion's voice.

Brum is simply packed with tossers riding about in their souped-up bikes, overly concerned with proving macho credentials through one-wheel swerving, left-right-and-centre overtaking and racing miles above speed limits. Race bikes, of course, are the most annoying. "Oh the freedom, maaaan", they would inform you. Freed from traffic, traffic lights and basic road rules, along with the hip pull-a-rock-chick imagery they evoke, aren’t motorbikes the coolest vehicles on earth?

Except for one, actually two, things. In 2005 motorbikes accounted for over 50% of road accidents. That's a huge amount if you think of the totality of vehicles in circulation. Coincidence? It may as well be. To me, it just proves most bike people are amongst the most selfish, self-centred, inconsiderate motorists alive (how long for?) given that it's not just their own spinal liquid they're going to spill out, but other people's too.

And that's without dwelling on the enormous noise those things produce. There are times you walk down the streets hearing industrial pneumatic drills throbbing about only to realise that of course there's no sign of road works nearby: it's just a hyper-cool souped-up bike roaring past you. And there's no way you can get sensitised. Play me the Titanic soundtrack CD everyday. I'll puke each time, like clockwork.

In Oldbury there's even more bikes around- only louder. If karma is anything to go by, the only conclusion is that my new strategically-located abode serves me just right. The sense of smugness as I signed the tenancy agreement was quickly followed by the bombshell of having a motorbike retailer as a corner shop and a bike repairs as you take a left. I'll go and have a kip.