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| Not how it's done |
I was never good at shooter games. I was good at that game Toad. When game consoles were the size of your face and made up of just a few pixels, the aim of this game was to get your ‘toad’ (a square) across the road by moving into spaces before the cars (rectangles) reached you. So instead of becoming a solider, I became a jaywalker.
My personality suits jaywalking – i.e. navigating the road on my terms, rather than being dictated to by crossings and lights. I am very impatient. I don’t like being told what to do. I’m decisive. I walk alone a lot. And I’m often running just behind schedule enough that waiting a whole minute at the side of an empty road will switch me from bang-on-time to actually late.
I’m not here to tell you to start jaywalking: that would be against the blogger’s code of responsibility to readers. It’s not illegal in Britain, but then neither are fireworks or teaching yourself how to do backflips on the home trampoline or piercing your own ears. But like all these things, if you have a sneaking suspicion that you might not be very good at it, you probably shouldn’t try it. And if you are going to do it, do it like a boss.
Family members, fiancé and future medical insurers: stop reading now. For everyone else, here’s how to jaywalk.
You may be a sloth in your resting life, but when you are crossing the road, you are a gazelle. Think gazelle. Be gazelle.
Gazelles know that crossing a road is not the time to check your phone/stare at the sky/tie your shoelace/read just one more page of your book. Have you ever seen a gazelle pausing to check Google maps while it’s springing across the savanna?
You need to be focussed on moving across that treacherous river without being snapped up by a crocodile. By which I mean getting over the road without being knocked down by a lunatic on a Deliveroo bike. Save the cat video for your lunchbreak, or wait for the green man.
Always check the side roads
Side road traffic is like love and periods and cravings for new potatoes: it appears when you least expect it, with potentially dramatic results. Even if you’ve walked across the same road every day, always check there is nothing coming. One day there will be and it won’t hit you because you remembered this rule, and you will feel a weird sense of pride, relief and invincibility.
Be decisive
You’ve done the necessary calculations and decided you can make it. Go now: another half a second and the car crawling along 10 metres away has found the accelerator and you have to re-evaluate the whole thing.
Never follow a stranger over the road
Like the adult version of stranger danger. Even if they look like they have this jaywalking thing down to an art (and it is an art, darling), don’t follow them. They could be high or unfamiliar with the concept of cars or just an idiot. Plus they’re only looking out for themselves – you follow them two seconds later and the situation has changed. You are the master of your own fate. Yes, you. Not that guy strolling confidently in front of the No. 76 without a care in the world.
Drivers have feelings too
Yes, the rumours are true: drivers are actually human and they need to get somewhere as well. Take advantage of a momentarily clear road and sloooow vehicles, but don’t walk out when they’re accelerating towards a green light and expect them to stop. And save ‘Hey, I’m walking here!’ for moments of justified outrage.
Learn to read traffic
With focus, study and practice you can become a Jedi of the road. Or a Sith, if that’s what you’re into. That driver isn’t indicating, but have all the other cars ahead of them turned towards you? Which way are they spinning the wheel? How long does it take for the lights to go green after the red man has appeared? It becomes a big puzzle you get to piece together.
Crossings are a conspiracy
I’m going to destroy everything you believed about society, the nature of the universe and the order of life. Don’t bother pressing the button at most pedestrian crossings. Like the ‘close doors’ button in lifts, most are put there just to make us feel like we have some control over our lives. Don’t buy into the lie. Truth is beauty. Ugly, sad, twisted beauty. Instead, find the nearest CCTV camera and stare accusingly.
Buses are slow
Although the phrase ‘What happens if you get hit by a bus tomorrow?’ is often used to force people to consider their own mortality, they are far from the being the scariest vehicles on the road. They're like Great White sharks: they're big and tough up close, but this hyperawareness also means you’re more likely to avoid them. Of course you should still look out for them, but it's hard to overlook something bright red that accelerates at the speed of a morbidly obese walrus and stops every 100 metres.
Beware professional drivers
Taxi and van drivers’ livelihoods depend on getting through traffic. They therefore have no tolerance for anyone else being on the road. It can appear that they are playing a game of human bowling, in which you are the pins. Some will accelerate straight at you. They are most likely to beep and shout wildly unimaginative swear words. Treat them with the caution you would grant to a rabid dog on speed who has spotted you wearing Lady Gaga’s meat dress.
Think bike
If you’re crossing between cars stuck bonnet to trunk in a traffic jam, always, always, check that there’s not a Lycra-clad speed demon weaving through the middle or up the side.
Cycling in London is scary, which means that some cyclists see themselves as gladiators pitched against everyone else on the road. They will not deign to inform us which way they plan to veer off to next. Red lights and one way streets and laws about riding on the pavement do not apply to them.
To avoid getting a spoke through your leg, listen out for the sinister sound of spinning wheels and for the bells they're constantly hammering away at, in the manner of a crazed priest announcing a coronation or a wedding. And stay as far away from anyone on a Boris bike as you can without actually leaving the city.
And motorbike
Motorcyclists are more vigilant but also more dangerous if you’re a pedestrian. Not only are many willing to weave into any space they can get into, regardless of who’s currently filling it, but they have the acceleration to change a road crossing situation before you can say Hell’s Angels.
Choose life
The aim of the game is to get across in one piece, which means waiting for the right time, even if that takes swallowing your pride and letting the red traffic light usher you across. You won’t reach your destination feeling like you beat the man and the tourists and the whole damn system, but you will get there, which is more important. Apparently.
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