I have a new problem in my life. You could call this problem a “menace” – although the menace is almost certainly an unintentional menace.

Confused? I’m not bloody surprised!

My ride home from work has been delayed over the past few days. The reason for this is a particularly slow person.

Now, I know that this sounds like an amazing example of the pot calling the kettle black, so hear me out.

Yes, before getting my scooter I walked slowly. Very slowly. So much so, I probably made the aforementioned sluggish person look like Usain Bolt.

There is one major difference between me and the the slow subject of this blog post. I’ll explain…

Before I do, I’ll give you some background on this individual…

Firstly, I have never seen them from the front – therefore not knowing what their face looks like. Their figure and hairstyle makes it impossible to decipher whether they are a man or a woman!

They are of a slightly large build, but observing from behind, you would not class them as obese.

I would place their age as being late fifties. This is based upon their hair. Not wishing to sound unkind; this mysterious individual has long, grey locks, which look like they haven’t seen a bottle of shampoo for quite some time.

They carry a woven bag in their right hand. This bag looks so empty, that I wonder if it has any contents at all.

The fact that it has only been the last couple of weeks that I have seen this individual is strange – added to by the apparent coincidence that they have been appearing from the same side street, during every encounter.

A local hospital and school are in close proximity to where this stranger emerges, meaning that they could work there, or they could simply be a local resident, who fancies a stroll every evening.

I hope that by now you have a perfect image in your mind of what this person looks like.

If not, this is how I imagine them to look from the front…

The Pigeon Lady from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. She was scary at first, but turned out to be nice in the end and saved Kevin’s life – proving to all kids during the 1990s, that despite what your parents and teachers say, not all strangers are dangerous. In fact, if an odd looking person approaches you in a park and invites you along to see some puppies – or pigeons – it’s perfectly safe, and may even save your life! Therefore, you should definitely follow them – especially if they have Opal Fruits and Tootie Frootie sweets.

I hope you enjoyed the mention of 1990s confectionary!

What I haven’t mentioned in detail, and what is one of the reasons why I am blogging about this individual, is his or her behaviour.

For the remainder of this blog post, I’m going to assume this person is a ‘she’ – like the Pigeon Lady.

I have already mentioned that she is on the slightly wide size. This, coupled with the fact she seemed to walk along the street, directly in the centre of the pavement, makes overtaking a particularly difficult operation.

Being on a mobility scooter, I take up a rather spacious amount of pavement myself – therefore making any attempt to overtake this individual most difficult.

I am sure that many of you are wondering why I can’t make my approach and ask the ‘path hog’ to “excuse me please”. Something about the person’s mannerisms made me wonder if it would be that straight forward. After observing an incident from a safe distance, I decided to continue giving Sranger Danger a wide berth…

A young lady, also presumably on her journey home from work, walked briskly along the roadside, approaching Miss Slow.

As the girl made an attempt to overtake, her slower and wider counterpart made a large step to the right, blocking the simple, everyday passing manoeuvre.

It was from this point the apparent younger individual had no chance or opportunity of getting around this now rather strange person, who had clearly decided that “you shall not pass!” – I believe from watching South Park, that this is a quote from one of the many Lord of the Rings movies.

This story has a happy(ish) ending. The pavement hog, young lady and myself all arrived at the top of my street.

Luckily both other parties carried on their walk along the main road – therefore allowing me to escape the madness. The quicker individual was able to use the road on my rather quiet street to race in front of the frustratingly slow person.

I don’t know what happened next. Perhaps the supposedly sluggish one stopped and sprinted her way, back to the start of the road, only to repeat the entire exercise again, forcing more poor sods to get delayed in their walk home and therefore apologise to their other halves for their tardiness.