When I was 5 or 6 I developed a phobia of dogs, all stemming from a particularly terrifying experience, being held hostage at the top of a slide by some furry yet ferocious monster barking relentlessly at its base. It took me a while, but I finally kicked that fear to the curb and am now gushing over most of the lovely little blighters that bob along on all fours. Especially the ugly but adorable little ‘pug’ dogs, which are growing ever more popular out here. The combination of a bulldog’s face and lizard-like tongue yet with a body a fraction of the size and a tame, playful character has made this dog the new chiwawa. However, really big dogs still make me jittery and I won’t go near my cousin’s Labrador-canaan. This canine took an instant disliking and seems to have made it its life pursuit to scare the living daylights out of me. In the dog’s defence, my cousin says it’s a girl and just doesn’t like other girls. At least now I don’t feel bad in freely using the term ‘bitch’ to describe her.

It’s not actually dogs I want to rant about. It’s what’s replaced them in the past year living out here. Cyclists.

Although not a phobia as such – the sight or touch of one doesn’t make me nauseous, I some don’t even bother me and I have been known to want to be one – during my daily morning run, these humdingers are not something I look forward to co-existing on the promenade with. With no cycle route, us defenceless joggers have to share our pathway with hoards of the two-wheelers that slice their way past us as frequently as we blink (or something near to it). Now I’m not even sure if you can call cycling along a flat, incline-less promenade exercise, for it consists of more ‘skimming’ than actual peddling, whereby you pedal once and let the bike whiz along for the following five seconds. Joggers on the other hand, have nothing on which to float on, only our own two legs that take a pounding and are therefore I feel, a whole lot more serious than these bicycle ‘hill-billies’.

I have found there to be certain types of cyclists. First off, you have the ‘bumblers’. Primarily well-meaning, they let down their fellow countrymen by wobbling along, not quite sure of where they’re headed. On approaching one you may try to help their confused minds out, by quite firmly heading in one direction, thereby leaving the remaining stretch free for them. However they cease to keep up with the rest of the world and have already decided on the direction you’re headed. As you swerve to the left, they’ll also swerve to the left, as you swerve to the right, they’ve also decided to swerve to the right. Have some conviction bicycle bumblers! Stake your claim and stay where you’re headed, it would make it a lot easier for us two-leggers, for whom all this swooping and swerving is not easy on the old plodders.

After all that you’ll be agitated but will eventually get your focus back. Trying to block out the strain on your muscles as you gallop along, you find a song to ‘zone out’ to and its all going pretty well until WHOOOOOOOSH, some maniac has zoomed past you on his marathon-contraption, leaving you as stunned as any man who just had a near-death experience. ‘What if I’d at that moment stumbled, bent down to tie a shoe lace, or splayed out an arm for stretching?’ Death by bike for sure. With no bell to warn you, these reckless and frankly, heartless psycho-cyclists deserve to have their tyres hacked up.

Then there’s the very particular Israeli specimen of cyclist, whose only aim is to plough up and down the promenade, hassling lone joggers. You’ll ignore him and he’ll bugger off but further on you discover he’s lying in wait to have another go.

Maybe we should introduce cycling licences and training centres for safe cycling. Why after all, should drivers have to qualify to co-exist with pedestrians and not cyclists?
Now there are of course many bumble-free and mentally balanced bike-riders that I cannot fault here. I just wish the ones at fault would take their crazy asses to the people-less Sinai desert for the day and give us all a break.