People
News
Discuss: Zen and the art of Stooging
Join the debate and let us know if you agree or disagree with writer Paul Barnes
Stooger. It sounds like a pejorative term, and indeed it is one. I never realised that I was a stooger until I came across the definition offered by a newspaper motoring correspondent. He was reviewing a macho machine that is fast and thirsty, and very expensive. It goes from a standstill to 62mph in a flash, and with your foot flat to the floor you could eventually storm along at 155mph. With an average fuel consumption of about 20 miles per gallon it’s just the ticket for the straitened times we live in.
Our man was on a country road in this sleek beast when he found himself at the end of a line of cars “following some stooger who was maintaining a resolute 45mph”. Forced to rein in, our reviewer was outraged. “Why do people do this?” he demands. “Don’t they glance at their mirrors? Don’t they care how much frustration they cause? Are they not aware that all the authorities and advanced instructors agree that, if it is safe to do so, you should drive at, not under, the prescribed speed limit?”
I fear that the spirit of J Bonington Jagworth must be at his shoulder, murmuring mischief. The monstrous Jagworth, the creation of Michael Wharton who wrote the Peter Simple column in The Daily Telegraph, was leader of the Motorists’ Liberation Front, hell-bent on exercising "the basic right of every motorist to drive as fast as he pleases, how he pleases".
I felt compelled to respond to our man’s angry questions so I wrote to his paper, pointing out why I prefer to bowl along at about 45mph. I drive so tenderly to conserve fuel and out of kindness to my engine and tyres. This also gives me time and space to react to the follies of others. I do glance in the mirror often, to make sure that the likes of our man are not too close behind. If they are I drive even more slowly, for the sake of their safety and my own.
But where did this motoring writer get this stuff about authorities and advanced instructors advocating driving at or near the speed limit? Every authority and advanced instructor I’ve spoken to insists that the limit should always be seen as a limit, not a target.
After my letter appeared there was a predictable response from some of the more carnivorous elements of the motoring fraternity. One claimed that my type “cause accidents”, and went so far as to insist that my licence should be revoked. Crumbs, I thought, if he drives the way he writes we’d all better watch out. It’s the Jagworth Syndrome. This fellow was asserting his prerogative to belt about the land at speeds of his choice while denying me my legal right to drive at my preferred rate.
Another correspondent believed that my dainty driving causes congestion, overlooking the fact that the cause of congestion is traffic volume, not velocity. The authorities recognise this when they impose motorway speed limits at times of peak road occupation. One letter claimed that the best speed for fuel efficiency was between 55mph and 65mph. I’d read this too, probably in the same magazine which offered no scientific evidence to support it. The figures don’t square with the 50mph limit some of us remember from 1973, when the price of oil quadrupled and petrol was rationed.
One week after the carnivores had shown their claws some herbivores joined the correspondence, among other things making the point that the 45mph car in front is not the cause of accidents; it’s the lack of both patience and good judgment on the part of drivers behind.
A few herbivorous drivers got in touch directly to express support for my views. We considered forming Stoogers United to lobby for slower, safer driving and to represent its practitioners when motoring matters are debated in the media. Stoogers United would serve to counter the pronouncements of the rather creepy Association of British Motorists, the real-life successors to the Motorists’ Liberation Front, whose principal raison d’être seems to be the elimination of safety cameras and the exoneration of any drivers caught by them.
Stooging is legal, though one of the carnivores would like safety cameras to clock us for driving too slowly, whatever “too slowly” means. I shall continue my feather-footed use of the accelerator, wary of the gnashing teeth in the mirror and making sure I keep well to the left to permit the carnivores to pass: I’d rather have them in front than behind. Since all this started I have made one small adjustment to my speed, no longer cruising – sorry, stooging – at 45mph. It’s now 42, which, as all students of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will know, is the Ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
What do you think?
Are you a Stooger and proud? Discuss this online at www.sagazone.co.uk
This article was first published in the December 2009 edition of Saga Magazine.
