What is wokeness? A close shave with a 4x4 got me thinking
When I’m cycling with my 15-yearold, I like him to go in front so I can see him, and he likes me to go in front, so he doesn’t have to make a judgment call about whether to overtake buses. We both like to spend the first five minutes of any journey arguing this point, to the extent that we lose any time advantage conferred by the bikes in the first place. On shorter journeys, it would definitely be quicker to walk. It’s not a bad parable for the maternal experience: you worry about them and think of it as altruism, but to them, it looks like you are ferociously prioritising yourself, fuming, “You go in front, you nitwit”, before eventually surrendering. This is why people can’t stand their mothers, then feel bad about it. This is what keeps psychoanalysts in business, and also Moonpig.
Yesterday there was an additional complication in that we only had three lights between us, so we were also arguing about who would get the only front light. His position was that I should have it, being the one in front, and mine was that he should, being the next and more precious generation. I actually won that round, more fool me.
On the way home in the winter’s early dark (but – important operational note – dusk, so not that dark) we were pedalling up a cycle lane alongside stationary traffic, a gap marked “keep clear” ahead of us. A 4x4 in the opposite lane decided it had had enough of the arterial road scene and took a right turn into a sidestreet at high speed. If we hadn’t been going up a hill and therefore not that fast, it would have hit me, but much more relevant is the fact that it didn’t. Everyone was quite shaken up, and the car pulled over on the side road.
It wasn’t clear to me whether the guy wanted a road rage incident or to apologise. I would have enjoyed an apology; I would have surfed all the way home on the grace of my airy “it could happen to anyone”. But I would not at all have enjoyed a road rage incident in front of my kid – there are things more embarrassing than watching your mother swear at a stranger, but not, I would argue, till you’re older than 15 – so I cycled on.
“Whose fault would you say that was, when you nearly got hit by a car?” my kid asked later. “I would say it was his fault, on the basis that you’re meant to indicate when you turn, give way to those going straight ahead and also look where you’re fucking going.”
“Might he have argued that you didn’t have a light?”
“Potentially, but then I would have said that he was already making a sudden turn without indicating, before I’d even got to the point where my hypothetical light would have been visible. Then I would have said: ‘Why d’you even have a 4x4 in the middle of London? What do you need bull bars for? DO YOU SEE ANY BULLS?”
“Would he have then called you the woke army?”
“Maybe, and then I’d have said, yes, I would march alongside Jeremy Vine over Jeremy Clarkson any day of the week.”
My son’s face was unreadable, but if I hadto read it, it would have said: “Thank God this argument never happened.”
I barely know what woke means any more. Is it wanting people to not die in the Channel? Or is it wanting students to be allowed to not listen to Melanie Phillips if they don’t feel like it? The terrain just seems so impossibly vast, it’s like waging a war against the sea. But the driver-versus-cyclist iteration is the most ridiculous; ie, you are automatically woke on a bike and anti-woke in a car. Yet 80% of adult cyclists have a driving licence. One in five drivers is a regular cyclist, compared with one in 10 overall. We’re the same people, in other words, taking our woke-ness on and off like a cloak, depending on our mode of transport, which was most probably determined by whether or not it was raining.
OK, it did settle one argument, though: it probably is better if I go in front.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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