Get in line: Your reckless behaviour on Church Street is a danger to us all

At 58 minutes past the hour, Church Street epitomises everything that is wrong with the British public – a culmination of slow walkers and ignorant friendship groups.

Naturally, the busiest road in Durham provides the narrowest pavement, meaning as soon as the Elvet Riverside cohorts come head to head, its survival of the tallest and rudest.

It bewilders me how anyone’s rational thought process consists of walking shoulder to shoulder with other people. Your snail’s pace would be excusable if we could all work round you, but when you’re in phalanx formation that’s not an option. Is it that you have total disregard of other people’s personal space or are you just that tragically obsessed with one another that you can’t bear to walk two steps behind?

Mate you’re gonna get me killed

The usual suspects are the type who wear Ugg boots that don’t fit and drag them noisily along the ground. It’s the lacrosse girls waving their sticks around in the air as  they dawdle up the road babbling about Wednesday night.

A lot of the time these people even have the cheek to be tall, your stride equals three of mine and yet here I am, once again, hoping the PR2 driver takes pity and chooses that today is not the day to flatten me.

Four side by side walkers approach and you can guarantee these ill-mannered souls will neither glance your way nor budge from their insecure friendship group to let you pass.

Single file, like civilised people

As the gap between you closes and you’ve lost faith in humanity for the fourth time that day, you are forced to step out into the road whether the X12 is millimetres from squashing you. Since when did it become the norm to regularly feel the air pressure from a bus’ braking system against your face?

Church Street has witnessed chivalry die a spectacular death. Slow walkers, do you not have places to be? Do you not have calories to burn?