At precisely 8:01 a.m., the City of St. Murgatroyd declared war on itself.

The battlefield was not some desolate plain, but rather a five-lane ring road, with several roundabouts, three pedestrian crossings which never actually worked if there happened to be any pedestrians within 25 metres of them, and one lost and confused mallard.

Cars honked. Taxis rattled. Buses wheezed. Cyclists swore. A delivery van mounted a kerb, gave up on modern civilisation, and dumped twenty-seven pepperoni pizzas directly at the foot of the pedestal of an impressive statue of Admiral Bumblescratch, who looked disapproving but unsurprised. Why an Admiral, now long dead, should be fighting a battle from the back of a rearing horse nobody actually knew. Or cared about.

In the centre of it all was Reginald Crump, a commuter. He was armed with nothing but a takeaway coffee and a somewhat flimsy umbrella.

And he was late.

He had been late yesterday. And the day before that. He was, in fact, late on such a regular basis that his boss had given up trying to do anything about it and simply moved all meetings twenty minutes later. But today was different. Today was the day the auditors arrived. The auditors were from ‘Head Office’. They were armed with clipboards. And wore smiles that didn’t reach their eyes.

Reginald stepped onto one of the crossings.

He was promptly almost obliterated by a red hatchback driven by a man engaged in a screaming match with his satnav. The hatchback screamed past, and so did the driver, oblivious to the plight of pedestrians generally and Reginald in particular.

Reginald, resolute, pressed on.

At the bus stop, the No. 23 arrived simultaneously with the No. 25. Both of these buses went to the same destination, but by differing routes. Both wanted to be ‘at’ the bus stop; neither driver would give way to the other. Both refused to move. Or even jiggle a bit. By 8:08 a.m., passengers had formed a fledgling democracy on the pavement and were drafting a constitution in which buses at bus stops, unconflicted, would be made a human right.

In the sky above, the minor traffic god, _Vehiculus, Patron of Horns and Mild Swearing_, hovered on a cumulo-nimbus and sipped an espresso. It was his day off. He watched the chaos with a proud sigh. If he had kept a journal, which he had, so far in the existence of this universe, failed to do, this would have gone right in it.

Down below, Reginald darted into the cycle lane. It was either that or death, which in rush hour were often synonymous. A cyclist with legs like pistons shot past and shouted something unrepeatable about blind pedestrians. Reginald waved apologetically, or possibly he used semaphore. It was hard to tell, Reginald mused, when your coffee was mostly on your trousers.

At 8:12 a.m., a small dog escaped from a handbag and bit a traffic warden. The traffic warden issued a fine. The dog owner binned it. No one was sure who had won.

At 8:15 a.m., the lights at the junction of Fiddle Street and Lemming Road suffered a nervous breakdown and began blinking in Morse code. No one could read Morse code, obviously, but several motorists felt it was saying something very rude indeed. Reginald, not for the first time, wondered if ever there had been a time when your average passer-by could read Morse code. Unlikely, he thought.

Reginald finally arrived at his building, breathless, shirt flapping, and lightly trampled.

He pressed the button for the lift. It made a sound like a man sighing through a drainpipe. The doors opened. Inside stood a figure in a charcoal suit and the kind of smile that should have come with a biohazard warning.

“Ah, Mr Crump,” said the auditor. “You’re late.”

Reginald stepped inside. The doors closed. The lift groaned.

He cleared his throat. “Rush hour,” he said, in the tone of a man who had just fought God, the mallard, a bus, and still lived.

The auditor smiled again. “We’ll see if that’s in the report.”

Above the clouds, Vehiculus sipped another espresso and chuckled.

Reginald groaned inwardly

There could be no greater comedy than a really badly designed ring road.