Road Rage or Paranoia?

Something really weird happened on the way to work this morning. I have three or four alternative routes to work, three of the four actually converge at one point but getting to that one point involves taking different roads. Anyway I've got into the habit recently of turning off the main road and picking up a newspaper each morning from a village store which was my intention this morning.

After joining the local road from home this morning I noticed a car in my rear mirror that seemed to be driving a bit aggressively, speeding up in a 30 m.p.h area and then braking heavily, the sort of driving that indicates either somebody is in a hurry and isn't concentrating on the road ahead or has got out of bed on the wrong side. At the first of three roundabouts I have to negotiate in the first mile or so I pulled away quite a way of this car that then proceeded to accelerate so that I couldn't even see its headlights in my mirror. At the second roundabout he did the same thing.

It then got a bit strange because I then turned off the main road to go to the village shop and the car followed me, nothing to strange there after all he could have been going to the same shop. After about a mile down this road there's a T-junction where I wanted to go left, the car behind was now about hundred yards behind. There was nothing coming from the right or left so I didn't stop at the broken white lines but the car behind either didn't know the road or was travelling too fast for the road because looking in my mirror I could see he had come round the corner too fast and was on the other side of the road.

It's about another half a mile to the shop, I indicated in good time that I was turning left and due to the road layout as you turn left you can see the whole of the shop front plus the parking spaces outside, I slowed down and stopped. The car behind again didn't seem to know the road layout because he drove onto the opposite side of the road, slowed down and then parked about twenty yards ahead of me. It took me about ten seconds to get out of the car because I was looking for the correct change for the paper, he didn't get out of his car during this time and then waited until I got out.

I was in the shop and picked up the paper and walked towards the counter where the owner was waiting to say, "Good Morning Sir," as he does everyday. The driver of the car was stood at the end of the aisle in front of me at the cold drinks cabinet, but he wasn't looking at the drinks, he watched me walk down the aisle, almost as if he was sizing me up, and past him. He was wearing jeans and a blue hooded top with the name of a local plumbing contractor on the back of it. He couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen and to be honest was pretty weedy looking. I paid and left the shop, he came out a few seconds behind me carrying two plastic bottles of a well known drink. He then waited to see if I was going to pass him or not, when he decided that I wasn't he drove off.

It probably doesn't look like much when written down but at the time it just seemed very strange behaviour.