Patience is a virtue

My housemate played us the clip which had been posted online. It shows the retired soldier breaking through a police cordon, dropping his plastic bag on the ground and clambering onto the bridge in southern China. He shunts up the metal sides and reaches over and shakes the suicidal man's hand. Moments later he pushes him off the bridge. Admittedly the clip was fairly comical - perhaps it was the disbelief that someone would actually do that. Apparently Mr Lai was annoyed by the suicidal man's selfish atttempts to kill himself which had caused a traffic jam. After the push the suicidal man fell 26ft onto a partially inflated air cushion. The suicidal man, who is recovering in hospital, told police he wanted to kill himself because he was heavily in debt following a failed construction project. Mr Lai didn't care. He was being held up. His impatience got the better of him and he finally cracked after being held up several times before by 'selfish jumpers'. I was chatting to the eccentric literary enthusiast, who shares my love of strange artwork, about the Chinese pusher. You see every time there's so much as a near fatal incident it's our job to get to it. We're the ones cursing the traffic, slipping under the police cordon, approaching the emergency services and the family. There's a buzz which comes from a breaking news story, regardless of whether it's fatal, a near miss or a miracle escape. But next time you're caught in traffic on the motorway spare a thought for the suicidal man.