I faced my fair share of scraps in the playground and had a few bust-ups on rugby pitches but in general, I’m more of a lover than a fighter.

Or, more accurately, I’ve always taken evasive action rather than face confrontation.

Even in my early drinking days in dodgier back street boozers in Brum, I’d be the one slipping out the side door rather than reaching for a barstool.

And, as I move into my dotage I thought such scuffles and bust-ups were a thing of the past and something I would now only witness from a very safe distance.

But, making my weary way home after a hard day’s gardening I found myself at the centre of exactly the sort of idiotic incident I thought I had long since left behind.

Negotiating a traffic island on the M20, in the same way I have a hundred times, I selected the correct lane for my exit and waited patiently for the cars in front to move. But, before the lights changed some impatient testosterone-fuelled meathead swerved around the vehicles behind me to pull alongside me on the left and then edged in front of me into a gap that didn’t exist.

I politely indicated I couldn’t move but he continued to pull into my lane regardless. I sounded my horn to make him aware of the impending impact but he just kept driving across me to the point I was forced to reverse to avoid a collision.

What desperate failure in his life or inadequacy in his upbringing led him to such unnecessary bullying action I have no idea. But even as I was still puzzling this, events took an even more bizarre, and potentially sinister, turn as he stormed out of his car and walked towards mine.

“I thought such scuffles and bust-ups were a thing of the past and something I would now only witness from a very safe distance...”

As I said, I’d been working so I had a long-handled axe and a good-sized chopper to hand. I also had a chainsaw, but sensibly decided this would be too cumbersome and, horror of horrors, might not fire up first time.

As the Neanderthal, with close-cropped hair and manicured stubble, wearing a tight-fitting grey tracksuit with a hood, lurched towards me my inner evader rose to the surface and, instead of grabbing a weapon to defend myself I instead clicked the button to lock all doors.

I’d reverted to type while he also maintained his persona by banging on my windscreen and showing me a selection of carefully selected digits on his right hand.

When I got home and recounted my terror on the tarmac my wife, who belongs to the 50 per cent of mankind generally regarded as less aggressive and more sensible, asked if I’d taken a note of his registration.

I made excuses, explaining any spare seconds were needed to decide whether to engage fight or flight mode, secretly realising I should immediately have chosen the latter and noted his number plate on my phone.

I’m still not a fighter and, all things considered, probably took the right decision, not least because this hothead had all the look of someone involved in organised crime.