The other night,  I was a happy camper thinking of my faithful bike waiting to take me home. Too late for buses and with two glasses of my favourite Australian red stuff down my throat, driving was out of question. To my surprise though, my bike had been converted into a bar counter. That's a new one I thought: there was a perfectly empty but otherwise functional glass taking a comfortable stand on what to my mind was designed to ease my bottom-side while pedalling. Failing to find a drinker to match the glass yet sure I had not been secretly given hallucinatory chemicals, I placed it on the kerbstone before speeding home.

This was one of the less worrying, if unusual encounters of the third kind I've had. Generally, the reactions to my iron horse are of a different nature and involve unmotivated aggression. Let me introduce you to the 10 year-old kid on a bus's back-seat pulling faces and fingers at me - that's the lady on the bike just about not overtaking the bus. Or have you met the group of footie-crazed youngsters deciding that a cyclist would make an excellent mobile goal? Better even: wee Miss drunk coming out of a public house on a Sunday evening and taking the notion of punching the cyclist off her vehicle - the warning words I should have reacted to for a swift escape being: "A cyclist!" My surprise at her action was only topped by my admiration for her ability to hit on target and smash my specs to pieces in spite of her degree of intoxication.

Sometimes I wonder if there is something in the water of Glasgow that infiltrates the population with such animosity for an innocent cyclist who braves the streets of the city in the face of all adversity. Mind you, this is the place that was honoured with the title of "velocity" alongside Edinburgh less than a year ago. At this particular time, Glasgow prided itself with new cycle lanes all over the city. My wonder at the incredulously high number of 750 cycling km to be had in the city was quickly taken back onto the ground floor of reality: What the City Council calls a cycle lane usually goes under the name of bus corridor. Now, in all seriousness, do you want to share a lane with busses whose drivers either ignore you or seem to get the kick out of mashing cyclist and bike into the 4 inches between the bus's left side and the kerbstone?

There are numerous attempts to make the city dwellers healthier. Promoting a healthy lifestyle includes exercise, and yes, why not cycle to work? Get the youngsters on their mountain bikes to cycle to school, give them road safety lessons and off you go. All I can say that I would not let my children cycle on the roads of Glasgow. It needs more than a bright idea to get people into a habit of cycling. First and foremost, it has to be a safe activity. And this it is not. Bus and taxi drivers are, exceptions granted, the worst. No consideration is given to on of the weakest groups on the street. To spell it out: if a cyclist is hit, there is nothing to protect her: no steel, no airbag, no seatbelt. It is pure carnage. Why then, I wonder, do most bus drivers refuse to render any space at all to cyclists? To give car drivers their due criticism: If you ever intended to change lanes as a cyclist, well, forget it. Car drivers simply won't let you in. Why? Maybe it is because bicycles aren't considered to be equal participants of traffic? Maybe because they only see them as a nuisance (yes, I am sometimes a wee bit slower than a car, but mostly, in fact, especially in rush hour, I am the one on the fast lane)? It's a mystery. In any case close encounters of the hitting kind are the call of the day. So are plain outbreaks of road rage, resulting in the abundant use of the shorter words of the English language first thing in the morning. No matter that I'm a lady and a stranger, I get the words that would classify a movie as "over 18" for breakfast.

Still, I'm all in favour of the City Council's initiatives. Only they have to be followed by a wider programme which includes raising awareness among motorised drivers and street planners too. What use are cycle lanes that are unconnected (have a look at Argyle street: 150 yards of counter flow bike lane out of the blue, that is nowhere) or contain raised kerbstones? Or worse: cycle lanes that are in fact cobblestone paths (see the stretch along the Clyde quays to the SECC) enhanced by 90 degree angles impossible to manoeuvre even at a modest speed of 5 mph - I'd rather use the busy road, thank you. Not to mention of course the many cars that see cycle lanes as ideal parking spaces. And to be sure, no double yellow line prevents them from doing so. Next time I might try to cycle over those inconsiderately parked cars. It also doesn't promote the use of newly designated cycle lanes if these are strewn with broken glass due to the nightly activity of local youths or last years storm-felled trees. Cycle lanes need to be kept clear, clean and safe; and so far, they are not. Last but not least, there is a very basic and simple measure to make cycle lanes and routes more user-friendly: clear sign-posting.