Maybe I'm just more on edge but I've had two minor verbal exchanges over the last two days.
Yesterday morning I was riding up a multi use path which has 9 chicane type gates. Up ahead at the last gate there are 3 runners together and ahead of them one of those mini council sweeper trucks. My speed is low anyway because of the 8th gate but I see the council worker opening the gates ahead to get his truck through. I manoeuvre around the 3 runners, up the side of his truck and up the side of the path through the open gate. He was bending down opening the padlock on the second gate to the left side. Once past he shouts something at me. I turn my head as I couldn't hear it over the din of his running engine which was loud. He then shouts that I should ring my bell. Again, he's shouting loud to be heard over the engine. I didn't turn but shouted 'how the heck would you've heard it over that?' and again he shouts about ringing my bell. Perhaps I should have but I can guarantee an 80db ding isn't going to be heard over the 100db engine. I will say, the noise of these sweeper engines is much louder than a regular car engine, it's almost like a hoover sound which I suppose is what the sweeper is.
Then this morning. On a pretty main 30mph stretch of road. There wasn't much traffic either side. About 400 yards ahead I can see a Renault Scenic reversing slowly out of a driveway, past some pretty big pillars. Obviously they're going slow as they can see nothing. I'm on the road at around 20mph so look behind me, no cars immediately behind, so I pulled into the middle of the lane from the left so that if the Scenic kept coming, at least I'd be out of the way. As I'm approaching the Scenic, a car now behind me blares his horn at me. I gesticulated towards the reversing car to show that's why I'm taking the lane and pulled left again about 5 seconds afterwards. The driver overtook without even a glance.