Autumn can put a spring in your step

‘This is lovely. Mmmm’

Lady Socks says ‘Mmmm’ during moments of pleasure.

The sun, your humble correspondent, and Lady Socks met up in the park this afternoon.

‘Really lovely, you wouldn’t think it was October.’

The azure blue sky.

The migrating birds stopping in flight, checking their maps, and deciding not to bother with Africa this year and heading back to sun-kissed England.

The children running and skipping and giggling at the sheer joy of life.

The feeling of oneness with nature, as we lay on the grassy slope, a million miles and a thousand millennia from anything bad.

‘Mmmm, let’s stay here a while.’

It was all too much for my cynicism.

‘Sssh, the gods might be listening and they’ll whip up a storm. Or the God… or whatever.’

I lifted my head from the hillside, as though to seek clarification for my own words. I came face to face with a flower.

‘Hey, since when was I a theist?’ I asked the flower.

A breeze helped the flower shrug its leaves but it gave me no further response. It just kept calling out ‘Look at me, bees, come on, I’m wide open! Just think of all the yummy honey! Screw theology! Calling all bees!’

As a bee heeded the call I lay my head back on the grass and closed my eyes - I knew the world could not have been so great as we had just been deluding ourselves.

Seconds later Lady Socks and I were startled by a crashing of metal, a screaming of surprised boy hurtling through the air like a human cannon-ball, and the whirring of an upturned bicycle’s wheel, spinning as the bike imagined itself still racing downhill and ripping through the finishing line of the world’s most important bike race.

Lady Socks was quickly on the scene tending to the human cannon-ball, who was to be found in a heap some distance further down the slope.

‘Oh crikey, my trousers* are ripped!’ wailed the heap**.

I stood like the village idiot, one stubby arm pointing at the crashed BMX, the other arm waving at the area of flattened grass where Lady Socks and I had been eulogising about the beauty of creation, my head now churning out clumsy calculations about the distances and speed of the bike and the velocity of the boy’s flight.

‘Look! One second later and he’d have crashed right on us!’

‘Get the blooming first aid kit out the car, you chump!’ Lady Socks replied.

‘Yes, I’ll do that. I knew all was well with the world. Yes.’

And to the car I skipped full of the joys of life.

*All our pants are 'trousers', here in Blighty.
** No boys were seriously harmed during the making of this post.

News FLASH! Gotcha.

The Magistrate has expressed his displeasure at a website peddling law-evasion gadgets, namely a device which can allegedly warn speeding drivers of the whereabouts of mobile police speed cameras so they don’t get caught in the act. I share the Magistrate’s ire at speeders being helped to break the law (and generally make the roads less safe, not just for other motorists but also cyclists, your granny when she goes to the shops, and everyone else).

I’ve long marvelled at the situation in Holland, where at least one national radio station invites its listeners to phone in the positions of mobile police speed cameras, and broadcasts these as part of its news bullet-ins.

It appears this is perfectly legal in the Netherlands, but I fail to understand why… it’s like Radio 4 finishing the news with ‘… and the serial killer who is currently murdering random innocent people throughout the Home Counties would be best advised to keep a low profile in the *insert any road or area* tonight, where police murder squad officers have been spotted. Our thanks to the listener who phoned that in. And now the shipping forecast…’

Slow down, everyone! Please!

Love letter from bicycle to car

Dear white Ford Fiesta (with big exhaust pipe),

Hello, you might not have noticed me but we met briefly this morning and after our encounter I felt I should write to you, even though we are only machines, you and I.

If it helps you remember me, I am a black framed road bike, and I was being pedalled by my owner, a large fellow who was wearing a distinctive luminous yellow jacket and brightly coloured helmet. You were carrying a group of four young men when you passed me as I was pedalled along the cycle path.

I thought you should know that one of your young men upset my owner a bit. It was something that happened when you slowed down as you passed me, and drove alongside me for a few seconds.

We would have no problem with that, my owner and I – in fact I thought you might just be a very friendly car. I thought maybe we were going to be friends. But I could sense through his grip on my handle bars that my owner felt a little tense when your front passenger window wound down.

I have to say I was pretty cheesed off by what the young man sitting in your front passenger seat did next. Did you notice what he did? He leaned his head out of your open window, his face as close to me as it could have been, then he opened his mouth and made a noise. The noise was a scream something like this: ‘Waaaah haaaa ya cunnn-tah! Waha ann kah!’

Then your window wound closed and you sped off, your big exhaust pipe burping louder than ever.

Do you know this chap? He’s about 20, perhaps older, and was wearing a baseball cap and a tracksuit of some kind. That’s all I could see from where I was. Oh, and he had a gold coloured chain around his neck. Did someone let him off his lead? Would you try to avoid carrying him again?

My owner seemed quite fed up at that moment, and I can’t say I understood what the young man was trying to say, either. I thought I would get a chance to find out, about a minute later. This was when I saw you, white Fiesta with big exhaust pipe, were stopped in a line of traffic waiting at a red light.

It’s nothing unusual for my owner to huff and puff a bit when he cycles me, but I felt he could barely contain how much he wanted to huff and puff as we stopped next to you. I wanted him to ask ‘what does this mean, young man, this “Waaaah haaaa ya cunnn-tah! Waha ann kah!” of which you speak?’ And I think he was actually going to ask. But the young man - he who was let off his gold coloured dog lead and allowed to ride in you – he was looking the other way, and would not look at my owner or me.

And I think it’s a shame, what happened that made my owner huff and puff and squeeze my handle bars and wobble a bit in my saddle. Because I think we could be good buddies, you and I. I must say how much I admire your spoiler. Does it make you go much faster? Perhaps I can persuade my owner to fit one on me. And the blue lights in your grill, they look so groovy! Your really thin tyres, your burp-burp exhaust pipe – it sounds a bit naughty but I love it! I know I’m just an old-style push bike, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me fancying cars as well, I’m happy to come out as being a bi-cycle, hee hee.

So I hope you’ll give me a toot the next time we pass and let’s hope you’ll be able to run over that silly young man if you get a chance.

Love from

Cyril Cycle

News from our neighbours in the Netherlands

De Volkskrant newspaper reports Dutch police think they may have caught a man who has been setting nasty traps in forest footpaths. These sharp metal spikes mounted in a concrete block have been concealed in at least 4 holes dug in public forests in the Dutch province of Limburg over that last few months. Luckily no one has been seriously injured so far.

I believe the Dutch are showing their engineering prowess in relying on the public to set their own traps. Here in the UK it is local councils who take responsibility for laying traps for unsuspecting pedestrians and cyclists in the form of well hidden holes on pavements and on roads, or the less covert but far more dangerous devices such as cycle paths designed to send unwary cyclists careering directly into sign posts or trees.

Cycosomatic

I wasn’t always Mr Toad of Toad Hall on a bike.

It was Piccadilly Circus without a single motor vehicle to be seen or heard. It should have been the perfect opportunity to freely cross the Queen’s Highway.

Surely that right is enshrined in the Magna Carta?

And with several thousand people present, protesting against reliance on cars, surely my right to cross the road was secured.

Traffic lights on red for road vehicles, green man for pedestrians.

Out I stepped into the road.

Back I stepped from the road.

‘Erm’ I said, apologetically, although none of the thousands of swarming cyclists was listening. ‘Look, the light’s on red for you, so we can cross now?’

Then one of them took a skid and I went ‘aaaaahhh’ like a malevolent child. Well, there’s no point in me lying here, now.

Cycopath

A recent song called ‘Thou Shalt Always Kill’ by the duo ‘Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip’ states:

‘Thou shalt not think that any male over the age of 30 that plays with a child that is not their own is a paedophile… Some people are just nice.’

This is true, but it can also be that the male was riding a bike which collided with the child, who was running across the cycle path without looking, and the male is desperately trying to placate the 3 year old and hoping for some parent or responsible adult to turn up and take the child back and, to be honest, perhaps get them checked out at the hospital.

It happened to me in Holland, in front of a café terrace full of chillin’ tourists. From some of the looks I got, I thought I’d be nailed to a windmill and lynched. But luckily for me, they were far too chilled out to do that. And mum was too chilled to do anything, in fact.

After some long minutes a woman stood up from a table, and came and picked up the girl. It was when I was just starting to learn Dutch.

‘Sorry, your girl, she run, whack, sorry…’

‘Oh, she never looks where she’s going’.

I thought ‘well, surely she must be nearing the end of her nine lives by now?’ (or is that only cats?)

'But face, her face mark... Look'.

'Thank-you.' Thank-you? At this point I stop existing for her. 'Now let's go and get an ice cream...' were the last words I could make out. I was still thinking about x-rays but they say that 'mother knows best', and I think that's probably right.

Anyway, the AD newspaper reports today that Rotterdam is experiencing a backlash against racing cyclists who are allegedly forcing pedestrians, joggers and regular cyclists to take cover. A 74 year old Rotterdamer’s desired solution is ‘big speed bumps, so they fall off hard’.

A racing-cyclist has left a comment under the article replying ‘You have to brake every 500 metres or you get another dog in your front wheel.’ Another dog?