I’m the village idiot and I’m ready to ride

Along the kitchen worktop the accessories are lined up. Bottles, shades, house keys, bank card. Maybe a banana or two. Possibly a slab of flap-jack.

In the bedroom a selection of kit, to be cross-referenced against the weather app (which often lies) and the actual view out the actual window (which can lull a sense of security or seed paranoia).

Practical considerations and colour combinations have been laid out to provide options.

The bike leans against the wall, in the hall, by the front door. Greased and lubed like something creative and sexual. Something in your mind. You are filling in the gaps you naughty thing.

It’s shiny bits glisten, the bits containing air are hard and taut. The analogy stretched to breaking point.

It’s ready for a ride, is what I’m saying.

It’s Saturday night and, where once I would’ve been cutting some rug across a low-rent and sticky dancefloor, I now get my ducks in a row for the Sunday bike ride.

The paradox is that I love – LOVE – riding my bike, and can think of very little I’d rather do, and equally I perform the Saturday night ritual to remove as many reasons as possible to avoid leaving the house on a Sunday morning. It has to be frictionless.

Easier to go for a ride than not.

I am not a morning person, see; the single night-owl in a house of early birds. Evolutionarily I take the late shift. If I emerge on a Sunday morning to find ride conditions that fall short of my expectations I can easily crumble.

My ability to dither and prevaricate is world class.

To be on the safe side I must not, under any circumstances, think.

I must leave my bed, slurp down coffee and porridge, get kitted up, and leave the house before my brain has even realised what’s happened. Intellectually speaking, a village idiot. Don’t think just do.

And once I’m out I’m out.

It was never in doubt.

(Image: www.pearson1860.com)