Unexpected treat

Unexpected treats are always welcome. So when a jaunt on the bikes was proposed yesterday afternoon, I was stupidly happy.

The euphoria was short-lived though. A voice from the garage announced “Oh. You've got a flat.”

“Very flat?”

“Very flat. Back tyre.”

Arses.

The sky was blue, the grass was riz; there was but a warm and gentle zephyr shifting the tops of the silver birches. This was no time for messing about with punctures.

I spied no 2 son's abandoned Kona. Knobby tyres, grip shifts, Manitous (seized but whatever). Just needed a couple of pedals, the saddle lowering, air in the tyres and I'd be away. He forsook it, still muddy from the last ride (from the colour of the mud, I'd say Queens Wood, Herefordshire and yes, he should be ashamed) when he took his road bike to Uni several years ago.

“Quicker to fit a new tube,” ventured Captain Sensible.

It fell on deaf ears. I was captivated by the thought of an interesting ride on the Kona. Gripshift gears, after all. Why hadn't I thought of this before?

Pedals were no problem but the seatpost wasn't going anywhere. Three lots of squirty stuff later, I was tempted to clout it with a mallet merely to vent my frustration but it has such a nice saddle that I didn't have the heart.

Captain Sensible shot me a look that said “Ahem” quite loudly.

Doh. So ok. Back to the tyre. I guessed blackthorn and found the demon spine well bedded in. But it was still going to be a pain to get that out and get a new tube on. Yawn.

I returned to the problem seatpost hoping the penetrating lubricant had done it's stuff. The seatpost was still unbudgeable but how hard could it be? Four broken fingernails later, quite hard.

But lo and hallelujah – in the meantime, Capt Sensible had sorted my back tyre! I just had to fit it. Another 10 minutes and my hands were covered in oil. I had oil on my downtube, oil on the handlebars, oil on my cycling jacket. The spiffy LX gear thingy kept getting in the way of the wheel going back in. Then my brakes jammed.

By now there were three bikes in various states of unrideability (did i mention that Capt Sensible's pannier clip had snapped and he'd discovered the wall of his back tyre was shredding with age?) littering the terrace.

This was the moment where, in another life, I might have said “fuckit” and abandoned the lot for a glass of chilled sauvignon blanc and a comfy chair in the last of the afternoon sun beneath the apple blossom. It would be have been pleasant to languish, watching the frogs in the pond and forgetting about oil and things which were stuck.

But in addition to leg muscles, cyclists develop bloody-minded perseverance. And I could never abandon my lovely Orange. It deserves respect and tlc. We've been together a long time.

So after another 20 minutes, the difficulties were resolved and the bike was raring to go. All that oil may be messy but there are few experiences quite as beautiful as riding a smooth, silent, silky-geared bike.

Immediately we set off, I knew it had all been worth it. Who wants to languish when you can have the sun and breeze against your face on a nice downhill?

There, rising above the fields in the distance, was Gloucester Cathedral; all bathed in the golden glow of late afternoon.

The ride wasn't ambitious. Capt Sensible wanted to ride to a pub and back. Fair enough. It involved some track, some fields and a lot of canal bank. There was a testing bit involving a narrow track, much churned-up mud and the possibility of a swim with the moorhens if you didn't pay attention to detail.

We tarried outside the pub watching the canal, people, narrowboats, letting the sun seep into our bones. There was warmth, a nice view and a large gin and tonic.

It didn't really matter that the Capt Sensible's pannier clip had to be repaired a second time or that the tricky mud had to be negotiated in gloom observed by curious, luminescent swans on the darkening canal.

In the waterside thickets, a chorus of birds sung out the end of the day. Scores of grazing rabbits fled as we pedalled across the fields.

We wound back through some Severnside wetland just as the fat setting sun was turning dark reedy pools into pans of roseate quicksilver. A brief, transient, magical time.
Worth all the effort, and more....

...even taking account Capt Sensible's back tyre blowing half a mile from home.

Miles Kington - a bit late.

There aren't many people you encounter in life that you feel you could relate to on almost any level; a friend, a sister, a hot date.

That's how I feel about Miles Kington.

Such a pity he is deceased.

I should have taken more notice of him during his lifetime.

A bit late, I know for general worship and reverence but not too late for a tribute now, that I have got something of the measure of the man.

An event at Cheltenham Festival of Literature had the extraordinarily well-kept Joanna Lumley, Terry Jones, Maureen Lipman and Miles' widow Caroline talking about their memories of him and reading extracts from a book of the letters he wrote to his friend and agent Gill Coleridge when he knew he was dying of pancreatic cancer. The letters are comic, quirky, witty and not in the least maudlin. The affection for Kington was almost palpable.

I knew Miles Kington was a witty writer and always enjoyed what I read of his but I didn't actively seek him out, which is a shame because I find I like him a lot for many reasons.

He was a cyclist for a start. Cycled from home to Fleet Street every day. Cycled at weekends down in the countryside near Bath.

Miles: “I have often found that the mind goes into free wheel more easily on a bike ride than anywhere else in the world and you get some really good thoughts up there in the saddle.”

yeah.

He wrote with an easy, witty panache. He had an extremely messy study, he was a musician and he had a liver and white English Springer Spaniel. He was entirely my kind of bloke.

The more I read of Miles the more I like him. He penned his collection of letters, collected in the book “How Shall I Tell the Dog?” after the time when he realised he would probably not outlive his spaniel, Berry.

He never told the Independent, for whom he was writing a daily column, that he was ill. So even when he was admitted to hospital for chemotherapy, he'd hand-write his columns in the morning, gave them to his wife Caroline and she'd take them home to type them up and email them to the Indie as usual. She did say that he hated all those columns because he disliked not having the opportunity to “polish” them.

Reading the book in a corridor at Cheltenham Town Hall, I found that he pitched the idea of a book called “A Hundred Things To do Before you Die” rather than the “1,000 Places to Go Before You Die” (written by some American woman) which I've always considered unrealistic to achieve especially if, due to indecision over dates and suitcase size, you have lost time and find yourself wheeling along the oxygen, drip and catheter bag.

Like me, Miles dislikes the whole Yank thing of travelling the world ticking off the sites of interest as they are bagged. He extols the virtues of doing all the things you ever wanted to do but didn't without even leaving home which is v achievable in spite of credit crunches etc.

He cites the essentials that everyone ever wanted to try but didn't get around to it, like Learning to Give a Piercing Two-Fingered Whistle. My Sicilian sister-in-law was very good at that. She could whistle her children in from a crowded Cefalu beach in high season. She tried to teach me but I think my fingers were the wrong shape. I envied her ability though.

I was with her at a dog-training session on the edge of a vast recreation area full of people playing Sunday league soccer. It came in handy when her large Doberman puppy slipped his lead and careered off into the distance to join them.

She put her hand up, wedged a finger in each corner of her mouth and emitted a whistle of jet-engine pitch and volume that simultaneously brought all four soccer matches to a complete halt.

Like meerkats, the players gazed in the direction of the whistle. The dog stopped dead too, briefly acknowledging the call before seizing his chance to snatch the nearest football and flee.

Some other valuable learning strategies proposed by Miles included:

How To Pronounce 'Macho' and 'Chorizo' Properly – Unlike Mark Lawson

Get – and Keep – That Space By The Beach Or Pool

How To Make Children At Adjacent Tables Burst Into Tears For No Apparent Reason

It's Never Too Late To Learn How To Shoplift

Beating A Duvet At It's Own Game

How To Do A Cartwheel

Of the wider list, I could only mentally tick off four, which is extremely poor.

How To Swear in Other Languages (I've got a neat little phrase book), How to Fix a Ballcock (you bend the ballcock thingy until it almost snaps and mostly does so you have to purchase a whole new section) and as for How To Make A Noise With A Blade Of Grass, I perfected that when I was eight. It's rubbish. Only useful for alarming pheasants.

As for Tossing A Coin, I can already toss a coin really high – something I had to learn in order to avoid looking even more stupid playing league ping pong.

Anyway, like him, I think there is a market for the One Hundred Things book. I'd buy it, if only to master the two-fingered whistle.

Miles also planned his own memorial.

“If there is any money accruing from any of the books which may be written as a consequence of these letters to you between now and my death, I would like you to arrange for a bench to be bought and dedicated to me along the canal.” (The Kennet and Avon, near his home).

He liked benches. They were useful for pausing to do up shoelaces and for sitting and scribble thoughts that had occurred during his bike rides.

He wanted the Kington seat to bear a plaque with the following words:

“IN FOND MEMORY OF MILES KINGTON, WHO HATED THIS SPOT
BECAUSE THERE WAS NEVER ANYWHERE TO SIT DOWN AND ENJOY IT FROM.”


'How Shall I Tell the Dog?' is a special book by a lovely bloke.

Maureen Lipman says it's a glorious feat of good nature, imagination and courage. I tend to agree. Worth a look. Definitely.

Cycling With Vegetables

It's not to be recommended. Honestly. Take my word for it.

And I'm not talking about going for a Sunday run with the local cycling club. Today I mostly cycled with potatoes. Big Mistake.

I could have gone for the small bag of Charlotte spuds but I can never resist a King Edward and they only do them in 3lb bags so, dreaming of buttery, fluffy mash and golden roasties, I grabbed a bag.

I knew I should have considered more carefully when they plummeted to the bottom of the rucksack with a definitive thud.

The carrots didn't help either. Or the value pack of baby parsnips. Or the double pack of broccoli.

Then there was the work stuff it was essential to take home. (Note to self: Must take the 2006 and 2007 diaries out of the Filofax.)

We are told repeatedly that vegetables are good for us. But it was 26 degrees and I felt close to death on the draggy hill to home which is always the killer after a long ride.

The object lesson is don't cycle with vegetables.

There is nothing to be gained except exhaustion and fitness. Exhaustion isn't pleasant apart from the excuse to lie flat out on the bed like the Leonardo da Vinci's Vetruvian Woman and fall deeply asleep. (Yes I know it was Vetruvian Man but obviously I don't look remotely similar).

Fitness is over-rated.

The really unreasonable thing about fitness if that it hangs around for a bit just so long as you exert yourself almost every day. It'll let you have the odd day off for good behaviour as long as you promise to go straight back to some kind of exercise the following day.

But if fitness even gets the teeniest whiff that you have better things to do than get pink and every-so-slightly-glowing while exerting yourself, it does a runner, leaving you feeling like a person who's gained four stones overnight and has just recovered from 'flu.

So if you want to gain fleeting fitness by all means lug King Edwards about. Anyone who knows anything about Gloucester RFC will remember that was the preferred training method of England player (tight -head prop/hooker/ ?? can't remember) Phil Blakeway. He used to work out by carrying not only veg but fruit too, being a fruit and veg wholesaler.

For those of sensible dispositions who are not interested in scratching the back of fitness, here is my cut-out and keep guide to cycling with vegetables.

Say YES to cycling with Curly Kale, Salad Bags (but beware of the whole lettuces although Baby Gem lettuces don't weigh much), Cress, Parsley and sundry herbs but watch the weight of the root ginger, asparagus, teeny tomatoes, spring onions, those hopeless little beans from Africa which cost about £4 to feed two people, shredded cabbage (mostly air, anyway) ready-grated carrot (also mostly air, so fine but for maximum value for money remember to breath it in when you open the bag).

Say NO to cycling with potatoes, carrots, celeriac, kohl rabi, turnips, parsnips, onions (unless strung around the shoulders because that is a cycling tradition in France, I'm told), cauliflowers, cabbages, kings, and really massive tomatoes.

I wasn't going to mention melons because, strictly speaking they are fruit but everyone - men included - is advised to avoid cycling with melons. They can be unruly and you might overbalance. You know it makes sense. Your health is at stake.

Beau Brummel Rides Again

As far as mens' fashions go, the 21^st century has proved to be tedious in the extreme.

What have we got? A well-cut suit if you're lucky, comfortable trousers, jackets, sweat shirts, polo shirts, cuff and collar shirts and sportswear and then you've got jeans which will do for almost every occasion....

oh, and T shirts.

Dull, dull-plus and bargain bucket supa-dull-with fries.

None of it sets the world alight. There are no extravagant wigs - except in the higher echelons of the legal profession - no pantaloons, no fetching Mr Darcy baggy shirts, no fabulously shiny knee boots.

Riding in Richmond Park recently, one couldn't help but notice the packs of dedicated, svelte, long-legged racing cyclists in training. It was a spectacle which called into question how anyone in their right mind could revile the wonders of Lycra but it also highlighted how tastes and fashions have changed.

Two hundred years ago when London and Bath were fashion capitals and the male form was celebrated and enhanced with more zeal than it is today, fellows like these would have been much feted and admired.

With enough cash and time on their hands, they could have been the Beau Brummells of their day.

Most of them , with a few exceptions, possess precisely the correct turn of ankle, calf and thigh which would have caused Regency ladies to swoon by the carriageload.

As the penny farthing didn't turn up for another sixty years to aid the requisite leg development, Regency gentlemen either had to put up with the leg and body shape determined by their genes or resort to artifice at considerable expense.

Where the upper body was concerned, gentlemen often wore whalebone corded lace-up corsets such as the Glasgow Stiffener for boxing, hunting and fencing. These corsets were not unlike weight-lifters' belts and designed to create the impression of strong, straight backs and deep chests.

If nature had failed to provide sufficient musculature in the leg department, the slim-calved gent would wear appropriately padded stockings.

For the desperate, a cheaper option was to buy a pair of false calves and strap them to their legs beneath the stockings. This was riskier , carrying with it the possibility of slippage and eye-catchingly swollen ankles.

Pantaloons were deliberately cut on the bias to emphasise the leg and thighs and had an outside seam to avoid chafing. They were tucked fetchingly into the boot at the calf or ankle.

The downside of all this splendour was the lashings of cash, time and downright cheating that it took to achieve.

Beau Brummell, the man credited with introducing the concept of the suit worn with necktie, sometimes took five hours to get ready to go out. If it started raining, he'd have to start all over again and change into a completely different set of clothes.

Not feasible these days and probably just as well.

After all, it just wouldn't seem right for a fellow to spend far longer on his appearance and grooming than his lady.

The sensible option in 2008 is to invest in modest racing bicycle and the right kind of lycra and join the beautiful people doing circuits of Richmond Park

Le tour - St Malo (Seafood and Eat It Stage)

.....not to be confused with the Tour de France St Malo Monday 7th July (Stage Three)

Le tour (note small 't') was a week early for obvious reasons.

We really didn't want to do the whole public thing. I'm quite shy really and the thought of the big massed start with multi-coloured bunting fluttering over the roads, the barriers, the definitive route and all the attention was quite off-putting.

Who, in her right mind on a pleasant toodle through St Malo wants that crazy Devil character sprinting alongside her brandishing a trident and yelling inarticulacies?

Those spectators who dash into the road to squirt water over riders in the midday heat - they're a bloody nuisance, not to mention Phil Liggett - there every year droning on in his slightly nasal, know-it-all-twang.

How tedious, if you've just stopped off at a nice seafood restaurant and the waiter's brought a bottle of chilled muscadet and you're cracking your first langoustine if Phil or Gary Imlach were to thrust a microphone under your nose and ask searching questions about your commitment to the Tour, why you appear to have gone off route and when you were last drug tested.

So we decided to avoid any unwelcome attention and walked the bikes off the 'Bretagne' ferry from Portsmouth a week before the circus was due to arrive.

The Brittany Ferries folk deem it unsafe for you to ride your bike off the ferry. The ramps are big enough and sturdy enough for juggernauts but not suitable to ride a bike over, apparently. There must be a good reason. Perhaps they have had experience of lemming-like cyclists who get half-way to dry land when they are compelled to take a sudden left and plunge into the sea.

It was good discovering a camaraderie among cyclists. Two guys were heading south with 65 miles ahead of them that day and had packed so economically they'd forgotten the map. A couple in their thirties were aiming for Avranches via Monte St Michel. We had about...well... fifteen to twenty miles, max. But ours was a pleasant relaxing kind of thing not some kind of endurance test; an opportunity to meander off course, wander along a beach or two, swim maybe, explore any interesting-looking places along the way.

A dead-easy mosey along thoughtfully-provided cycleways through St Malo continued east towards Cancale then turned north along a deserted lane to the coast and a couple of lovely deserted beaches before the Pointe de Grouin to watch cormorants fishing and listen to oystercatchers.

The views were good from our outside table at a restaurant close to the Pointe. During a couple of hours, the distant and mysterious blue cone of Mont St Michel way across the bay faded in and out of view in the deep blue haze over the Cote d'Emeraud.

You know how it is when you're not expecting anything special and suddenly everything conspires to produce a special moment?

So it was when, in search of the first destination, we freewheeled down a short, steep hill on the outskirts of Cancale, took a left and found ourselves by the sea at Port Mer, a perfect, pocket-sized French seaside village.

There was one hotel and a couple of bars on the front across a narrow road from the sea wall and then a clean, soft sandy beach, gently shelving beneath the clear waters of a sheltered bay where yachts and fishing boats bobbed at anchor.

I loved the hotel sign. I loved the hotel room even more with a tiny balcony complete with a table and a couple of chairs overlooking the bay. It was hot. We grabbed towels and books and joined the few families dotted about the beach. That first swim in Channel water which was impossibly clear, was just fabulous.

Sunday in Cancale, the oyster capital of Brittany, was a revelation. It was across a couple of headlands from Port Mer. Vast degustation platters of shellfish and seaweed were being served in dozens of restaurants strung out all along the seafront but the real afficionados weren't in restaurants at all. They were perched akimbo on the sea wall next to the oyster market where they'd bought lunch and were busy levering oysters open and slurping them as people have done for centuries.

Much, much later, there was the small matter of picking up the bags from Port Mer, discovering how steeper the hill had got in a couple of hours and returning to St Malo via the coast road, busier as it was a sunny Sunday and the French had come out to play.

Cycling was a breeze in France. The drivers were polite and gave cyclists a wide berth so it felt very safe. There were no real hills to worry about and where there's a bit of undulation at least you have the satisfaction of the swooping downhill, which, if enthusiastic enough, gets you at least a third of the way up the other side.

There were plenty of other cyclists too. One couple could not possibly have been less than seventy years old but there they were, pottering along on sit-up-and-beg bikes on Sunday nodding amiably as we passed.

The next stop was La Grande Plage, St Malo where an electic selection of French seaside architecture lines the promenade - a sought-after location for the summer residence - overlooking the wide beach and sea with the old fortifications of St Malo to the west a ten minute stroll away. A curious forest of thick tree trunks had been planted on the beach to protect the sea wall. Not a bad idea. They'd probably last hundreds of years.

We rode along roads which will be closed for Monday's Tour stage.

But in spite of our own tour of St Malo, I have to confess I'm still in denial about the whole cycle tour thing. I've never wanted to be a classic touring cyclist and still don't.

I'm a terrible apology of a cyclist; a real lightweight. I don't want to carry more than a rucksack and a pack on a rack. I loathe panniers and I feel sorry for those couples you occasionally see in faded waterproofs where the guy is grinding away the tarmac out front and the woman is a quarter of a mile back looking worn and miserable.

I really don't want to just bike from place to place in a determined fashion where achieving miles is more important than carefree exploration and exhilarating downhills generously peppered with stops to enquire, to observe and to loaf about a bit.

A French loaf is appealing on so many levels. Crumbs, you should try it.

Sleeping with Strangers

There are those who aren't the slightest bit perturbed by the prospect of sleeping with a stranger. I'm reliably informed that some women actively seek out opportunities to do so.

I've never fancied the idea. I'm not the type. I require at least an introduction along the lines of a “How do you do?” or a “Do you come here often?” or a Majesterial “And what do you do?”

A small tincture doesn't go amiss either. It's only polite after all, to break the ice and put someone at their ease if you're going to spend the night with them.

But by the time I reached my sleeping quarters on Friday night, it was too late for introductions. I knew where I should go, because I'd checked it out earlier. But at 11.30pm the room was very dark indeed and I only managed to locate the place by taking a bearing from a now almost indiscernible painting on the wall of a French cottage.

That was my recliner, the empty seat by the aisle. But there was a man in the next recliner. He was a big bulky bloke built like a Toulouse prop-forward. Instead of sitting back and reclining in a disciplined way as in a chair, he had twisted on to his side, facing and uncomfortably close to, my seat, semi-curled like an enormous, unruly foetus.

He overflowed his recliner in all directions and was very soundly asleep. He looked like a professional traveller. He was wearing one of those Joan Collins eye masks which gave him the air of a burly cross-dresser. No doubt he had earplugs in too but if he did, they were hidden by a bushy thatch of dark hair. A blanket provided by Brittany Ferries was slipping off his legs.

I didn't immediately take to him. He looked like a man who was fond of food or beer or probably both so there was a strong probability of noctural eruptions. He might need to go to the bathroom at least twice, which would involve disturbing me.

The worse thing was that his great thick left arm was sticking out stiffly over my recliner; an over-hanging bough with a huge pale hand on the end with fingers pointing downwards stiffly like an inflated rubber glove.

Even if stopped breathing, sucked everything in to make myself as thin as possible and limboed silently into my recliner, I figures that like the Sword of Damocles, The Hand would be hovering approximately above the region of my breasts.

I''d never be able to close my eyes for fear of The Hand descending suddenly or lowering itself very very slowly, at the speed of the London Eye and making contact during the night. Whether it was by accident or design was immaterial; the prospect was too real.

The whole room was full of people breathing heavily. As my eyes got used to the darkness, I located DT man and disturbed him. He was unwilling to move, having consumed soporific quantities of very reasonably priced merlot. DT man's sleeping companion was a small slightly-built shaven-headed chap who was snoozing silently in a very disciplined way entirely enclosed within his recliner.

“A big man's got his hand over my seat” I hissed.

“Oh just nudge him,” DT man mumbled somewhat incoherently.

“He'll shift and go over his own side.”

Quite frankly, it wasn't the chivalrous response I was looking for. I was firmly of the opinion that squeezing in next to the Toulouse prop-forward was DT man's job, rather like putting bins out or using a power drill.

Gradually it became clear to him that the urgent whispering was only going to continue and sleep would be impossible unless we swapped places.

So he went over to sleep with the prop forward and I settled in nicely next to shaven-headed chap, who I decided was probably a Tibetan monk in civvies, unlikely to make any inappropriate lunges in his dreams about begging bowls and prayers.

I must have got a solid couple of hours before I was woken suddenly by the sound of a terrible prolonged groan/sigh which shook the room.

“Fuck,” I thought. “Someone's pegged it.”

Packing for three days on a bike in Brittany, I hadn't included the resuscitation mask which I usually carry. I shot bolt upright in my seat and scanned the darkness for signs of distress. No-one else had moved. DT man and Toulouse man were slumbering undisturbed. If someone was dead, it was going to be quite tricky to determine who. Should I creep between rows, silently poking people to check they were alive? Not a popular move. Maybe I'd dreamed that noise. Someone with sleep apnoea? Everyone else was still. I calmed down.

I must have drifted off again and I slept pretty well, except for the stiff neck and the not knowing what to do with my feet and legs, which seemed not to fit anywhere, as though I'd drunk, like Alice from the “Drink Me” bottle for especially long legs. Sometimes I crunched them up and sometimes I stretched out under the seat in front. It was not ideal.

I was sleeping very soundly indeed when the Really Useful Woman about three rows back woke me up by announcing to her poor long-suffering partner/husband/kid/friend “It's five past six. Did you sleep ok?”

Well I had until then. My shaven sleeping companion was still serenely breathing lightly in exactly the same posture he'd adopted seven hours before.

I looked over to see what the Hulk With The Hand looked like in the early daylight but he had already gone, no doubt in search of refreshment. A man of his stature would be needing an early breakfast before disembarking.

Winter ride

A murmuring gunmetal ocean

stretches and slips beneath my wheels

Traffic roars in frozen ears

a winnowing wind takes all the tears

and an aching heart is

calmed by fiery circular rhythms;

soothed by the comfort

of concentration.

Roly's Tour Diary

July 2007

Until yesterday, TV coverage of the Tour was exceptionally tedious. Don't get me wrong, I like proper cycling but that programme they keep watching just can't compared with Dogs with Jobs or Animal Planet. So I was dozing nicely when she suddenly shouted “Someone get that damn dog off the course!”

I glanced up to see some brainless labrador wandering among the riders then Marcus Burghardt ran straight into him.

A very embarrassing incident. That dog was definitely in breach of regulations. It wasn't wearing a number or a helmet and everybody knows you should wear both during a race. What was he even doing there? He'd be a hopeless climber - far too portly (although I suspect he'd have a momentum advantage on the downhills).

I blame the owner. It wasn't lardy-boy's fault that he wandered amiably among the frantic competitors. No doubt he could see that crumb of power bar which I spotted by the opposite kerb.

He wore a sheepish “Ooops sorry mate. Am I in trouble?” look as Burghardt sprawled on the tarmac. Just as well Burghardt wasn't seriously injured.

My extremely mean owner keeps me on a very tight lead at races or if there's food lying about at nose level. You know the sort of thing, dead seagull, horse manure, half-eaten burgen, the odd chip - all very desirable stuff. She's very boring.

No doubt they'll be glued to the box again this evening but I prefer the real thing. I remember the road races. Full days out in the fresh air, food, long walks, stopping for her to hand a bottle or two, a fragment of banana bar if I was lucky and then the joyous greeting at the end.

What cyclist who's just ridden 60-80 miles doesn't welcome an exhuberant springer spaniel reception party? Forget the pecks on the cheek from the dolly girls on the podium - my welcomes much more effusive and the exactly the same if he'd finished 40th or 1st.

I don't get out cycling much these days. The last time we went mountain biking in the Forest, I beat them on the climbs and I don't think it went down too well. The words fat and old spring to mind while I am ripped and in my prime.

Sex and food excepted, there's nothing to compare with the exhilaration of racing alongside the lead bike at full pelt, ears aerodynamically flapping in the wind.

They haven't taken me for some time though, ever since I made the wrong turn at a forest junction and went off with the wrong bike for several miles. The guy had to turn round and take me back to my people. Course, I couldn't explain it had been a sharp left and I was blinded by my ears at the crucial moment.

So cycling expeditions these days are a bit tame - a quick one down the cyclepath to the Farm Market and back AND I still beat her on the uphills, which occasionally has attracted comments from pedestrians.

She keeps talking about wanting to see Chablis and drink Tignes (or was it the other way round?) and I've got my own EU passport now.

I live in hope. I'll show 'em who's boss on those climbs.