Day 4.

Day 3 was cut short, it started spitting. Today I find I can pedal up the second uphill walk and often use a higher gear, progress: A circular route of about seven miles. As a fledgling cyclist I’m as sensitive to loss of altitude a pilot landing a Cessna and Twentywell Lane is a diving crime against potential energy. All that hard peddled rising lost in a flurry of hot, juddering brake shoes. I try not to cry. I feel like Mark Zuckerberg watching Face Book’s share price. But another first, I stop for a cup of tea on the way home. I sit in the middle one of three picnic tables outside Abbeydale Hamlet’s café. To my left a family is teaching a cross between a husky and a polar bear table manners. It seems incongruous to be teaching etiquette to a beast that could tear any child under ten limb from limb. To my right is a very late Queen’s centenary street party with the table piled high with every sort of edible snack. An overspill chap places his plate on my table with ham and cheese sandwich, sausage roll, pork pie and crisps. I feel taunted. Back home I eat the overspill from yesterdays pizza in futile retaliation. I am now waiting for a kitchen sink and tap to arrive, apropos nothing.