I had another session with the physiotherapist today. Unfortunately, there's a tube strike in London, so I had to cycle the seven miles from my office to get there. Given that I'm being treated for a shit knee, this is probably not what the doctor ordered. Are you listening, the ghost of Bob Crow?
Luckily, it's an absolutely tremendous day in the capital, sunny and warm, so it was almost a pleasure to bob and weave in and out of traffic in the Blackfriars underpass. The only problem with being on two wheels today in fact was the lack of parking spaces. Everyone who's ever owned a bicycle clambered aboard it.
There is some shocking cycling to behold on London's roads at the moment. The combination of moderate heat, men in shorts and crowded streets is an accident waiting to happen. Sometimes I look on, slack-jawed, at some of the antics middle-aged men get up to on bikes. To look at most offenders, you'd have to assume that they are otherwise extremely conservative by instinct - the kind who wouldn't buy a lawnmower without having read Which Magazine cover-to-cover first. But as soon as they hurl their thin white legs over a bike, they become freed from fear or self-doubt.
They really take chances. I sometimes want to applaud when one of them narrowly escapes coma-free from another altercation, and shout over "Well done. The best that could have come out of that particular piece of high slapstick was your not ending-up in a wheelchair and having to be fed with a funnel for the rest of your days. So, hats off."
And when you consider that most of them are en route to jobs they loathe when dicing with death like this, it really beggars belief. I don't know how, or indeed why women put up with most men. Bunch of facking idiots, if you ask me.
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