94. A letter to Terry ✒️ #21
94. A letter to Terry ✒️ #21
Sweet and savoury Shakespeare, biking, and some terrific pothole hacks.
Dear Terry,
Thank you for your latest letter, which verily got my mouth watering! Are you sure that it was Billy Wagglestaff himself with that food obsession you mention, or is it actually you?
It has not escaped my attention that none of the titles you’d listed offered even a sniff of a pudding! That fascination you share with Shakespeare appears to be with the savoury rather than the sweet.
Terry, you’ll be glad to know that I have taken the opportunity to balance the scales, you know, measure for measure. It turns out that there are alternative editions of four of Shakespeare’s plays which would be a cracking pairing for a decent dessert wine.
Let me present to you the following:
A Midsummer Night’s Cream
The Merchant of Viennetta
The Taming of the (Tirami)su
Jell-Olius Caesar
Yummy!
I’m impressed with you both for your awards of badge and certificate in respect of passing your Bikeability course. I trust that you’re wearing your badge every time you get into the saddle so that you can easily prove your certified ownership of if not the road then at the very least your local cycle path.
I’ve had a look at the syllabus for Bikeability’s core training programme, and I fear that I would fall at the first hurdle.
At Level 1, new riders learn to:
🚴♀️ Prepare themselves for a journey
Terry, do they know how long it takes me to even leave the house, let alone do anything specific related to the task of mounting a bicycle and riding it on the public highway?
By the time I’ve filled two flasks with tea (better safe than sorry), found my rucksack, packed a week’s worth of snack food (you never know), found my front door key, remembered – and correctly entered – the burglar alarm code, locked up, unlocked the front door again, gone back into the house to check from the kitchen window that I’ve locked the shed, locked up again, gone back in again to open the shed (which I had left unlocked, ooopsy) to find – and apply to my head – my bike helmet, the day would be all but over.
I’m sure that you and Elaine, though, have absolutely nailed ‘Prepare for a journey’ and are right up there ready for Level 3, in which you will become certified not only to board a bicycle with a view to riding it, but also to:
🚴♀️ Plan a journey
🚴♀️ Plan to and ride assertively everywhere cycling is permitted
🚴♀️ Maintain suitable riding positions
🚴♀️ Co-operate with and respect other road users
🚴♀️ Pass queuing traffic and use junctions controlled by traffic lights
🚴♀️ Use cycle infrastructure and multi lane roads
🚴♀️ Ride on roads with speeds above 30mph
Taken from Wikipedia.
Terry, I’m afraid that I’d have to retire to lie down in a darkened room way before the ‘Plan a journey’ stage, given that I am still unhappily preoccupied getting ready for Level 1’s ‘Preparing for a journey’. As for riding on roads with speeds above 30mph – does that refer, I wonder, to the speed limit signs on the roads, or to the speed of the bike? If it’s the latter, well, sorry, I’m busy that day…
I wonder whether that bike of mine ever will make it out of the shed?
Thank you for your congratulations on my successful completion of the 5k race I’d been training for. These words of yours had intrigued me:
…if you’d shown me the route in advance I could have advised you where to catch a bus without anybody seeing…
A bus? Around here? There’s never been a bus on those lanes, Terry! Well, some have made it close: there’s a bus that leaves the stop opposite the pub at the start line and heads for the bypass every morning, returning mid-afternoon, but that’s solely a school service that doesn’t go anywhere near the village where the finish line is located.
If I’d perhaps sweet-talked the driver of any of the cars that had passed me during the race – there having been no road closures in place – I’m sure I could have hitch-hiked back to the village, but with 256 runners ahead of me clogging up the very narrow lanes it was always going to be quicker to run, or even to walk, than to wait for a non-existent bus.
I laughed when you told me about the pothole related letters in the Daily Telegraph, because by the time I’d read your letter on Wednesday I had at last reached the Letters to the Editor page of last week’s Saturday edition. In fact, I only take the paper on a Saturday, and only then for the Telegraph Crossword – it always takes me at least a week to read the whole thing.
I found this letter particularly alarming, although given the size of some of the potholes in my lane I wouldn’t be all that surprised if they’re visible from space:
And this one has provided me with a genius hack which I might just use myself:
Terry, I’ll keep you posted with news of any pothole progress. (Don’t hold your breath.)
Well, it’s the start of September at last, and that means that most children in the UK are back at school this week.
Cue a poorly-timed heatwave!
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that after a whole six-week school summer holiday period of grey, cool and rainy weather, to be reading news headlines like this the evening before the start of the new school year?
Here’s what the Daily Mirror had to say (excerpt shown below):
Some of the most sweltering days of the year are expected to arrive this week as children across the country head back to school, with the Met Office forecasting 28C highs rising to 31C on Wednesday and Thursday. Temperatures will then linger around the 30C mark in the warmest areas until Saturday, according to meteorologists from the national weather agency.
The dramatic turnaround in the weather for the beginning of autumn comes despite a summer largely marked by miserable wet, windy, and cool weather.
I have noted your safety recommendation that meeting up with ‘strange women’ should occur in ‘broad daylight, in a crowded place’. I’ve had a chat with some friends about the prospect, and they are unanimous with this advice when it comes to meeting up with new people in person:
Make sure you feel comfortable.
Terry, should we ever meet, I shall bring a cushion to sit on. My comfort is assured!
All the very best, as always,
Rebecca
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Very chortlesome, Rebecca. I look forward to responding 😹
I must know - is the phrase 'board a bicycle with a view to riding it' actually written in the training manual??! Haha!
The pothole ads are brilliant, thank you for sharing them. Maybe they will help in your community Terry?
Good luck with the heatwave, may there be no fires.