Ok – let's start again.
It was an overcast evening, the sun was just breaking through the clouds dotting ever shifting pools of light across the hills and dales. My bike felt good beneath me, and the ride was going well until, oh woe betide me, the bridleway spat me out into what could only be described as oblivion.
How was i to know the horrow that would engulf me? How could I have predicted the true darkest of the human mind i was about to be exposed to? How could I have expected to be roast over the flames of my own thread on Singletrack when I deigned to mention it*?.
The bridleway, oh the clawing bridleway with its tangled mass of overgrown nettles and grasping bramble, spilled out on to the road, its mouth just a tiny aperture in an otherwise inpenetrable morass of hawthorn and gorse.
The black rubber of my front wheel touched pebble strewn tarmac and i waited.
I waited as I looked at the scene in front of me; the crest of a hill, road dropping away to my left at my right for the short distance I could see beyond the hedgerow. I was at the very apex of this corner, the road curving sinewously around my position. I was wracked with fear… to dash across in the hope of reaching the sanctuary of the bridleway opposite with luck on myside? To wait patiently, deliberate my crossing, awaiting the silent clue that my passage would be without incident.
Sensibly i chose the latter, and waited, ears attentively focussing on the tell tell sign of motor, hoof or tyre. The blackbird in the tree chirruped mockingly as I, muddied and sweating, stood, terrified of the tarmac ocean facing me.
I waited more, still the silence mocked, the blackbird chirruped, and the still, beady cats eyes stared at me incredulously.
This was my moment, yea, my perfect moment in time, and I strode out towards my goal.
The monster woke, i had stepped into its territory. I quickly made my way to sanctuary. The monster was getting closer, he was almost on top of me, his mottled, multicoloured skin teeming with the furious sweat of rage.
Our courses were not set to coincide, and we passed one another without incident, bar the mournful growl of an otherwise passive beast…..
"you f***** t***",
sod this, I'm bored now.
*scrub that last one. It's always going to happen when "overweight IT types" get bored on a Friday afternoon.