Whatever can go wrong...

I had ordered the bike in June, but by the time I was summoned to collect it, November was thrashing Hovisville with all its angry might and darkness was upon the town by three in the afternoon. The rain was torrential and unrelenting, but having waited this long, I was loathe miss my chance.

The new bike is a strange fish. For one thing, it’s pink. Aside from that, it’s not the sit-up-and-beg Dutch or Japanese style that I’m used to. It has 14 gears and forces me to lean forward to reach the handlebars, making it impossible to carry an umbrella.

So with my head exposed, I set off through the hailstones towards home. Such was the fury of the weather, that by the time I’d got to the end of the street, my jeans were waterlogged and my bra was wet. I could barely see where I was going for the rain in my eyes.

In such conditions, I felt it unwise to stay on the road, so veered towards the pavement only to realise, too late, that the smooth slope I’d seen ahead of me was actually a large brown puddle with a kerb submerged beneath it. To stop in time, I had to brake and bring my feet to rest in ankle-deep water. Cursing, I lifted the bike and myself free, trailing great streams of water as I went.

With around 300 meters to go, I noticed that the road ahead was flooded. Passing cars were, with a pleasing hiss, casting a graceful, five-foot arc of filthy water across the narrow strip of pavement I was about to cross.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I bothered to brake, since I was already soaked to the skin. But once the wheels were set in motion, they were doomed to continue, skidding across the piles of sopping leaves, and delivering me, chest-and-mobile-phone first into the freezing deluge I’d been so keen to avoid.

I like to think the arc I created matched that of the finest Ford Mondeo.