…I am, embarassingly, not. Or not on my bike anyway as I discovered when one of them overtook me on the way to the station this morning. In my defence, I would like to point out that the milk-float was almost empty at the time, and that it had had a long, long, straight piece of road to accelerate in, and that had I known that the strange whining noise coming up behind me was a milk-float, I would have pedalled harder*. Just to avoid the humiliation, you understand.
But I’m not at least the slowest thing on two wheels. The private day school near where I work has obviously been having a bit of a ‘cycle to school’ campaign because there was a herd of tiny wobbly blazered cyclists heading towards its gates this morning. Which is all good stuff, especially among the Chelsea tractored classes. But, wobbly as they are, they were all wobbling along on the pavement. Oh dear. That’s hardly a good example to set the lower orders, is it? I may be a slow cyclist but I am a fast walker so I ended up having to walk in the road to get round them all. I wouldn’t want the little darlings back in their four-by-fours, obviously, but perhaps a little bit more practice on the ‘cycling in a straight line’ and ‘leaving a bit of room for people to pass’ part of the cycling proficiency badge may be in order. And then they can go out into traffic and be humiliated by Ernie by themselves.
*In retrospect the sound of clanking empty milk bottles should have tipped me off, but who even knew there still were milkfloats any more?
Disgruntled Commuter 