For Fuck's Sake

Suddenly everybody loves bikes. One Tour de France win plus considerable Olympic success and everywhere you look are people on bikes, with their pink lycra and bulbous cycling helmets making them look curiously like mobile erections.

I haven't bought into this bikeophilia, but being open minded I readily agreed when the wife suggested that we should take the boys out on the bikes to the local ice cream parlour, my protestations about hills receding as I remembered that only her bike was set up to have the boys' trailer attached to it.

Helmet.

And, in fairness, the ride was a success, at least on the way there. The wife coped admirably, dragging the boys the majority of the seven miles to Archer's Ice Cream Parlour, kindly letting me have a turn when we got to the foot of the hill leading up to Archers. Once we arrived, ice cream was the order of the day and, having removed the saddle of the bike from its preferred resting place of halfway up my arse, assorted flavours of ice cream were purchased and consumed.

It was only during the way home that things went downhill. And not in a good way. Punctures are a part of cycling but a simultaneous double puncture is surely proof that God does exist and that he's an evil bastard. So, as the wife disappeared into the distance, dragging the boys behind her, my bike ride quickly turned into a bike push. A six mile bike push. 

As I trudged wearily along the road, only the sight of the motorway lifted my spirits. Not becasue it offered a quicker route home but because by that point I was about ready to chuck myself under a lorry. 

The lesson; sometimes it's better to tell life to fuck off and to put the telly on instead.