Not so in my book. If one can anthropomorphize a car it seems to me like a small mongrel terrier, always ready and eager to please (if it had a tail it would wag it). It is not particularly economical on petrol, its small 1300 cc engine (auto gearbox) giving me about 37 miles to the gallon for the short runs I use it for (long gone are the days of runs like Germany and back in a day for which the SAAB was so eminently suited) and its high seating position is extremely comfortable with easy entrance and exit .
Riding large, heavy motorcycles (my life's love) is also currently no longer possible, but I find great relaxation and solace in my electric bike. One of the reasons for this car is the ease with which a cycle can be simply slotted down between the back seats with its low, easy-loading platform. The pedals need removing first but I have ordered some folding ones of the type fitted to folding bikes, which should obviate this need.
Sunday morning saw me load the ebike and drive about 5 miles down a boring, heavily trafficked road (potentially dangerous for cyclists too) to lovely autumn woods.
Once there it was a simple matter of unloading the bike to set off for a glorious morning's run through woodlands
and down to the little village of Appledore and Miss Mollet's tea shop for toasted tea cakes with black currant jam and a cafetiere of excellent coffee.
Only about 15 miles cycling but a delightful way to spend an autumn morning.
8 comments:
Go Pa Go!
Love daughter xx
Avus, I am so happy for you. I have read with more than passing interest how you have adapted, and coped with your life's problems. I take my hat off to you, sir!
Daughter mine:
Shall I switch the ebike to maximum speed then? (On throttle alone in manages nearly 19 mph which is technically illegal here - should max out at 15 mph)
Tom:
Thanks for your encouragement. Either one sits in a chair and bemoans one's lot and what is past or you find new ways to enjoy life.
My hat is also off. I can't see you doing the bemoaning option; and fresh air and autumn woods sound just the ticket for raising the spirits.
Thanks for visiting Pam and for your encouraging comments. Such are all very welcome and help reinforce my convalescence. (liked your "walk & talk" along the riverbank on your blog)
Wasn't Miss Mollet's called "the quality" tea-shop? Just to add to my frisson. A terrifying place with accusatory Tory women's hats, cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, barely audible discussions about bringing back the birch, a car park full of Rovers (the old sort).
There's a middle-class malapropism whereby toasted tea-cakes become teasted toe-cakes. When evoked it causes genteel laughs but not for me. I imagine Miss Mollet's customers eating toe-cakes with relish, especially when the toes are cut from the feet of the undeserving poor. Worshipping, as it were, beneath a halo-ed oleograph of GO, a sort of trapdoor in the middle of his chest, open to reveal nothing. But then we all knew.
I do not want to be enlightened. I am sure Miss Mollet's is a completely humdrum place and I would not enter it for that reason. I'm a savoury man, anyway, and for me cakes just don't cut it. But where's the fun in humdrum? Look around comfortable rural Kent but don't record what you see, only what you imagine. Solace for you and your dogged (nay, admirable) organisational spirit, intent on prolonging cycling delights whatever the complexities. May all bike runs be glorious (even if it rains; you're allowed to fib you know), may all complexities be reduced to "a simple matter", and may your rosy-spectacled memories of SAABs never dim.
And, incidentally, thanks. I'm sitting here in my dressing gown stained more than once with dropped food, a veritable literary cliché, and I've been moved by what you wrote. Not in the right direction, of course, but movement is at least one confirmation of life.
I've enjoyed catching up with what you've been up to! I envy your visits to Tea Shops in the English countryside.
RR: Thanks for that entertaining and witty post. It did go through my mind when I wrote about "Miss Mollet's" that I might get a nibble on the bait from you. Names are all. What if I had called it "Fred's Caff"?
Kay: Good to hear from you from far NZ. I found many of your cafes, etc. just as delightful once one got away from the tourist track. (Although I was a tourist myself)
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