Wheely Free

I used to love cycle rides when I was a child. Before I had my own bike, my dad took me out on his. I'd perch on a block of wood strapped to his cross bar and, until I got my foot caught in the spokes of the front wheel, it was a perfect arrangement.

Next came a blue three-wheeler that me and my brother would ride on downhill; him on the saddle and me standing up behind him like a seven-year-old charioteer. I don't recall any accidents, but concussion can do that.

But it's the bike rides with my little sister, when I was a teenager, that I remember most fondly. I'd pack a flask of hot chocolate and a couple of Club biscuits and we'd be off, flying along the country lanes. Sometimes she would stand up on her pedals to moo at the cows and sometimes I'd join in. And it felt bloody marvellous. The whole of the Kentish Weald at our feet and everything we needed in one saddle bag. Propelling ourselves along under our own steam. Free to stop and look. Free to get off and push. Free to moo at cows.

We didn't have to arrive anywhere. It was all in the travelling. And thoughts and ideas were welcome to come along for the ride. Flowing through our minds like the breeze blowing through our helmet-free hair.  

Over the years, the pure joy of cycling for cycling sake has been worn away until it's become simply the best means of getting from A to B in a city of rising bollards and streets clogged with traffic. I still get some great ideas along the way - in between avoiding death under the wheels of a bus or serious injury from anarchist cyclists shooting out of side roads and jumping red lights.

And, then, I started going for bike rides again. Purposeless, aimless, glorious rides. The Cambridge guided busway has replaced the country lanes, and it's more likely to be Earl Grey and a banana in a pannier, nowadays, but it still feels bloody marvellous.

Sadly, my sister lives too far away to join me on my outings, but I know she's with me in spirit. Especially when I pass a field of cows.

November Blues

Now I like a bit of bleakness and decay as much as the next melancholic. Just a glimpse of a bare, ploughed field - all that dark, turned-over soil - and I'm belting out 'plough the fields and scatter' like a five-year old in a school assembly. I love the way the mist hovers and clings, and sign posts and cows loom out at me like I'm Pip in Great Expectations - only without the stolen pork pie. And anyone who doesn't appreciate a big old carpet of leaves underfoot must be soulless, right?

But, despite all that, there's something about November that sucks the creative life out of me. You think I'd be used to the month by now, but it's caught me out again. Moping round the house with its long November face. Sighing and speaking in that gloomy, Eeyore voice it has. 'Only five months til the clocks go forward.' And 'Nothing to look forward to, unless you count Christmas. Which I don't.' Last night it went all Walter Scott on me, and kept chanting 'November's sky is chill and drear, November's leaf is red and sear,' And isn't that typical? Only November would have an ear worm all about itself.

Being born at the darkest end of November doesn't help. Pitched into the world, full of hope and wonder, only to find darkness; cold; tacky Christmas decorations. Not for me the delicious freedom of my spring-born siblings. Lying out in their prams all day in just their nappies. Cooing and watching the clouds scud across a bright blue sky, the whole of summer ahead of them. All I got was the tedium of the same four walls. Every outing requiring a strait jacket of warm layers with only a postbox view of life. No wonder a neighbour told my mum, 'I can hear your Melanie crying two streets away.'

So maybe that's it. My inner, wailing infant is kicking off again at the first hints of winter. Maybe, I just need to get her out of the house a bit more. Move and stretch and soak up some of that shrinking daylight.

And, perhaps, I could find something nice to say about November every day for the rest of the month. Smile at it. Give it some little treats. 

That's not so hard, is it?