Nearly bought it yesterday. in a reenactment of that scene from the “Guns of Navarone” or was it “Where Eagles Dare”. Anyway, I was on my bike and had crested a slight hill on Bishnym lane when I saw two figures ahead of me by a farm gate. That’s Alan and Oh Susannah! I thought, who own the farm. [Note: I call her “Oh Susannah!” after the American marching song. It’s a memory jog to stop me calling her Joanna, which I have done from time to time. I can’t help it. I get names wrong. Recently I was told not to call my wife’s colleague “Kylie” as her name is “Carly”. “For Pat’s sake I don’t do it on purpose”, I said. “Pete’s”, my wife said]. Anyway, as I started my descent, I picked up speed and changed gear to maintain a constant force on the pedals but inadvertently changed down instead of up so my leg rotation accelerated into a frantic blur that a casual observer would interpret as a man about to break his downhill speed record. Oh Susannah! who was watching, while wearing a waterproof coat, long shorts, and wellies, dropped what she was holding and waved. How jolly and sociable I thought and waved back. This seemed to enthuse her, and she waved even more. I grinned and nodded acknowledgment, shifted gear correctly and gathered more speed with less blurry legs. Now she was really waving, in fact she was jumping up and down and waving with both arms over her head, like they do on aircraft carriers when they want the pilot not to land and go around again. Then I saw it. An electric wire was stretched across the road (where cows were waiting to cross) at perfect garrotting height for passing SS motorcyclists, sidecar machine gunners and me. I yanked the brakes and stopped just short with both wheels locked up and teeth gritted in prep for having my head cheese wired off. Fortunately, it had a happy ending so we all had a jolly farmer laugh about it. But when I cycled up there today I was super careful. Riding past the scene the murder weapon was still visible.
Oh Susannah! also happens to be the lady who gallantly drove her quad bike into a ditch when we both came around a corner at the same time on a single-track road and one of us (which had to be her as I was in the Land Rover) had to bail out. I swerved past to the sight and sound of flying and barking dogs, two border collies and a lab had jumped off the quad when they saw where they were heading. I reversed back to the scene, opened the window and asked if she was ok and whether she needed any help, but dusting herself down she laughed it off and said everything was Ok and she’d ask John, the farmer next door, to pull the quad bike out with his tractor. “Happens all the time!”, she said, pulling nettles out of her mouth. She had somersaulted over the handlebars.
