I was walking back from escorting Mum from Catford to Euston (the annual Preston visit is upon us – I would hide yourselves in the Trough of Bowland til the danger has passed, if I were you) because I am the perfect daughter, when I was suddenly confronted with the unexpected and to be frank deeply unwanted sight of a huge procession of naked cyclists bearing down on me as I tried to cross the road. Truly, no good deed (all the way to Euston! From Catford! Early in the morning because she likes to get there in time to meet herself coming back) goes unpunished. I don’t know what their point, their protest or their message was.
Maybe they didn’t even have one. Any agenda they might have had, I assure you, would have been lost amidst the hundreds of questions that immediately fill the onlooker’s mind as they bomb past. Things like – doesn’t that hurt? If not instantly then surely very soon thereafter? Aren’t you cold? Do you think I want to see this? Why have so many men got thick metal rings round their parts and do I want to know? And why, given the profound novelty of the sight, does it all become, within nanoseconds, so, so boring? Taylor Swift, the Euros, the election, a reported increase in fox hunting, milkshakes being thrown at Nigel Farage – there is currently almost too much for me not to care about.
I’m gonna have to write to that John Donne and take issue with the whole “no man is an island” thing. I know I should care about at least fox hunting.
