A Winter's Tale

As Mr Kingsbury used to say, The Boy Done Good . (I'm no good at Suspense.)

Also Urghhh is what I wanted to say, who invented alarm clocks? Up before dawn trying to think of everything that hadn't been packed the night before, and off in convoy to Nelson. Lots of people - three - already milling around, and a frantic unpack until Bob and Nigel agreed with each other not to be so silly, they'd start at eight. This was to prove a Mistake as shall be revealed.

Lots of warm-up laps and so to business, I holding Bob up on the line and Mrs Farrell holding Mr Farrell up on the far side of the track. Mr Farrell - I wasn't close enough to see - may have received a good luck kiss; Mr Knight did not. The countdown and they were off, I running along holding the sides of the machine to prevent ignominious horizontality, my attempts to cheat by giving him a vigorous push being pre-empted by the fact that he pedalled out of my hands. And then they were on their own, and Mrs Farrell (it's Annalisa by the way and I didn't have to ask. I googled) sat down beside me and we settled to the ticking off of laps. All looked hunky-dory at first with each exactly matching the other's speed, and though Mr Knight was taking a slightly higher line on the track they were crossing their respective Start lines at exactly the same moment.

After an hour both of them had broken the NZ record but I'm kanckered (anag.) and about to go to bed because although all you rosy-cheeked yokels of Greet Maaaarsin'm Naarf'lk (for the NZ reader: Great Massingham; a noble city of several houses wherein the improbably named Niels Christian Arveschoug, famous Norfolk folk musician and an old mate of mine once lived) are up and planting turnips and so forth, we Colonials are frozen to our earthquakes and the sky is starry and frosty and the moon glimmers like a glimmery thing and actually I don't happen to have the exact figures to hand. I know one of 'em did 101 laps and a bit and t'other did 97 and a bit, but we want exactitude and I forgot to write it down and can't get the Results emailed to me until the morning. Besides the photographer has gone to bed.

Okay so that was a bit of a let-down, and here's another: it got so windy that for the subsequent race I tried my wonderful, beautiful, exquisite (get on with it. - Ed.) foam fairing for one trial lap and promptly took it off because the wind was steering the bike, not me. My fairing has a number of deficiencies, conspicuous among which being that it's useless.

I shall tell you all about these adventures tomorrow. Promise. (Maybe.) But there's a Clue in the preceeding paragraph.