One day I am going to do it. One day I am going to throw vegetables at unsuspecting cyclists – cyclists without helmets. This is one of my all-time pet hates – #27 but who’s counting? – daily this spectacle fills me with rage, daily I am forced to endure it. And nowhere is this phenomenon more prevalent than Cambridge. Cambridge! Home to thousands of Really Smart People. And rowers. But it’s not the rowers, it’s the hipster cyclists ambling dreamily along in the glorious sunshine with a basket attached to the front of their old-fashioned bicycles with their long loose-flowing hair, floral print dresses, denim jackets, and sandals.[1]
STOP IT! YOU ARE NOT IN A FRENCH FILM. This is not Jour de Fête[2] and neither are you Amelie. I can tell this is not a French film because: 1) I am not in black and white 2) I am not smoking 3) I am not cheating on my husband. In fact, there’s no-one looking anything remotely like Romain Duris anywhere near here, and – if this is a French film – I will be writing a strongly worded letter to Studio Canal about the casting in this miserable production.
And it’s around about now that you are probably thinking, “This definitely is a French film because I have lost whatever semblance of a plot there was, and – once I have read the reviews to make sure that I am not missing out on anything really deep and meaningful – I am definitely giving this a 2 on Rotten Tomatoes.” But I promise I am getting to the point or at least that we are near the end credits.
Helmets may not look cool but they will probably stop you becoming a vegetable. They may not save your life but they may stop you suffering serious brain damage. It’s not glamourous but neither are the consequences of blunt force trauma to the head. Rant over. Now if you will excuse me I am off to buy some fruit…
[1] You may think this is an anti-woman rant and right now be deploring the state of female solidarity crying ‘Whatever happened to sisterhood?!’ But there’ll be no sisterhood with one of us six feet under.
[2] If anything Jour de Fête is a cautionary tale about road safety
There will no longer be Summer. ‘WHAT?!’ I hear you cry. ‘You said you weren’t going to impose your will on us and now you’re abolishing Summer??’ Chillax. It’s just a question of re-branding. The way I see it that imposter called Summer is merely a cunning ruse by Primarni et al to get us to buy clothes that we will ultimately never wear as we anticipate weather that is somewhere between wildly optimistic and frankly completely unrealistic for our geography. The English ‘Summer’ mostly consists of a few nice days in May and a few unexpectedly good days in September. ‘Summer’ with cloudless skies and temperatures in the 20s is merely a myth to keep us down as we constantly lament that ‘it’s not very sunny’! NO MORE!
‘Summer’ will instead be replaced by Tepidus, which is derived from the Latin meaning ‘warmish’. We will instead celebrate days that are not cold. Any days of glorious sunshine will be treated as an enjoyable surprise. For anything more than this, please take your holidays abroad as I am not having the island towed to the south of France. It’s expensive (and truthfully I get sea-sick).
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