LITTLE RED Retro
The doorbell of my parents’ house in Taunton chimed. I answered it, sure it was for me. It was for me. I can read the future.
‘Hi Frank,’ a policeman in uniform, complete with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves was standing there, grinning. He’d been in my class at school. I suggested that he’d done well, attaining the three stripes of superiority so soon – it was only five years or so since we’d all left that educational establishment. He grinned more, and we chatted with animation for a while.
‘We’ve found your bike,’ he revealed at last. I grinned back, and wondered whether he’d give me a lift in his panda car so that I could collect it. He shook his head, the smile fading. He shrugged.
‘It was dumped in the canal.’
I stared. Not a little bewildered.
‘Doubt it’ll run,’ he added, and I just nodded.
Moving backwards in time only a little, I can reveal that the previous day I’d ridden my bike down from North Wales, where I was resident at the time, to visit my parents, as a chap should. It had been a spectacularly dull trip, barely bearable until I rolled along the nearly new M5 south of Bristol, rapidly gave it up as a bad idea, and saved my sanity by proceeding
