The Confederacy Of Cyclists

I know I've told you before but just to remind kind readers that I have a bike, a Cannondale CAAD 8 to be exact, of which I am inordinately proud. One can pay ten times (and the rest) what I paid for a bike but this will do for me and as with most sad middle-aged cyclists I rather fancy that the combination of cycle and lycra knock years off me. But there is more - what really knocks years off a bloke is a pair of Oakley sunglasses - full mirrored proof that you have more money than sense. Here are mine, Tour de France 2013 special editions with interchangeable lenses. Been running in them three times and two outings on the Cannondale and as yet they have not made me measurably faster but that can only be because I'm getting used to them. What they have done is made me want to get out and exercise. I know, pathetic isn't it.

I had a nice, moderately strenuous, bike ride yesterday which was lifted by what happened when I got a puncture only six minutes in. As I inverted the bike to change the tube an elderly but lean man crossed the road to ask if I needed any help, he had tools in his garage just round the corner. No I was fine thank you. Transpired he was still a keen rider himself and we chatted amiably as I worked on the wheel, discovering some mutual acquaintances - it's a small world (but I wouldn't want to wallpaper it). Then we were joined by a slightly younger man (number one was in his seventies, the second his sixties) and his dog. Another cyclist though currently recuperating from an Achilles injury sustained in five-a-side football - "You'd think I'd know better at my fucking age" as he succinctly put it. My two new friends did what cyclists always do and politely admired my bike, "Three cogs of nine, twenty-seven gears, bloody hell. Puts my old Sturmey Archer in its place." Once up and running again I bade them a cheery farewell and left them in each other's good company. Sometimes it is good to be alive.

And today it is good to be a British/Irish rugby fan. the Lions gave Australia a bit of a towelling this morning - 41-16 - thus winning the series. Leigh Halfpenny attracted much deserved praise for his nerveless display but for me the man of the match was Alex Corbisiero who helped render the Aussie scrummage inoperable and did countless good things in the loose. Mention also for Romain Poite, the world's best referee of the scrum.

While I've got you, just to confirm that I completed the set two nights ago when I watched Revenge of the Sith. Far, far better than episodes I and II but not up there with The Empire Strikes Back. Dialogue still creaks but there is a nicely bleak message underlying it all in the scrolled type of the introduction - "There were heroes on both sides."