A WEIGHTY PROBLEM

                                                                                    

   ‘Why would anyone in their right mind want to do this?' she muttered, sweat trickling down her spine, looking at the steep hill she was fast approaching.

  ‘If it wasn't for McDonalds, Cadbury's, Starbucks and the new cake shop forcing their stuff on me, I wouldn't need to flagellate myself - hmm nice word for a Tuesday,' she puffed.

    ‘'Chances of me losing two stones on one of these things are fairly slim, I'd be better off at the fat club, he, he.' She grinned, thinking this is great, no one can hear you talking to yourself when you're pedalling along the road.

    ‘Lets see,  £110 for the bike equals five gym sessions, latte and biscuits during cool down, a sneaky lunch at the pub after the session and I've still got the bike in five weeks time - I'll probably still have the two stones as well though.'

    ‘My God this hill is steep, why is it that railway stations are always built on top of hills and why do they always call it Station Brew when it should be Station Brow?'  Gritting her teeth, she resisted the urge to stop pedalling mid-climb and have a rest.

    ‘A brew of tea would be welcome round about now,' she grunted, pushing hard on the pedals.  ‘Humph, a cold lager would go down better still.'

     That old guy with the baseball cap riding his antiquated, wartime, mudguard rattler thinks he's kidding everybody when he stops in the middle of the hill and affects to be admiring the view.  Maybe he's admiring the graveyard down in the village, sometimes he looks as if that's going to be his next stop, hope it won't be the permanent one.  Funny thing about the white heads though, they almost always speak or wave when passing you on the road, not like those grim-faced, cat-suited, insect-headed morons who delight in shouting as they overtake at elbow-burning distance, usually causing an embarrassing wobble and a startled grab for the brakes.  

    ‘Do I risk changing to a lower gear for the last fifty yards or not?'  She remembered the first time she tried that on a hill and thought she'd better not try it again.  She'd lost her momentum as the gears changed, which caused her to involuntarily dismount the bike in a tangle of legs, skinned hands, the rear bumper of a parked car, and one of her more evocative, Saturday morning epithets.  Her pride had reacted with horror at the indignity of it all and she'd marched off half-way down the hill, refusing to return until the small knot of helpful disembarked railway passengers had dispersed.

    That was the day her husband told her that had bikes been meant to spend time at ground level, they'd probably have had four small wheels instead of two large ones.  He wasn't saying anything clever like that a week later when his bike got a puncture in a village eight miles away and he hadn't taken either money or mobile phone with him, which resulted in him having to walk all the way home.  One of their older children reckoned that it must have been a deflating experience for him and made the mistake of saying so at dinner that night.  The rest of them found out how difficult it is to eat spaghetti while falling about the dinner table laughing.

     ‘Well, this is the third time I've made it to the top of the hill without stopping, trouble is, I have to do it every time from now on, you get compromised having done it once,' she muttered.

    ‘What's that you say dearie?' asked an old lady walking past, hauling back hard on the leash of her small dog.

    ‘Oh nothing love, I'm talking to myself'.  She smiled at the old lady who tugged at her dog and walked away.

    ‘You should get out more often,' the old woman said, waving her walking stick while trying to organise her shopping bag and the dog lead in order to straighten her spectacles.

    Sitting down on the railway bench and pulling her socks up, she looked again at the severity of the incline and thought about her recent reckoning - that  she'd never, ever, be able to get to the top of that in one go.  Feeling a little smug at her achievement, she giggled because she knew the middle-aged man next door, who'd taken up bike riding at the same time as she, would probably hurt himself attempting the same climb when he found out.  There was unspoken rivalry between them, whenever she reached a new goal her neighbour reported, a few days later, that he had done the same trip. 

    ‘I'm going to try The Big Hill on Thursday, see what he makes of that, that'll make his teeth squeak a bit' she said, to a small sparrow prospecting on the dusty cobbles.  The Big Hill was a two miles long, steadily rising main road beyond the village that her husband had referred to as ‘a death certificate demand' the first time he'd tackled it.

    ‘If I can do the big one I'll probably qualify for a pair of Lycra leggings like the professionals wear and maybe a pair of wrap-around sunglasses too, it might even stretch to one of those body-hugging vests, though I'd have to leave my stomach at home if I bought one of those'.

     She wondered why the grim ones took their bike riding so seriously.  At the pace some of them rode they were asking for a heart attack and it must be pretty undignified to go tarmac-hopping in the event of a miscalculation on a wet road surface or the sudden appearance of a spotty eighteen years old Michael Schumacher in a beat-up old Ford Fiesta.

    A train pulled noisily into the little station and stopped, no one got on or off and after a couple of minutes it pulled away.  She looked at her watch which showed 11.55am. and reckoned she'd just be home in time to make herself a salad sandwich for lunch. 

    ‘The trouble with all this healthy fresh air and exercising stuff, is the eating regime that goes with it,' she said to the sparrow, now hopping a little nearer.  

    ‘No calories this and no saturated fats that, no cakes and biscuits the other, it'll be no sex next,' she reflected, riding back down the hill to the village.

    ‘Listen my love, 'I'll give you fifty pence if you look after my bike while I nip in here for a minute,' she said, offering her bike to the small boy outside the take-away.

    ‘You can't ride your bike and eat burger and chips as well,' he said importantly.

    ‘You watch me sunshine, you just watch me,' she said, disappearing inside the premises.

 

        

    

     

 

by david lavisher (Viewed 216 times)