My very own Voyage

Barty just told me we have eight working days to play with before we go. EIGHT WORKING DAYS. It can't possibly all get done. But it must.

A friend of ours is in the last few weeks of her pregnancy. We decided there is a comparison to be drawn here - one embarks upon something of scale with the cushioning of distance. As that distance diminishes and the thing becomes a reality, it becomes less and less probable but increasingly inevitable... hence this sort of permanent fidgety twitch that I have developed. When I'm not emailing people and sorting things out, I should be, and when I am, I'm not doing it fast enough. Except for the other morning when I had sent eleven emails by eight o'clock. Barty soon stole my thunder however when he told me that he'd sent thirty eight by nine.

The cycle training has taken a back seat. By necessity, it became not so much training as transport. I even took my little, very crap child's mountain bike to London town last weekend - it made me savings on both beer and public transport, and led to the discovery that people who smoke on trains do so in the bicycle carriage.

What I have done however is test driven my bicycle proper! She's a Voyage made by Ridgeback and she's beautiful. I wouldn't say she's exactly built for the ladies - I mistakenly wore a short skirt to test her and nearly caused a minor accident on the Banbury Road in Oxford - but nevertheless, she goes like hot snot and left me exhilarated.