A royal baby and why I'm on four wheels instead of two today

Shakespeare would have been sharpening his quill this morning after the birth of a royal baby. A prince is born and storms rage across the land. The portents don't look good. I'm fairly sure I spotted three witches sitting on the breakfast TV sofa, mouthing vague incantations about nursery furniture and breastfeeding.

 

The royal birth means very little to me, personally. I am always delighted for new parents, as long as they don't make me hold the baby and I should imagine that's very likely to happen with William and Kate. I must be a few million steps down the baby-holding line of succession.

 

The storms, though, have driven me off my bike.

 

I am no fair weather biker. I have frozen in the snow and baked in the summer heat. I used to be downpour-proof, too. I simply wore one of those hotel shower caps under my cycle helmet and pedalled to work as normal. That changed the day of the Really Big Fall. Having underestimated the slippery effect of a wet road I took a bend too fast and completed the manoeuvre sliding sideways across the tarmac beneath my bike.

 

The bike was repaired and so, eventually, was my leg. My confidence, though, has been slower to mend. So today I'll be leaving the bike at home and retreating to my car. The attempt to beat my best weekly mileage total is doomed. I'll be miserable and migraine prone. And the roof is leaking. Shakespeare and I know a thing or two about the new Black Prince.