Back to Normal

I'm happy to report that the friggin' flower show is over! My fellow cyclists and I are back to only having to contend with the few small groups who occasionally amble along the tow path and block the cycle route. Usually, they are pretty good at getting out of the way when you ring your bell.

To celebrate the end of the Hampton Court Flower Show, some friends of mine and I went to The Albany (a pub on the river) to watch the people who went try and get out as the show ended. We sat on the river, sipping our beers and watched as the queues for ferries or tried to make their way along the towpath carrying armloads of various vegetation purchased at the show. To show that it isn't just he inability to reason how the cycle paths work that visitors to the show lose. They also lose their money sense.

As Terry pointed out, as we watched the huge queues slowly dissipating as the ferries came and went, you could get a ferry from one side of the river to the other for a pound. But if you got the one that dropped you at the train station, it would cost you £1.50. The extra fifty p apparently to save you the two-hundred-yard walk along the tow path and across the bridge.

Usually, however, there is no problem getting through the bike path. Personally, I am so happy about the end of the flower show that I took the long way (along the river) to work, then again today at lunch time. What a lovely day! They are predicting that the weather will fall-apart around the time I plan to leave this evening… just the way, eh? Oh well, as my friend and mentor, Ruth used to say: "We'll just have to jump off that bridge when we get to it."

To close this I think I should quote a book; the last line of Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco: "Right now, it's so beautiful"

Wherever you are today, I hope you're faced with lovely weather - whatever "lovely" means to you.

Don Bergquist - 09 July 2007 - Thames Ditton, Surrey, UK