Back again, with bikes

I'm just back from three days out of the country and in the sun. The distance and time to relax and sleep and enjoy eating, drinking, conversing has made me feel a bit less weary than last week, and a bit less fraught about work, so I thought I would pop in and try and post something at least.

Lots of post material has been building up over the last couple of weeks in my head and on the camera, so hopefully I'll get time to share some of that with you soon. For now, I think I'm just going to post some photos. These are from the summer solstice a couple of weekends ago. We had friends over for dinner and I mentioned I'd read about a solstice bike ride taking place the next morning. We liked the idea, we realised we had four bikes between the four of us (none of them being mine) and decided to go.

A short nap later, we reconvened and I got on a bike for the first time in probably 12 or 13 years. Swept down dark and empty streets, through the park, down towards the clamour of the city centre. Into soho, where being sober at 2am felt like being thrust into a circus or asylum, people shouting, swaying, talking to themselves, pirouetting, vomming, carrying friends, acosting rickshaw drivers.

A group gathered and we set off. It was short, and a little disappointingly lacking in the bubbles and music and costumes and general jollity you see on the critical mass rides, but I loved flying through dark streets surrounded by a sea of flashing red lights, and we made it up to primrose hill to see a (cloudy!) sunrise and drink tea, and it felt like a little adventure.

Now I really want a bike.