Mellow fruitfulness

I had a miserable weekend getting my legs ripped off by a melange of over-keen weekend racers who have nothing better to do that prove they have more testosterone than me. They do. They win.

I chose to sweep up the remant thoughts of this anger and scrape them into the emotional rubbish bin along with the slightly furry skin off last night's smoked mackarel.

But I keep back one memory from the weekend which makes the girl in me smile coyly, tilt my head to one side and go 'ah'.

Picture this. 3 hours of mentally technical and hard riding, too ridiculous to be anything other than unnecessarily exhausting. Crawling back to the car on the final bridleway, sweat beginning to cool down and the sun beginning to run out of power. The boy and I slow down and stop, tip toes on the ground to steady ourselves, tired bikes and tired faces pointing towards the view.

In the valley below there were layers of smokey green hills, fog clinging to the bottoms of each dip, hiding the light polution and turning all sharp lines into soft sketches: The perfect soft ambient painting of a Somerset scene. Exmoor in the distance was blanketed in mist and the sun was that beautiful autumnal pinky-orange.

And he held my hand and what was left of my steely resolve melted completely.