Lost in a dream
The sun is hot. I sweat. The saddle is hard. The road narrows. I don’t know the landmarks. The tarmac surface runs out. Ruts approach. Green appears between the ruts. The track surface is stoney muddy and unflat. Flints like acne pop up in the thinly soiled fields each side of the track. I pedal hard. The track winds around the stump of a very old, very circumferated tree. The track comes to an end. I am outside a flint-built farmhouse. Part of the house has knapped flints but in the older part they are left rounded with a slight imbrication to the east, seemingly leaning because of the keening west wind up here on the dry hill.
There is a well in the courtyard in front of the building. I wind up the bucket, hoping for a drink. It is a long wind up. A long way down to the water table. A long way through this hill of well drained chalk. The bucket appears. It is half full of water. I take a long grateful drink. I pour the rest of the cool water over my head - a welcome wet chill. I look around, no people. No way out except the way I came; in. I prop my bike against the parapet of the well. I drop to the ground to lean my back against it. I am too weary to search for a seat. I doze in the shadow of the well roof until a dream comes, of speedy pedalling along these old trading trackways.
The sun moves around. The shade moves away from my face. I wake in the sun burning light. The dream retreats. The nightmare advances. I mount the hot saddle and free wheel down the track. The temperature drops. Grey clouds appear on the horizon. The clouds travel nearer. Wind comes from nowhere. The clouds arrive, now darker and thicker. Rain switches on, large thundery drops. It is cold. it is wet, Wind whips at my summer club top. I pedal faster to create warmth. The rain roars and hammers the ground. White rivulets form in the chalk ruts, turn to milk, race me down the track, looking for but not finding, a drain. It is a cross wind. I don’t know why. I am happy. It pushes me sideways. I keep on the bike, just. I follow the furrows. The tyres plough through the rivulets, competing to speed to the lower ground. The squall passes. Rain stops. Sun emerges from the clouds. A miraculous rainbow forms. I pedal faster, try to get to the illusory pot of gold. It moves away from me. the rainbow fades. Nothing lasts.
The rivulets chuckle and gurgle, not knowing that their life is nearly over. Twigs and leaves, debris, dam the bends. Clouded, milky water rushes down the straights. The ruts deepen, washed out to small river beds. The track flattens, the ruts fill with watery, chalky mush. The green centre of the track changes to tarmac. A tee junction ahead, no coffee here. The rivulets meet their nemesis, a black drain grid, hellespont on speed as they rush to a certain death in the dark unknown depths below. I pedal faster, aiming for dryness and warmth. I start to steam. The tyres sing on the tarmac. A spray of droplets from the rear tyre form a wet line up my back. This is cycling. This is how it should be. I sing with the tyres in happy harmony.
I look up to the side of the road, houses, shops and pubs appear - each side. I am entering a town. No reception committee. Where am I? What is the name of this town. I know I am in South East England because of the chalk downs, vernacular buildings of flint, lopped ends and tile hung fronts. All towns have a name. If a town had no name, no one would know of it because no one could refer to it. I see a church, built of red stone - is this possible? It is but parish churches are always built of local stone. Only cathedrals could afford to import stone because they had more tithes ground from the poor. I stop. I prop the bike against a gravestone to ‘tuts’ from purple and lavender clad ladies with large-brimmed hats who chat in the sunlit graveyard. Who will object to my bike? They are too late. I walk up to the war memorial. Names written in cyrillic script in columns down the five faces. Five fold symmetry, must be crinoidal. Why cyrillic? I enter the church. I pick up a hymnal. It is English, I recognise some of the words. I put it down. I walk out through the heavy door to the sunny graveyard. The lavender ladies have dispersed but my bike is still there. The gravestone has gone. Other gravestones have english names, Henry Edwards, George Kent… The church is now vernacular, flints and bricks. The war memorial has four sides, english names in english script. I look at the notice in the church porch, St Ethelburgh’s dates and times of services. The town has a name, Tenterton. I don’t know it.
I wake and stretch my legs, aching from all that pedalling. As I dress I see my cycle top is still sweaty, with a muddy line up the back.
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