Southpaw had served him well. Many an unsuspecting errant car wing-mirror had fallen to a vicious uppercut from the cyclist. In severe traffic situations, many motors had received worse – a stamp to the near-side wing, a banana up the exhaust pipe. The cyclist now even wore body armour when he pedalled.
But his familiar cycling stance had to change. As his legs thumped out a regular rhythm urging his icicle bicycle towards the ice stadium, large flakes of snow began to tumble from the sky. Flakes flew into his eyes, reducing the limited visibility from a few metres to zero, as he blinked away the icy intrusion between the lids. There was nothing for it. The cyclist raised his armoured gauntlet to shield his eyes.
The road was heavily iced, like a Marks and Spencers luxury Christmas cake. Car combat was likely to end in tarmac marzipan for our cycling hero, but he fought on through the snowstorm, to the ice stadium – the accident blackspot that was the roundabout below the Hammersmith flyover. His leg twitched with the memory of previous fights, as he steered into the middle lane, and accelerated hard towards the Fulham Palace Road exit….