A Dismal Shortest Day on the Castle Line

The shortest day, in terms of daylight hours, was compounded by heavy skies and rain all morning. When it finally stopped at 1.00, I slipped down on my bike to Rolleston for the lunchtime oil tank returns bound for the Humber refinery. It was due to pass at 13.56 and though it had been shown as being 12 minutes down, it had made up time by Nottingham and was now back on schedule approaching Rolleston.

No. 60054 duly obliged, without keeping me there long enough to get cold standing around. I’m not sure exactly when it was that I started to wrap up warmly, as my Mum had regularly advised me to do in the distant past. It was advice regularly ignored then, but not anymore, she would have been pleased to know.

Closer to home, I climbed the hill a bit more quickly than usual. I was expecting a delivery that was too big for the letter box. If the train had been late it would have been touch and go. There were very precise instructions from the carrier that I needed to be home by 14.42 and for an hour thereafter. A motorbike approached from the opposite direction. As he passed me, he imitated my hill climbing style by putting his knees out wide and adopting a rocking motion, moving his head from side to side in an exaggerated fashion. Even Chris Froome does a bit of that on the Col de Tourmalet. What was his point, though?

“I’ve got a motorbike and you’ve only got a bike, so I must be “considerably richer than yow”.

“Your riding style is pathetically childlike and uncool and you must be an eight stone weakling”.

“I am a complete knob and I just love trying to wind people up at every opportunity”.

I was home with 5 minutes to spare before the specified parcel arrival time. The package was already waiting for me on top of the plastic container marked for deliveries next to the door. It had been dropped off prior to 14.37.

My solstice experience had been determined by a handful of moments in time. Retirement confers the luxury of time to fill, as opposed to time already charted out in advance. It is my waking thought again today that time is mine to do what I want with and I’m very grateful for that, even on the shortest day - and the skies get brighter from now on, as well.