The day the Queen died
The bike is not well
In the rain, beside the river, somewhere near Woolwich, a puncture.
I break three levers trying to remove the tyre.
And puncture the new inner tube whilst trying to replace the tyre over the rim.
Frustrated and wet, I push the bike to the nearby pier which serves the Uber Thames Link boat. The bike, which goes free on the Thames ferries, lies on its side on a deck - like an injured dog.
As we travel up the river, the sun illuminates London in brilliant chiaroscuro.
A wind blows making the rain rise back to the sky.
The rain pours upwards towards the sky
A message on my phone said that the Queen was dying and a hole appeared in the sky.
As the message was being typed, ‘The Queen is dying’, a hole opened up in the sky
And a rainbow began to spread from the North, slowly arcing its way over the river.
With the full arc in place
a second rainbow rose above it
and my phone pinged again
with a message
that the Queen
was dead.