On freedom in the night

I use my bicycle to get around London. Coming from South Africa, a country with no subway system, I was fairly excited about the Tube when I arrived, until I actually had to use it regularly. Its the foetid air that puts me off. And one particular journey, in which I was mashed into a malodorous armpit for the length of the Northern line... Honestly, soap dodgers should be flogged. Or at least fined. Getting held up at the lights behind a garbage truck was never as traumatic. Having a bicycle means I am free; of the masses, of waiting for buses, of paying for a journey. I firmly believe that every little girl should be given a bike for Christmas. Mine was a black and red racer and I used it to terrorize the neighborhood. It was my first taste of utter freedom. I felt the wind in my hair as I screamed silently down hills and had absolute autonomy over my after-school movements. Would I go to the clubhouse, or pop round to my friend Emma's house? And having a bike in London brings that all back. I feel like a kid in an enormous playground, that happens to be filled with incredible architecture, and some great window shopping. I confess to being a shameful traffic hazard on Sloane Street, on the stretch outside Maria Grachvogel's windows in particular. Last night I was editing late, trying to complete an audiobook by the deadline. The morning had been fine and warm and the optimist that I am had left home with a leather jacket and a silk scarf on. But the capricious British weather system had turned grumpy by eleven, and an Arctic wind was hustling up Edgeware road, rustling the burqas of the strolling women. The hookah smokers remained undeterred, of course, and the street smelled as gloriously redolent as it did the first time I rounded the corner from Oxford Street to find myself suddenly plunged into Arabia. But on this occasion I was tired and cold and longing for a warm descent into the land of Nod. On an average day, my pace on the bike could politely be described as sedate. My husband, rampant speed demon that he is, calls it other things. But now, I knew that the only way to get warm was to attempt to out ride the wind. So I did. Suddenly, I remembered my precocious ten-year old self; I flew under Marble Arch and dove across the lights at Cumberland Gate. I was invincible, a thing of light and carbon. The night streamed through my hair as I blasted down the Broad Walk in Hyde Park and weaved through the frozen traffic on Brompton Road. Is it possible that the congestion is actually worse at night? Where are all those people going? I laughed inside at their bleary eyed boredom, while they pitied my under-clad self on a bike in the cold night. Then I donned metaphoric blinkers for the race down Sloane Street and sailed through the taxis in Sloane Square. A few hardy souls were at the tables on the sidewalks. I wanted to be drinking champagne after a performance at the Royal Court, but that's for another night. Over Albert Bridge, effulgent like a Christmas tree, and through the hush of Battersea Park. I allowed myself the guilty pleasure of taking the pedestrian shortcut around the bandstand, a ghostly sentinel alight in the Cimmerian night. And then I was home. I was safe and warm, my nose was coursing. And I was far too exhilarated to sleep.