WEEK 6: Death By Cherry Blossom

Green things are growing, flowers are in bloom, mammals small and large are getting randy (some of them have been watching the wood pigeons rutting in the tree outside the kitchen window) and so it’s no surprise that my route to work, once so barren, is now verdant like the hanging gardens of some biblical city. The branches of tall bushes and the boughs of trees are so heavily laden with new leaf growth that where they lean outwards and downwards over garden walls and fences, they create a serious hazard for your average cyclist, zipping along with his head at just the right height to snag a tree limb with his throat. Cherry blossom is evil stuff. It’s so dense it’s like approaching a huge cloud of candy floss moored to a tree. It always grows on corners where it’s guaranteed to reduce your forward visibility around the bend just when you need it the most. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Oh yes. As I said, from a distance the pernicious pink stuff reaches out so far and so low that your view of what lies just 20 yards beyond is completely obscured. It’s not until you cautiously approach the outer limit of the blooms radius that you can make out the legs of pedestrians on the far side, and then you have to duck so that your chin is almost resting on the handlebars. But in this manner the careful and considerate cyclist may avoid a collision – unless he’s very late for work!

Red light ahead, divert onto the pavement, over the pedestrian crossing, back onto the road, stopped traffic behind, road clear ahead, shift up to next gear, bastard headwind, check watch, feck feck feck, this bits downhill, use it to shift up, argh my knees, work it, work it, lorry behind, blind fecker’s in the cycle lane, speed up beat him to the lights, too late, gone red, onto the pavement, no pedestrians, smooth surface here, pick up speed, corner ahead, take the outside line, nice and easy, nice and easy, CHERRY BLOSSOM CHERRY BLOSSOM! SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS! BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE! TOO LATE, I’M GOING IN… ARGH!

I was lost in a blizzard of billions of tiny soft pink things swirling in every direction, plastering my lenses and gluing themselves to my clothes and tyres. A dense, dark mass swished by my head. A branch? Dozens of tiny whips lashed at me, scittering over my helmet like claws raking a chalk board. The blizzard grew thicker as I ripped even more blossoms free. I had no idea which way I was going or how fast or where I would end up. In the road? In the fence? Just as I thought I would emerge under the wheels of the lorry I burst out the other side into daylight, my vision clearing just in time to catch the look of horror on the face of the unsuspecting pedestrian who very nearly became extremely intimate with my front tyre. Still on the pavement, still moving at speed and still extremely late for work (and too cowardly to stop and apologise) I pedalled on, sparing time only to glance over my shoulder and call back,

“Sorreeeeeee…”

I have an image, very briefly registered, of a tall man in a suit holding a briefcase, staggering backwards and slowly becoming engulfed by a gentle falling rain of millions of tiny pink blossoms, like the fallout from a powder puff bomb.

I arrived at work late, sweaty, exhausted, agonized and bearing multiple small lacerations, but did I get any sympathy? Hell no. I suffered merciless piss-taking the whole day because when I got there I had a big, beautiful cherry blossom flower lodged in one of the ventilation slots of my helmet, right over my left temple.

For the record, I am not New Age, I didn’t leave my grass skirt at home and I do not know the Hula Hula dance.