Dear Bicycle

Dear Bicycle,

thank you for being so bright and shiny and always lifting my mood.

Thank you for enduring your two month sabbatical in Victoria Square Park after the cable lock froze over in the depths of a very cold winter.

Thanks for bringing a smile to the face of many with your flower-adorned basket.

Thank you for resisting the prolific Bristol bicycle thieves and staying true to me.

Thank you for ferrying me to and from those late Tuesday evenings football practices far over the Suspension Bridge.

Speaking of which, thank you for taking me over that bridge safely and filling me with wonderment - because riding one's bike over the Suspension Bridge at night has to be one of the very best things in the entire world.

Thanks for keeping up with the boys (well, almost.)

Thanks for accompanying me on many a weekend afternoon ride around Clifton College, and keeping me company whilst I read my book on the Downs.

Here's to a kind new owner and a happy life from here...I'll miss you.

Love, Louise

My electric turquoise bicycle with its wire basket and helpful stickers telling one to 'Wear a helmet - cycle safely!' is for sale, because I have no way of transporting it back home to London with me for the summer (and I have my perfect purple bike from my grandmother with its highly superior wicker basket there anyway) and cannot take it with me to Germany on my adventures, of course. But it's been a good ride....

Update: bicycle sold! (To a lovely BBC worker who very much appreciated the flowers.)