Painted at Pedal

It didn't take much encouragement [as in, a [i]"wanna come paint some pedal signs in the park?"[/i] text around midday] to wrap up school presentation plans for the day ["I can be there after three, if that works"]. The sky was simply roaring and the potential to return back to the lakeside to throw paint around was all too exciting ["yessssssssss"]. The hot afternoon brought swarms of play makers to the great park, with fizzling smoky BBQs accompanying popping bottle tops of sweet cider, and chaotic games of footie convoying heated competitions on the basketball courts. Limbs on full show from strutting beauties, eager to reveal their perfect frames beneath highly considered flowing ensembles and school kids ricocheting around in a frenzy of ice-popped sugary exhilaration enabling them to play out until way past dinner time. And then there was Pedal, with a buzzy wave of tinkering brake pads and spinnings of bicycle wheels playing their part in wafting out great greasy scents primarily erupted by working cans of GT85 - with enthusiastic new clusters of willing volunteers increasing their velo education as they go along - humming inside + outside, compromising between radiating in the rays and dabbling with bolts in close proximity to the vast array of specialist tools. And I, perched in a semi-permanent position, pot in one hand, paintbrush in the other, stewing in the great late heat + marvelling in the nostalgic act of attempting to adorn boards with colours across the scale, but realistically lagging far behind as a result of chatting to everyone who passed. We stayed till late, because we could, until the swarms of sun worshippers eventually dispersed and went about their evenings whilst the new duck families gently swam back to the isolated comfort of the island. We found fun things to do, like pretend to skateboard + learn sick tricks on a saddleless BMX [featured] whilst we waited for the paint to dry. We watched the lake turn mystical and bantered about bicycles until we couldn't see anything anymore.

The everlasting blissful evening reluctantly came to a close, somewhere in the early hours. We were idly trotting to the chip shop in search of some sort of dining sustenance when out of nowhere appeared a frantically enraged man, who hesitated for less than a millisecond in deciding to launch an attack on Dan. Wild eyes + screaming, he soon progressed onto hounding any or all of our bicycle frames, his strong apoplectic arms demanding all of our strength to preserve the precious pedals in our possession . All I could scream was "noooOOOOOOO!!", in an overwhelmed horrified state of confusion and worry for my boy who'd just been so dramatically splurged into and frantically clasp on to a gyrating and fragile spinning wheel. A man with a dog came to our rescue and soon the maniac dispersed out into the darkened depths of Fallowfield to lunatic around a little more, but to be eventually apprehended by the Rozzas.

Just another spectacularly unexpected making of an unfathomably unpredictable buzzy afternoon living in a big city. Our chip naans tasted divine as we devoured them beneath the sticky night that had fallen so subtly, we talked about peaceful things + tried to eradicate the surreal attack we'd just walked away from.