To our brave Cyclists
Today I went to a business meeting that was rendered almost enjoyable by the fact that we got to conduct it outside, sitting at a long table surrounded by beds of flame red tulips and buzzing throngs of industrious bees. The meeting was held at a hotel in a pleasant village called Meriden, a little place just off the M42 in the ever shrinking greenbelt that seperates Birmingham and Coventry. After the meeting was over I sauntered in a sun-becalmed way to the village green, to sit a while on a bench and eat a Cornetto.
As a person with a declared interest in boring municipal statuary, I was drawn to the large sandstone obelisk on the green. Nearby lay a plaque proclaiming the spot where I stood to be the very centre of England, the furthest point from our coastlines. Wikipedia has since disabused me of this romantic notion by informing me that the real centre of England is in Fenny Drayton.
It was the obelisk that was most interesting though. It turned out to be a memorial 'in remembrance of those cyclists who gave their lives in World Wars I & II', which I found to be both moving, whimsical and amusing all at the same time, whilst being somehow terribly British too.
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