I.
Book Club Sunday nights - monthly - are the best Sunday nights, because after the rigorous discussion of book and the rigorous selection of cake brings us from late afternoon into early evening, I cycle home through the quiet back streets of Hoxton and Islington. It takes twenty minutes and the streets, which are tricky to navigate during the daily commute, feel wide and clear, for a change.
Last night was the first time I did the ride on my new bike, Juliana, bought to replace my tragically-stolen Sebastina, the bike that turned me from an afraid-of-traffic kind of person in to someone who sometimes couldn’t help but sing songs as I cycled, such was the joy it brought to my travel. I’ve had Juliana for about two weeks but hadn’t taken her much further than Waitrose or the tube station until last night; there’s a lack of trust there.
Juliana is a plucky little eighties Raleigh shopper, and I was happy to find a bike that was secondhand, but not stolen. And she’s lighter and nippier than Sebastina was. And in the dark of yesterday evening, when the only people on the streets were a couple of other cyclists and some pizza delivery men on scooters, off to slake lazy Sunday-night hunger, and as we trundled along through the cold air, I thought: all right. This could be OK. But never the same.
II.
I got home, and Speed was on television It was my favourite movie in 1994, when its release on VHS coincided so precisely with the release of the hormones that made me realise that men were MEN.
I remembered: that Keanu Reeves was 17 years older than me, which was totally gross when I was 13 and he was 30, but would be totally fine when I was of marriageable age (20).
I remembered: his biographical details, like that he was born in the Lebanon but spent most of his time growing up in Canada and was part Chinese and part Hawaiian and played ice hockey and dropped out of high school and had two younger sisters.
I remembered: wearing my watch with the face on the inside of my wrist just like Sandra Bullock when she was driving the bus, because it was obviously very alluring.
And I remembered watching his talk show appearances and thinking:he seems kind of like a meathead, but it is probably an act, and I am pretty sure that secretly he is a sensitive soul who really likes reading books, just like me.
Which is why, last night, I watched until the very end of the credits.
