No torment so sweet
As a brand-new bicycle
Confined to the house
As the rain falls.
The spotless silver chain,
Those glossy black tyres
That smooth, gleaming paint:
I cannot do it –
Something within me rebels
At the very thought
Of knowingly exposing her
To what’s out there:
Bleak roads all awash
Seeded with needle-tipped flints
Slathered with churned filth
Potholes like bomb craters.
Fear not, my lovely.
The moment will come
When, under blue skies,
We finally get acquainted.
The calendar says it’s spring. The daffodils, primroses, snowdrops, celandines, windflowers and assorted amorous birdlife all concur. The weather, however, is refusing to get with the programme. Profoundly bored of the endless wind and rain now; longing for dry roads and warm, sunny days. N.
Gonecycling (again) 
Ah…but it will be sweet when you finally get out and about.:-)
Oh indeed it will, Charles, indeed it will. I’ve done some short shake-down spins on the Brompton, just round the local streets, and it’s wonderful. For ‘proper’ riding in this grisly season, it’s the e-bike all the way; I’m enjoying it in a masochistic, martyred kinda way, but that first ride in shorts and short sleeves…that still feels a million miles away!