Whilst walking from Westminster towards old Queenie’s place on Saturday afternoon, Karen and I were overtaken by a small girl on a pink bicycle, who shot off into the distance ahead of us. Bemused that she seemed to be out in London all alone, I suggested to Karen that it would be awfully easy to just grab the kid and run, going so far as to describe the dramatic scene that would be created by the image of a pink bicycle left lying on the ground, its rear wheel slowly rotating.
At this point the mother (yes, there had been a mother present) then walked past us. Whoops, I thought.
Feeling slightly awkward, we took a right at the next junction, partly to avoid a confrontation with the mother (who probably didn’t fancy the idea of her kid being taken) and also to trail a girl wearing a pink skirt with a particularly loose waistband (Karen’s idea, not mine).
Over the course of the next five minutes, the girl on the bicycle crossed our path about four times. The first couple of times it was moderately amusing, and I wondered if perhaps she actually wanted to be kidnapped.
But by the fourth time it was just scary, so I grabbed the girl off of the bike and threw her over the fence into the lake in St James’ Park, leaving a pink bicycle lying on the ground with its rear wheel rotating slowly.