Pia, Mark, Mike and I all attended an  RGS lecture yesterday.

It was entitled ‘ In the footsteps of Shackleton ‘ and was held at a local school, in their drama hall, which has lots of seating.  The head of school Geography, Mike, had reserved a space at the front, at the side, which effectively was right next to the guest speaker and his lectern. He was all set up with his stuff and his laser pointer etc.

He and I had a chat for a bit, and then it was time to start.  I’d pulled my coat over my head and hung it on the right handlebar of my bike attachment.  If I put things in the floor, I can’t reach to pick things up again. I’ve also trained myself to never drop anything, and tend to grip stuff with an iron hand.  Anyway… then I hung my small, but packed and heavy bag on top of my coat.  A few seconds later I touched the bag and it moved.

It seems that it moved enough to press on the throttle of my bike attachment..

I found myself surging forward, and shot straight into the lectern and the guest speaker. I was trying to find the brake, but it was under my coat and hanging bag.

After knocking over the lectern and with the guest speaker sort of riding on the front, with me trying to slow it down with my hand in the grip ring of one wheel, it veered to the left and then stopped.

I then heard Pia saying ‘ what are you doing?!’ – like I’d done it on purpose….

I was now facing the 250 odd people in the audience, who were in stunned silence.. so said something like ‘ thank you for watching that totally planned manoeuvre. I hope you enjoyed it?’

More stunned silence as I wheeled myself ( having turned off the bloody motor ) back to my space… where by now Pia was kind of shaking with suppressed giggling.

The speaker, having composed himself from being run over, said something like ‘ that was an icebreaker ‘ – topical pun in the circumstances and lecture subject – and at that point the audience laughed ( in relief ? )  and he carried on.

What was funny was that no one there mentioned it again…?!

As his laser pointer had also been run over in the crash, and crushed, he had to kind of point at the slides he’d prepared, but didn’t make any reference to the fate of his laser pen at all …

All highly amusing to Pia, who hasn’t stopped texting me about it since.

My apologies to the RGS, the school, and the assembled audience…

It was a bit like this…