In the country.

So there I was, driving round the countryside in one of those big cars which farmers sometime use, and which you see in the movies when they film on safaris or driving through jungles and deserts. You know the kind of car I mean – it drives very well off-road in the most difficult of terrain.

Right now however the car was confused, because I was lost and didn’t know where to go.

After a while driving round in circles I stopped to ask direction from an elderly man on a bicycle.

He must have been about sixty years old or so, and spoke in a very pronounced rural accent. He wore red elastic trouser-braces (trouser suspenders) intended to keep his trousers up; but I noticed that he’d taken them off his shoulders and they were hanging loose by his side, still attached to his trousers of course. It was their bright red color which made me notice his braces hanging loose and, as if to be doubly sure, he also wore a belt round his waist too.

After tuning my ears carefully to his strange pronunciations I thanked him for his directions and set off once again.

As I drove away slowly I saw him in my rear view mirror following me on his bicycle.

I continued driving and a few minutes later I noticed that he was still following me. I thought it strange that such an elderly man could cycle at that pace.

As the narrow country road got a little wider I accelerated a bit more and to my amazement the old man was still keeping up with me, cycling only a few feet behind me.

I was now on a main road and doing 45 miles an hour or so; and to my disbelief I saw in my rear view mirror the old man cycling fast behind me and moving frantically from left to right as if trying to decide on which side he was to overtake me.

Is this a joke? I thought. How could such an old man cycle so fast? And he’s trying to overtake me too!

I could see his little legs pedaling round faster and faster as the bicycle bounced with every crevice and un-evenness it met on the road.

This man was sure determined to overtake me.

So I stopped the car to allow him to do so.

Sure enough, he came fast behind me and overtook me at speed. He cycled some hundred yards ahead of me then he turned round and sped fast towards my stationary car.

He came close past my car and continued cycling behind me still at break-neck speed.

I saw him stop in my mirror, turn round and come back cycling towards me again. He overtook my car once again and cycled some fifty yards ahead, and then returned one more time.

He passed my car and cycled some twenty yards behind me and then returned again at speed.

After this going backwards and forwards a few times he stopped abruptly just by my car window.

When I opened the car window he said: “My braces got caught on your rear bumper!”