C is for crash helmet: I urge you to wear one, though in disobedience to Kant’s Categorical Imperative – that certain actions are necessary and right, whatever any one individual thinks – I don’t myself.

My explanation is that I don’t like to be lured into any false sense of security. When they made wearing a helmet mandatory in Australia, so many people then stopped cycling that doctors reported a huge surge in corpulence, one of the many problems that riding a bike can help fight.

D is for death: Every successfully completed bicycle journey should be counted a triumph over this.

E if for exertion, endorphins and ecstasy: The first produces the next, which produces the next, as you whiz through London's lovely streets and look at the play of light through the plane trees, and you inhale the open air, and you think of the poor souls stuck in the taxis, the cars, the buses and, God help them, the Tube.

Next week: freedom and gears

Extracted from Have I Got Views For You, HarperPerennial, £7.99