Oh, wait. That’s not like what I’m doing — that is exactly what I’m doing.

Leigh was in the UK a couple of weeks back for a conference down in Durham, and so I caught the train down there to meet up with her on the Friday evening. I gave my Dad a call on the train down. He answered and said: “Oh, good. You’re alive. We thought you might be dead.”

Apparently, about a week previously a 32-year-old cyclist had been killed in a collision with a bin lorry on the road to my work. My parents’ frantic phone calls to me had gone unanswered; unbeknownst to them, I was in the air on a flight to Istanbul at the time.

“Maybe next time you’re planning to be abroad, you could let us know…?” he suggested, and I agreed.

Central Durham is, it turns out, astonishingly picturesque. On Saturday we had coffee in the sun by one of the old stone bridges across the Wear, walked up the hill to the ancient, massive and intricately decorated cathedral, and finally descended to the riverbank to visit the endearingly amateurish archaeology museum, complete with a laughable/unnerving mannequin dressed untidily in the manner of a Roman soldier. I’m being flippant, but Durham really is worth a visit.

That afternoon we got the train to Newcastle to meet up with a old friend of Leigh’s, and again I was amazed by how pleasant a place central Newcastle is. Let’s face it, this is not a city which presents a particularly attractive prospect to passing train passengers, but having spent an hour or two pottering around in the shadow of the Tyne Bridge I was converted.

We were back in Edinburgh in time for a drink in the Basement and then dinner at l’Escargot Bleu on Broughton Street. It was an excellent meal. This particular Saturday evening was apparently the culmination of a week-long visit to Scotland by a load of student chefs from Breton, and the menu was devised for that one night only. We started with mussels with white wine and lardons (Josh would, I suspect, have been rendered teary-eyed with untrammelled joy), followed by an enormous pot au feu and then some entirely unnecessary and entirely awesome crêpes with ice cream. It was faultless. Go there.

On Sunday I’d planned to drive us to St Andrews, but this plan faced a succession of ludicrous obstacles. First, the car wouldn’t start. It was parked nose-in to the pavement, rendering a normal jump-start impossible. No problem, I thought, I’ll pop open the bonnet and charge the battery with this portable battery charger, bought with just this eventuality in mind. Unfortunately, having opened the bonnet, the battery was nowhere to be seen. Surely it’s hidden by one of these bits of plastic cowling for which I don’t have the correct size of screwdriver. I’ll borrow one from the café down the road. Oh, I see. Now that I’ve removed the plastic panels I see that the battery is not, in fact, in the engine bay at all.

At this point Leigh looked up from thumbing through the GTV’s maintenance manual and said, “It’s in the boot.”

I opened the boot, found the bit of carpet concealing the battery and hooked up the charger. We sat in the car to wait for the battery to charge, Leigh wearing an expression of amused contempt the whole time. “Let’s give it a go,” I said after a few minutes, and turned the key.

The engine cranked sluggishly but did not catch.

“Alright, let’s let it charge up for a few minutes more”.

This time the engine turned over with a little more vigour, but it was clear it wasn’t going to start up.

“Balls.”

I caved in and called Neil. He and Vanessa were in town with their own car, and they agreed to drive by and help us jump-start the car. A jump-start was possible, of course, only because of the car’s nose-in attitude and the situation of the battery in the boot. Irony is my co-pilot.

Neil & Vanessa rolled up fifteen minutes or so later. “Thanks, guys. This is amazing,” I grovelled, “I’m really sorry to have to drag you over here.” They were gracious, and Vanessa indulged only slightly in the mockery to which she was entirely entitled. Neil, however, fiddling with the bonnet of his own car, was perplexed.

“How do you get the bonnet open?” he wondered. We all attempted to help, and I was reminded of the scene at the start of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The scene with the monkeys.

Eventually we got the bonnet open, hooked up some jump leads and started the car. It turned over and caught almost immediately. I was overjoyed. We arrived in St Andrews about 3pm, after a…spirited drive, and spent a couple of hours wandering around the castle and the ruins of the cathedral. I’d been to the cathedral innumerable times as a kid but had never really appreciated its scale, but having visited Durham’s own cathedral the day before I was suddenly able to visualize how it must once have been. It’s a shame that so little of it is left; it must have been huge in its day.

We drove back via Anstruther, stopping for some fish & chips — again, excellent food, if less studiedly so than at l’Escargot Bleu — and then home to Edinburgh. On Monday we met up with Austen, Maria and (for the first time) Leo for breakfast at Peter’s Yard, then spent the rest of the day pottering around to no great effect. It was, in short, a fantastic weekend.

Yea, it was good.

We met up down in the Raconteur in Stockbridge, and things snowballed after a slow start. I was given a cornucopia of tremendous birthday presents to enjoy later — a batch of brownies from Jez & Katri; a book about Le Tour from Row (how did she know?), and a quite mesmerically awesome melamine-plate-with-painted-sperm-whale from Jeff & Devon (how did they know?) — and a variety of tasty drinks to enjoy right then.

Sam arrived later (gift: The End of Mr. Y by Scarlett Thomas — “explores the relationships between quantum physics and post-modernist and deconstructionist theory” — how did she know?) and proceeded to set me up with a series of shots of liquor sorted, at least as far as I can remember, in terms of increasing difficulty. Apricot brandy was followed by tequila and then absinthe. I became very drunk. Other people may have brought me shots too, but by then I was on autopilot. I swayed gently and nodded appreciatively. We went home when the bar closed.

Next morning, the brownies saved my life. Carbs to soak up the booze and sugar to kick-start my system: the perfect morning-after birthday present.

A few days later Maisie and I, along with Jeff, Devon and Custer, were over at Sam’s place for Tim’s slightly-surprised birthday party. Custer and Maisie’s love/hate relationship seems to have reversed polarity and become instead a hate/love relationship. They start off play-fighting with alarming ferocity and then at some point, like courting teenagers discovering that a pillow fight is just a gateway drug to something quite different, things tip over into sexytiem! Or at least they do for Custer; Maisie seems oblivious to Custer’s romantic overtones and continues with the play-fighting. It is quite something when the hubbub of conversation in a roomful of people gradually dies out and everyone swivels to watch the pair of dogs inexpertly grinding in the middle of the room.

The festivities continued the next weekend with a ceilidh at Pollock Halls, with tickets being organised by Row in honour of a visit by her Mum. The band, who I get the feeling I’ve seen before, were fantastic, and by the end of the night everyone was exhausted and dripping with sweat. In a good way. The stand-out dance of the evening was the Cumberland Square Eight, where sets of two guys and two girls form a ‘basket’ and spin so that the girls’ legs fly out and up as the guys support them. It looks striking from the sidelines; no less memorable is the sight from inside the basket, where each guy gets to stare at the sweaty, grunting visage of his opposite number as they take the strain of spinning four people at once. I’ve never felt quite so close to Neil as I did that night.

As a branding strategy, it is pretentious to the nth degree. It is pretentious even to me, a 32-year-old man who wears cardigans in an unironic way and who reads The Guardian website on his smartphone at lunchtime, as often as not sipping from a cappuccino in a poncy café as he does so. That is to say, it’s off the pretension scale.

Irritatingly, though, Rapha’s retro-King-of-the-Mountains schtick is — just occasionally — bang on the money. Sometimes, when you’re grunting up a hill and there are no more gears left to make life easier, it rings true.

A month or so ago I rolled up to Portobello High School on a grim, grey morning to join ERC’s ‘advanced beginners cycle’. Only five of us turned up that day, and things were not looking promising: the sky was a solid blanket of cloud, the air was damp, the usual ride leader hadn’t turned up and no-one seemed to have much idea of where we should be going. We sat around with the heat ebbing out of us until one of the older guys seized the initiative and led us off in more or less in a random direction.

What an incredible cycle. The clouds dissolved as we headed inland, and within half an hour the sun was beating down on us and we had endlessly rolling, smooth country roads to ourselves. We skirted a couple of small hills, rocky pimples on the wrinkled landscape, and finally hit a couple of decent climbs as we approached North Berwick. This is one of those few situation in which it pays to be a skinny freak, and I shot up each hill as the others toiled along behind. For a split second at the crest of each hill, I threw off the bonds of critical thinking and revelled in a moment of unadulterated Rapha-style glory. I was king of these very small mountains. My only regret was that there was no photographer there to capture the moment in gritty monochrome.

We ate lunch in North Berwick, lowering the tone at a prim tennis club’s café. The Forth was still covered in a dense bank of fog, but our little patio of young families and sweaty cyclists was baking in the afternoon sun. Again: what a great ride.

* * *

Later that week I competed in my first race, and while it was a novel, exciting experience, it shows exactly what’s missing from Rapha’s exercise in branding: cyclists who are better than you are. You can wear merino jerseys patterned after the shirts of Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault all you like, but any mind’s-eye-visions of heroic ascents of lonely Pyrenean peaks you happen to entertain are blown away the instant some 17-year-old on a mountain bike leaves you for dead.

Guess what happened during the race? A 17-year-old girl on a mountain bike left me for dead. To be fair, she was wearing a British Cycling ‘Olympic Development Programme’ jersey, but still, it was a rude awakening. I finished two places behind her in 21^st (of 36 finishers) with 9 laps under my belt, two fewer than the winner.

Another great ride — scary, breathless and challenging — and I can’t wait for the next one.

* Rapha attracts a bit of heat for their preference for cycling caps rather than cycle helmets. Their defence — “you’re an adult, choose for yourself”, basically — seems to me to be a bit disingenuous. One unlucky fall is all it takes to transform you from a Mamil into an organ donor.

At lunchtime a couple of Fridays ago I did my now-customary furtive change into cycling gear in the disabled toilet before heading off for North Berwick. The Social (Engineering) Committee’s semi-annual Beach Party was kicking off over at Seacliff Beach, and I decided to cycle there rather than take the shaky old coach they’d booked for the occasion.

It was not exactly a great journey, it must be said. The constant headwind wore me down and the traffic along the coastal road kept me on edge for almost the entirety of the 40-kilometre journey. For the last couple of kilometres, though, out east of North Berwick where no-one seems to want to go, the road emptied of cars, the wind dropped and the sun broke through the clouds. I rolled down the private road to the beach, pulled a pair of baggies over my indecent cycling shorts and grabbed a beer. It was a great afternoon spent milling between the beach and the marquee laid on for the day, quaffing booze on the company dollar and eating barbequed meat until my sides groaned from the strain.

I slung the bike in a luggage compartment under the bus for the return journey and would have happily called it a day, but it wasn’t over yet. Once I’d sobered up to a degree and put on some long trousers, I was off out again to meet Doug and some of his London workmates to see Mark Watson at the Church of Scotland on the Mound, or the “Assembly Hall” as it’s rebranded for the Fringe. Maybe knowing that you’re watching a comedy gig in the house of God would otherwise take the edge off — the Almighty’s watching too, and he kills a kitten whenever you laugh at a masturbation joke.

The show was solid if not quite stellar, but the three hours of increasingly sozzled conversation in the Wash which succeeded it amused us admirably. Doug, the newly arrived Davis and I got stuck into self-referential and obscure band chat with ease, while Doug’s friend Rob looked on and feigned interest with remarkable success. I rolled home at 3 am, tired, as they say, but happy.

…and then met up with Doug and co. again the next evening for more festival boozing. Bolstered by the attendance of Fat Pete and the Captain, we saw Henning Wehn perform “My Struggle” in a dank vault under North Bridge. (He’s German, and the title of the show is nothing if not bold.) I was in two minds about the gig; for the most part it was observational humour with a fairly cutting edge to it, but it was let down by some don’t-mention-the-war stereotyping that I think a 2010 Fringe audience doesn’t have much use for.

After the show we decamped to the temporary beer garden in the still-vacant hole where La Belle Angele and the Gilded Balloon used to stand, sank a few pints and chatted amiably for a while. Alright; we played drinking games. I begged off around 1am (so I could get up early the next day for a bike ride with Edinburgh RC, but that’s a post for another time), shook hands/man-hugged everyone in attendance as appropriate and walked home through the chilly, clear night. It had been an excellent couple of days, and I now find I’m hankering for another London trip to try for another weekend of carefree culture+drinks.

* * *

In other news, Jeff, Devon, Neil, Vanessa, Jez and I won the Cumberland pub quiz the Monday after the abovementioned Fringe action; Jez, Ally, Row and I came a valiant second this following week, and finally last night Jez, Row, Tom and I got thoroughly wrecked in honour of Jez’s birthday after gorging ourselves on Row’s expertly prepared dinner. I walked home at 2 am with War of the Worlds playing on my headphones. Need I say more?

Earlier tonight I did my first cycle race, the Edinburgh 48 in Craigmillar Country Park. My shins are covered in nettle rash, my hands are midge-bitten and my muscles are utterly void of energy. My brain, however, is fizzing with nervous energy — this racing business is a lot of fun — and it demands to be occupied, and so I stick on some headphones and plug myself into some sprawling Glaswegian post-rock.

Also, I’ve joined Facebook. This is less exciting.

(A real post is in the works!)

On Sunday I’d gone on a ride out to Haddington and back, organised by Edinburgh Road Club, and one of the more serious road cyclists shepherding the rest of us along was in recruiting mode. “You should come along to the Kirky 10 time trial on Wednesday nights. It’s easy to get into, and you’re really only racing yourself.”

Excellent, I thought — I’m an inherently lazy bastard, so I should be easy to beat. So it was that last Wednesday night I arrived sweaty and breathless at Kirkliston sports centre at 6.45pm. I signed on the dotted line as directed by one of the marshals, who explained what I had to do.

“You’re number 17, so you’ll be starting at 17 minutes past seven. The numbers are in that box down there — find your one and pin it to the back of your jersey. The start is out by the roundabout; it’s five miles straight out, a U-turn in the road (make sure you check for cars first) and then five miles straight back. You’ll see a marshal at the turn. Shout out your number as you cross the line so the timekeeper hears you.”

Ten miles as fast as you can, and don’t get run over: this is the essence of a time trial.

Having sorted myself out, I headed down to the start with a couple of other new faces from the Sunday ride. The knot of cyclists hanging around the start were a mixed bunch: granted, the demographics of the group didn’t veer far from ‘white male ABC1’, but the bikes themselves (and the associated levels of seriousness) ranged from sleek carbon time trial machines through normal road bikes to an elongated cargo bike whose rack was laden with bungee-corded barbell weights.

“Are you having a laugh?” I asked its rider.

“Training bike,” he replied jovially. “Makes a normal bike feel fast!”

The minutes ticked down, with a rider being sent off each minute until I was next. I rolled up to the spray-painted start line and steadied myself as the fitness instructor-alike starter reeled off more instructions, smoothly punctuating them with a countdown read off his stopwatch.

“Okay, are you twenty seconds ready to go? Remember, go hard on the way out but keep something for the way back and fifteen seconds call out your number as you pass the ten seconds timekeeper.”

Another marshal, this time a curious older chap wearing a three-piece tweed suit and a flat cap (I never found out the story there — he was utterly incongruous in amongst all the lycra and tracksuits), held my bike steady as I clipped in my free foot. I wobbled a bit. Only now was I starting to get nervous. The starter counted down from ten seconds.

“…one. Go!”

The old chap gave me a rather feeble shove and I wobbled slowly off the line. Not quite the blistering acceleration I would have liked. Both he and the starter seemed concerned that I was going to fall off.

“Are you okay? Go! Go now!” barked the starter.

“Pedal!” the old guy added.

“I’m fine, I’m going,” I muttered back petulantly, steering unsteadily away from the kerb then standing up and getting some power into the pedals. I wound up to what I thought was a reasonable cruising speed, got into the drops and put my head down with my eyes flicking between the heart rate monitor on the handlebars and the road ahead.

Turns out it’s a disingenuous to talk about ‘tactics’ for a time trial. It’s just you versus the course and the elements, and other than moderating your effort to varying degrees there’s little else to do other than to keep grinding away at it. Even should you find yourself in the fortunate position of overtaking another rider, the rules preclude you from drafting behind them to gain any advantage.

My vague plan had been to stay within a particular range of effort for the first two miles, then move up a gear for the next three and finally blitz the return leg in an all-out blaze of glory to shoot speedily over the finish line with fists punching the air. Unfortunately, I’d failed to take into account the two-mile climb and unrelenting headwind that confronted me as soon as I’d started. My heart rate immediately shot through the roof and my legs were burning within minutes. My three-part strategy degenerated into just keep going and the next eight miles were an exercise in gritted teeth, running nose and streaming eyes.

I crossed the line in 29 minutes and 53 seconds, having averaged almost exactly 20 mph over the ten miles: my first time trial had been a deeply meh performance, but I’d enjoyed it nonetheless. And like I said, I’m going to be very easy to beat next time round.

Bikes: Back at the start of the July I headed into town to watch the Edinburgh Nocturne, a cycle race running in a closed loop along the Grassmarket, up the cobbles of Victoria Street and back down Candlemaker Row. A mini Paris-Roubaix, I thought, and cycled up there to meet Andy and Thomas (late of Proxy) just before the main race.

It was, sadly, slightly anticlimactic. The start was exciting enough: the competitors milled around awkwardly in slippery cycling shoes and warmed up on turbo trainers, forming up purposefully on the line with a couple of minutes to go; finally, the starting gun went off and after the briefest of lulls as twenty left feet clipped into twenty pedals the bunch charged off up the Grassmarket. Andy, Thomas and I precessed around the course to watch the action at different points, and after about 45 minutes we were back in the Grassmarket.

“Pint?” someone suggested.

We got a drink at the Blue Blazer, and by the time we got back to the race it was all over. No-one seemed to mind. Cycling — at least for the three of us, with only a fairly vague notion of the tactics and skills to watch out for in a road race — is probably more of a sport to get involved in than to spectate at.*

Dogs: Maisie has been enjoying the weather too, although admittedly she enjoys being outside in more or less any weather short of an apocalyptic thunderstorm. There must be something in the air at the moment, though, because she has taken to barking at inanimate objects such as tents and telephone boxes. This is difficult to explain to passers-by.

Drinks: I haven’t been doing a lot of boozing of late, but when I have roused myself from the sofa the results have been epic.

One Saturday night a few weeks ago Jeff and I went out for “a couple”, and ended up unsteady and bleary-eyed Hawke & Hunter around five hours later, having taken in Pivo en route and declaring it not a patch on the real thing.

Then, last Thurday night Davis and I met up, ostensibly to discuss what needs to happen to the Coba Fynn website before we launch the album, but having cracked open one beer we felt compelled to crack open a whole host more. Friday morning was unproductive a living hell.

Finally, this last weekend I went out for a Jez-by-proxy evening, meeting up with his ex-flatmate Beryl and and his sister Rowe at 99 Hanover Street (don’t worry, I’d tucked my shirt in and buttoned my cardigan in preparation), and was surprised to find myself in the sticky-floored cavern of doom that is Finger’s Piano Bar at 3 am after a night of excellent chat and ropey beer. The cocktails at 99 Hanover Street may be “sex in a glass”, but the Guinness was closer to “the unfulfilled promise of a lost lover”, or “a kick in the balls”. Still, a great night!

So far, so entertaining. It was to my great chagrin, then, that I found the other morning that some criminally negligent moron had driven into the side of the car, leaving the driver’s side door rather more concave that it’s supposed to be. My month’s worth of good humour evaporated.

I fumed; I prodded the dent experimentally to see how bad the damage was; I glared around at nearby cars looking for matching scrapes, and then I saw a note under the windscreen wiper. Mr. Crashy the hit-and-run-bastard may have driven off without so much as a by your leave, but some crafty onlooker had seen fit to write down the offending registration number and leave it for me. I called the police and then the insurance company, and my mood brightened considerably as a result.

* As an aside, Rowe was on holiday in France during the Tour, and managed to watch Contador and Schleck battle it out on the Col du Tourmalet more or less by accident. Now that is a cycle race I’d have liked to watch in person.

A couple of weekends ago now, I had a Proper Weekend. For the first time in ages, a Saturday and Sunday were blighted neither by an excessive hangover nor unreasonably crappy weather and were filled just so with pleasantly engaging activities. If it didn’t feel pompous to do so, I’d have gone right ahead and called it ‘beatific’.

Ash had been invited to a barbeque on the Saturday in a small village called Dirleton, a few miles west of North Berwick, for her boss’s birthday. It was taking place at a nearby beach called Yellowcraigs, and it seemed cruel to leave Maisie the Dog behind in the flat while were off gallivanting in the dunes and munching on barbequed burgers, so we decided to take her with us in the car.

The only snag, of course, was that Maisie gets motion sick. Voluminously so. On the very first car journey we took with her, driving back to Edinburgh from the dog rescue centre in Dumfries, she lurched around the back seat like a seasick muppet and glumly yakked her way through a series of technicolour yawns. We stopped each time to clean up the mess, and as soon as we pulled away again she would start panting, then drooling, then perform another stripey laugh.

We tried her in the car again a few months ago with similar results, although by then we knew the signs and hastily pulled over each time it looked like things might go awry. I was not overly optimistic, then, about the forty-five minute drive out to Dirleton, and it was with some trepidation that we coaxed Maisie into the car on Saturday afternoon, whereupon she curled up in a pathetic ball on Ash’s lap and gazed mournfully around at nothing in particular. We opened both windows, set the fan to blow a cool stream of air over her, and set off.

And miraculously, Maisie was fine. She fairly bounded out of the car as soon as we’d arrived and fixed us with an accusatory stare from a safe distance, but within seconds she was back to normal and bounding off after her tennis ball. We found the barbeque in a hollow between the woods and the sea, said hello to the various archeologists and heritage types in attendance, and settled in for a couple of hours of random chat+burgers. It was a relaxing afternoon: Jeff and Devon arrived a while later, guests of Ash’s boss’s husband; we overdosed on burgers; we blethered about nothing in particular, and, to Maisie’s great consternation, we wandered over to the beach to throw the ball into the water for her.

We were getting ready to leave when a boy of maybe 5 or 6 came over to us and held out his hand for Maisie’s ball-chucker thing.

“You want to throw the ball for her? Sure, okay.”

He took the launcher in two hands and walloped the ball off the ground. It bounced away in the direction of the barbeque with Maisie charging after it.

“Er, you might want to not throw it quite so hard…”

Maise came trotting back and after a bit of persuasion, dropped the ball at his feet.

“Sit!” the kid bellowed at Maisie, who was a little taken aback.

“And you don’t need to shout,” I tried to tell him. “She’ll sit down if you just—”

“Sit!” he bawled again, for good measure. Maisie sat.

And so, for the next little while we tried to curb Connor’s (for that was his name) enthusiasm and minimise the psychological damage meted out to Maisie in the process. Eventually the ball was getting just a bit too wild and Connor’s demeanour was heading towards that staring-eyed, foot-stampy enthusiasm that immediately precedes someone getting hurt.

I knelt down to call time.

“We’re going to go now. Can I please have the ball launcher back?”

Connor conveniently forgot how to speak, and evaded my eyes. The adults in attendance looked at each other, foreseeing a tantrum. Not wanting to be seen to be wrestling a five-year-old for control of a plastic stick, I tried a different tack.

“Okay, how about we take turns? You’ve just had a go — can I have a turn?”

Connor fixed me with a cold, dead stare and said:

“It’s. My. Turn.”

His Mum arrived shortly after that and tutted him into handing over the ball launcher, thank God. We collected Maisie and bolted for the car.

* * *

The rest of the weekend was a genial amble through a series of untaxing but enjoyable activities. On Saturday night I watched the England-USA game over at Jeff and Devon’s, complete with Bud, snacks and snarky Eurovision-style commentary, and on Sunday I took Maisie out for a walk in the glorious sunshine before a leisurely cycle and finally collapsing in front of the box for the Canadian GP. Good times.

The reason for this sudden profligacy — after all, ITTET £2k is still a fair old wedge — is that for the past few months, Ash, Jez and Devon have been knitting together the threads of an autumn road trip down to Provence. With echoes of our pan-European 2006 trip still ‘Ringing in my ears, I decided I needed a suitable car for this year’s edition.

As ever, I started off looking at completely impractical vehicles and gradually homed in on a model which split the difference between zOMG11!! awesomeness and sober practicality. I tried and failed to organise a test-drive in an Renault-Alpine GTA, a rear-engined, plastic-bodied sports car (or “death trap” as they say in France); I quizzed my Dad about having a garage-owning friend of his build me a refurbished Mark II Escort; and I gazed longingly at aged ’70s Toyota Celicas on classic car websites.

In the end, though, it was an episode on our 2006 trip to the Nürburgring that got me onto the straight and narrow. On my lap around the track, we’d been overtaken by a pair of Alfa Romeo 75s, square-edged 1980s saloons with suitably Italian/off-the-wall design features like inboard rear brakes and complicated de Dion suspension. These Alfas shot past the Saab and proceeded to drift round the next corner before disappearing off into the leafy distance. Fast forward to earlier this year, and I happened to come across a bright red 75 for sale at a dealership in Edinburgh. Not only that, but it was going for the paltry sum of £1,300. Intrigued, I arranged a test drive and cycled over to the garage on a Friday morning off work. With the garage owner riding shotgun, I took it out for a jaunt round the bypass.

My word.

This was a proper old sports car, even though it looked like a horrible joke from the late ’70s. The throttle response was incredibly eager; just a touch on the pedal and it snarled and popped away, and I liberally but accidentally spun the wheels the first time I pulled away from a stop. It felt lively and balanced. This thing would be a monster on A- and B-roads up north.

It was brilliant, and I didn’t buy it.

There were problems. The gear shift was incredibly vague (the ’box is mounted at the back, so the linkage is longer than usual), it had a tendency to wander at motorway speeds, and the dashboard sported some ultra-tacky faux wood trim that had been glued on by the previous owner. I chatted to the garage owner after we’d returned to the forecourt. “It’s really a £2,300 car,” he explained. “£1,300 for the car itself and about £1,000 to fix all the problems.”

So, I passed on the 75 that day, but the Alfa bug had bitten and after a couple more test drives (one of a ratty green GTV with missing dashboard trim and a wobbly driver’s seat, and one of my eventual purchase), on a rainy night last month I took the train over to Bellshill to pick up my dark blue GTV Twin Spark.

Both my previous cars had a certain element of built-in self-effacement about them. The Cappuccino, for instance, was so diminutive that it deflected the inevitable “mid-life crisis car, eh?” sneers that a sporty two-seater convertible would otherwise have drawn. The Saab was so self-consciously quirky that it attracted bemusement more than it attracted praise or derision. It also helped that parts kept seizing up or falling off.

Not so the GTV: It’s an unapologetically sharp-suited Italian sports car with leather seats and a 7,000 rpm wail, and I almost feel guilty owning it. I want to put a sign in the quarterlight saying, “For sale: Bought for £2,000. Please don’t hate me.” It looks like a million dollars and it probably makes me look like an attention-seeking yuppie. “Surely Jez, as a BMW driver, knows my pain,” I thought, so at his suggestion we went for a drive down a familiar country lane out beyond Penicuik. I wound down the windows, wound up the engine, pointed the car down the winding road and let ’er rip.

“It’s faster than I thought it would be,” Jez said mildly as we came to a hurried halt at an unexpected T-junction a few miles later. High praise!

Later that day we went down to Jeff & Devon’s place to eat barbeque, play cricket and drank beer, and sat lethargic and stunned in the evening as the sun set in the west. All is right with the world.

The next morning, goaded out of bed about four hours earlier than my hangover would have liked, I had some tea and toast for breakfast, then suited up and jumped on my bike. Today was a manifold experiment: how long would Buckhaven to Edinburgh take along the Fife Coastal Path? Would a heart-rate monitor/cycle computer be useful? And most importantly, would the one-two punch of a Tunnock’s Caramel Wafer and a Stuart’s scotch pie be the match of 60 kilometres of winding coastline?

This final question was an ad hoc addition to the day’s challenges, brought about by my complete failure to bring any cycling-friendly snacks with me in the first place. The caramel wafer was provided at my Gran’s house a mile or so along the road — a distance just far enough to warm up, followed by a tea break just long enough to cool down again — and the pie was safely ensconced in my backpack, bought at Stuart’s in Buckhaven before I left and ready for consumption somewhere down the road. A cup of tea, a chocolate biscuit, a pie and some lycra: my loins were girded.

I hit the coastal path just beyond Kinghorn, exchanging fast but worrisome B-roads for gravel paths and startled pedestrians for the next fifteen miles. It was a great day: cloudy but bright; cold but not windy, and I gradually forgot where I was as the miles rolled by. I’ve always been a bit less than enthusiastic about the south coast of Fife (familiarity breeding contempt, maybe) but it was a lovely cycle; the harbours, fishing cottages, old woods and train lines, with the quiet rustle and slap of the dark water of the Forth behind it all, put me in mind of a highland lochside.

I climbed up and over the Forth Road Bridge and freewheeled down into South Queensferry about an hour and three quarters after having left Buckhaven, rested my bike against a wall and collapsed, sweaty and smelly, onto a bench in the shadow of the rail bridge. My pie was calling.

This was no ordinary pie: Stuart’s are the founders of the World Scotch Pie Championships, and have won it countless times; their arch-nemeses W.F. Stark face them across College Street and snatched the crown a couple of years ago. This was a pie whose shell bore the weight of history, expectation and tradition. The fat had frozen into little white pools on the top of the crust, and yet this only made it more appealing. It was a glistening, golden-brown cylinder of meaty joy, and I ate it with gusto. And a coffee from a café over the road.

God, it was excellent. 500-odd calories of bakery genius, a smart-bomb of beef, mutton and lard, and it propelled me home over the last 15 kilometres. My heart-rate monitor told the full story: 60 kilometres, two and three-quarter hours and not one but four pies’ worth of calories expended. I was ravenous for the next two days.