A Man, a Bike and a Potato.

“Do you want this potato?”

 

I’ve just woken up and Ben has probably just woken up too, so I don’t really know what to say.

 

My analytical prowess is at its lowest this early in the morning, and since I am English and Ben – the person asking the question - is French, racial stereotyping is clouding my judgement.

 

I think food and eating is of fundamental importance to the French, and since there is no other potato in sight, I don’t understand.

 

“Don’t you want it?”

 

“No.”

 

Ben is a manual worker, he is about to leave for a day’s labour lifting and moving things. These things are big, and the temperatures are expected to be in the high thirties. He is holding a Tupperware container full of lettuce and tomato and chopped courgette. 

 

Ok, there is a formidable salad dressing to go with it, but the potato looks essential.

 

“A potato is your fuel.”

 

“It’s too heavy.”

 

Ben’s shift is twelve hours and he will be shifting things a lot heavier than a potato.

 

It doesn’t make any sense.

 

As far as I know, all he has eaten for the last three weeks is pizza.

 

We both look at the potato, then each other, and then Ben says goodbye and leaves for work.

 

So I take the potato.

 

I wrap it in silver foil and put it in the handle-bar bag of my bike and cycle to the community café in town where I am volunteering for the day.

 

I leave at five and start to pedal home.

 

I eat the potato as I cross the bridge opposite the café, waving at Ben who is working down by the river.

 

Shifting canoes.

 

My ride home is fifteen kilometres, along the river at first and then a climb through the forest up onto the moor.

 

The temperature is 38.

 

I vomit at the top of the fourteenth kilometre.

 

It may be the climb, it may be the heat, it’s probably the potato.

 

Or perhaps the four pieces of cake I had eaten before, two of chocolate and two of carrot.