On women’s work.

Yesterday you indulged your cultural heritage as a middle class British woman from the Home Counties by standing in a drafty village hall surrounded by thatched cottages, 17th Centrury pubs and rolling farmland, serving polystyrene cup after polystyrene cup of stewed tea for seven and a half hours.

Even better was the fact that the tea pot was a metal affair which held at least six litres of the brown liquid filled, refilled and filled again from a humungous urn stashed out in a kitchen at the back covered with housewifely little comments from the local WI regarding what to do if you blow the fuses, scald yourself or, heaven forbid, drop the urn while trying to use it.

You also got to serve sandwiches – one hundred and fifty of which had been made by your fair hands the day before. And home baked cakes. None of which you had made. Which was a strategic mistake. Sandwiches are taken for granted. Cakes are complimented. Next year you are making cakes.

The only thing which spoiled the day in any way was that you weren’t taking part in a jumble sale or garden fete in an all out attempt to raise money for the local church roof. You weren’t actually taking part in any roof maintenance money grubbing at all. No, you were doing your daughterly duty and helping out at your Dad’s Annual Bike Ride Round the County event.

Of course this did have the advantage that many of the people you were serving were tall lean men thinly covered by skin tight lycra.

With the disadvantage that many of the remaining people were tall lean women in skin tight lycra.

I think the reason you are feeling utterly exhausted today though is because you were forced to engage in unrelenting hours of mental arithmatic. A cheese and pickle sandwich at 80p, an egg and cress roll at 65p plus a rock cake at 25p and a cup of tea at 25p is, wait for it, no, don’t tell me it’s on the tip of my tongue, hang on a sec, I’m just going to screw up my face and mutter under my breath for a bit…

It wouldn’t have been half so bad if it hadn’t followed on directly from an evening of the same, as a cock up in the catering arrangements meant that instead of merely swanning around eating the quiche from the buffet at the local mayor’s soiree celebrating the Bike Ride, you ended up helping Dad tend the bar instead. You did still get to eat all the quiche you could possibly want though.

And sit in the council chambers in deep leather chairs watching a French cartoon about a Tour de France cyclist who gets kidnapped by the mafia so he can be the star attraction in an underground gambling den in New York.

Overall, you are undecided whether you prefer this sporting hobby to Dad’s previous one of sailing small dinghy’s round the local pond. On the one hand, you aren’t actually expected to take part. On the other, you rather miss that.

Perhaps you’ll take up cycling after all.