Shared opinion

There was a photograph in one of the Sunday papers, and it caught my eye. It showed a cheery bald man in some drowned Gloucestershire village traversing the floodwater on a penny-farthing. Hmm, I thought to myself, almost immediately, I bet that’s faked.
I should be careful here. The kind of man who would ride baldly and cheerily through floodwater on a penny-farthing is the kind of man, I suspect, who would fire off a wronged and angry letter to a newspaper at the merest drop of a (doubtless jaunty, perhaps themed) hat. So, to be clear, I am suggesting no impropriety. I am merely suggesting that, perhaps, the situation was not quite what this photograph suggested. Perhaps there was some collaboration at work here. Perhaps, across flooded Gloucestershire villages, staunch men are not really getting around on penny-farthings. Perhaps, in two feet of muddy water, it isn’t a particularly sensible way of getting from A to B.