You wait ages for an ambulance, then five come along at once

‘I need an ambulance!’ yelled the builder boyfriend into his mobile phone as the cyclist lay bleeding from a head wound.

‘What’s that, luvvie, you want to order a chicken dhansak? You mustn’t bother the emergency services with that sort of thing, dear, it’s very inconvenient and could cost lives…’

This was a sarcastic approximation of what the ambulance service operator said to the BB, which he paraphrased with much artistic licence when he relayed it to me an hour later.

I was at home when I got a text message from him to say that a couple of cyclists had trespassed on to the farm where he keeps his horses, a daily occurrence.

They come down the driveway which is clearly marked ‘footpath’ on road racing bikes and mountain bikes in such numbers and at such speed that we have been reduced to begging them to desist, for their own good if they are not bothered about us or the law.