Edward Enfield - Downhill all the Way: From La Manche to the Mediterranean by Bike

One of the pleasantest things in the world is going a journey; but I like to go by myself.'

William Hazlitt, On Going a Journey' (1822)

HARRY ENFIELD

There is a condition known as second childhood which some old people enter in their twilight years shortly before popping off. My father is not there yet, but he is hurtling towards it at alarming speed. Since retiring he has entered a sort of second teenagerhood. When I was a teenager I began to take an interest in girls, sulked in my room a lot, and went on cycling holidays with my friend Philip Spain. Dad displays all these characteristics. At a recent lunch in London for a hundred or so old bores, to which he was naturally invited, I had the misfortune to witness a sad display of flirtation.

Would you like to go in to lunch now? a young woman responsible for ushering enquired.

Youre the most beautiful woman Ive ever seen, replied my father.

Thank you, go in to lunch, please, the young woman said patiently but firmly. Dad turned to obey and caught the eye of another woman.

Hello, Im Joanna and Im an actress, said Joanna who is an actress.

Youre the most beautiful woman in the world, said Dad, oblivious of the young usher still standing next to him.

He spotted a blonde. Barging between the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and The Most Beautiful Woman He Has Ever Seen, he launched himself at his victim.

You have the most beautiful he began, but I seized and frogmarched the old man into lunch and plonked him do next to Sue Townsend, who as the author of The Diary of Adrian Mole Aged Thirteen and Three-Quarters knows how to handle males at this stage of their development.

Flirting has become a major preoccupation and he has started making trips up to London purely for this purpose. Recently I had to ring the editor of The Oldie magazine, for whom my father writes a column.

A young woman answered the phone. Your father was in yesterday, she said.

Oh dear, what was he doing? I enquired.

Oh, he just came in to muck about, to cheer all us girls up hes delicious.

No one describes my father as delicious.

No he is not, I bellowed. I am delicious, he is old and bald.

When not out on flirting expeditions, Dad spends most of his days sulking in his room. When we were children there was no space for him to have a private sulk-room, so he used to have to sulk off to walk the dog, scowl off to the drawing-room where there was no television and therefore no children, and grump around the garden. He would go anywhere and think of any excuse to get away from us. Now we have all pushed off you would think hed have the run of the house, but unfortunately there is still the problem of my mother, who has the irritating mental condition known as Liberophilia, or being fond of ones children. This involves her wishing on occasion to discuss us, how we are getting on, how wonderful, kind, generous, good-looking and talented we are, all of which Dad finds intolerable. He has taken one of our old bedrooms as a study, into which he barricades himself from morning to night with plenty of old books written by grumpy people about how horrid life is, venturing out only at lunchtimes to snatch a cheese sandwich off the kitchen table, like a wild beast demented by starvation, and scurry back to his lair.

As I have mentioned, when I was a teenager I used to go on cycling holidays with my friend Philip Spain. Dad has recently discovered the same means of escape from the family home, although he chooses to go on his own, claiming that he is quite happy with his own company, and does not need to take a friend. This claim strikes us as pretty hollow, a much more obvious reason for his solitude being that he has no friends. Perhaps, however, he is nearer to second childhood than we thought, and takes an imaginary friend, possibly called Philip. This would explain why, if one is behind a hedge or otherwise out of sight as he cycles by, one can hear not only the wheezing and clattering of decrepit man and machine, but also loud muttering and the odd bellow of rage as he chats to himself or argues with Philip.

So there it is. The strange personality that accompanies second teenagerhood. Disagreeable to family, agreeable to pretty women and off on his cycle as often as he can. The other little characteristic I developed at that mental age was becoming a compulsive liar. Perhaps Dad is now similarly affected. As we lose sight of him from the moment he cycles out of the gate, we have no proof that he has ever been further than the local station, perhaps to take the direct line to Gatwick and jet off to the sun with a fancy-woman of very poor taste. Perhaps this book is a pack of lies from beginning to end. We shall never know.

I have called this book Downhill All the Way because, as everyone knows and can see from the map, if you bicycle from the Channel to the Mediterranean you are going downhill. I am thinking of writing another book, about life with my four children, for which I have reserved the title Uphill All the Way . The largely fictional and wholly libellous introduction that my son has written shows what I have to put up with from that quarter.

Different people make different excuses for writing books. I possess a slim volume called Extracts From the Diary of a Huntsman , published in 1838, the author of which is given as Thomas Smith, Esq.. He introduces his book like this: The writer, a master of fox-hounds for some years, is aware that it will be easy to discover that these observations were not designed to appear in the world, written as they were for his own satisfaction alone, until the repeated request of many induced him to offer them for publication.