I'm in the market

On Saturday I wanted to take Hannah to the farm shop. We were only going so that Hannah could play on the tractor, slide and swings. It's about a mile away.

The sun was shining and I thought about walking. Hannah's only got little legs though and a walk would have been really tiring for her and would have taken a long time. So we took the car, but what I really wanted to do was take the bike.

On Sunday the weather was fantastic too so we went to the park, which is probably also about a mile away. We took both children and because it's long walk for little legs we used both buggies, but what I really wanted to do was use the bike.

The trouble with the bike is how to take Hannah.

We haven't got a bike seat and she's too big for one anyway. I have seen tagalong bikes which are bikes for children that have an attachment in lieu of a front wheel. The attachment fixes to the adult bike seat post.

So on Sunday afternoon I raised with Dave the idea of getting a tagalong bike.

I hit a brick wall. Dave was not interested at all. He doesn't like the idea of the children on a bike on the road, even if there's an adult in control.

I know the safety issues and I would think carefully about the routes I'd take. Dave's children are mine too and I don't want to put them in danger, but I also don't want to mollycoddle our children and remove all danger from their lives because life isn't like that.

I hate the idea that we might bring our children up to think cycling on the road is too dangerous for them. And what kind of example would Dave be setting in that case given that he went on a 2 1/2 hour road bike ride on Sunday morning?

So following our very obvious disagreement, I did the one thing that I knew would wind him up. I phoned the classified ad for a tagalong bike that I'd seen in the Gazette. When I discovered that had sold I spent an hour or two researching ebay.

I haven't bought yet, but I'm in the market.

I don't like being dictated to.