Midsummer Madness

Dull, dank depressing Summer Solstice. A pretty chesnut pony ridden by a little girl on the pavement (sidewalk to our cousins across the Pond) wishing to be a wild rider, but not along the High Street in this once BLUE Radical part of town if only both were not escorted on foot by two women, the mother and the child's sister? Astounded! I said to a bloke pasing by, "That's legal?!" half like a full capon judge, half like a Radical. The bloke broke into a wry smile, shrugging his shoulders replied, "Don't intervene". With a pretty white maned pony, two determined women and the little hoped to be wild rider wearing a blue helmut, I knew that I was on to a loser, as we say; later in the day when a teenager on a bike blocked the pavement - er sidewalk- when I and two women, one in a wheelchair and another pushing it could not get by the cyclis;t, I, 'The Big I Am', as my father in his dotage called me, with no stentorian tone, but authoritative and polite, he moved! An intervention that worked. Flabbergasted! When the pretty pony with the white mane and until then co-operative demeanour move left blocking the side ah, you know what I mean, the mother led the pony, the so assurred rider in the blue helmet with her elder daughter - all - onto the road, the pony reared! The mother puzzled said, "She's frightened!" seemingly not expecting any traffic. The appearance of a pony on a pavement, you know by now what, getting as busy as bees in midsummer, as narrow as a path across a field in midsummer, until a semblance of order returned with pedestrians, motorists and the long suffering pony suffered itself to be led across the road to the safety of the car park - ur- ing lot of the Baptist chapel where behind lay a graveyard of Anabaptists, so seriously radical!