I’m rather sad for it really is time to say goodbye to my faithful companion, although, to be honest with you, she hasn’t been particularly faithful of late; you could say that she’s been well and truly going her own way, furrowing her own field. That might sound okay to some people but, believe me, she did her furrowing in a most harrowing way. Where once I knew how to press all her buttons the right way, recently she just stared at me blankly; it wasn’t simply a case of insolence or even a slowing down in old age – I think her brain had gone. I still plugged her in to the life-support machine… but to no avail, she kept going in and out of consciousness.

Yesterday morning I thought she might like a trip out with me on my bike to Cockwood harbour. She seemed to perk up when I mentioned it, and seemed not to notice how cold and windy it was. The sun was shining, which was a blessing – she normally responded well in the sunshine – but that North-Easterly wind against us all the way proved to be too much for her. Before reaching Cockwood I stopped and coaxed her to look at a pretty pastoral scene – and she snapped. It was her penultimate snap. I didn’t hear the last one, which she did quite silently, in her own good time, in my bicycle basket. Somehow it was fitting that she was in the casket basket, and not simply because she was a bit of “a basket case”.

To mark the occasion of her passing I shall attach the results of her final efforts. The last one showed a touch of genius that a normal mind such as my own would never have considered.

On Monday, or even tomorrow if I’m lucky, I hope to have a much smarter companion.