I left work at just after 5. I left because I am so cold. By the end of the day, my feet feel as if I have had them in buckets of ice all day.

It is dark now, when I leave home and work. It’s no wonder they invented Christmas. It helps to brighten up the dark mornings and nights with lights. I really dislike this time of year.

However, back to the post.

I hadn’t reached the end of the road when a bike came from my right, without looking, and rode on the side of the road just in front of me. Because I was near a junction, I had already slowed down.

However, bikes coming out without looking are nothing new.

What really amazed me was that the guy was wearing dark clothing and had no lights on the bike. The street lighting, this far out in the suburbs, is not that bright. Stupid guy, I thought, he really does want to be killed.

I turned the corner and within a few minutes, there was another cyclist without any lights. I wonder if this is illegal. Surely, this IS illegal? I then decided to count the cyclists on my way home and count the number who had lights (on – not just on the bike, of course).

OK, so I am driving and concentrating on driving so I may have missed a couple of cyclists but I counted 11 in the end. Of those 11 cyclists, 8 – yes EIGHT – either had no lights at all or, if they did have them, they were not switched on.

If it is illegal then 72% of cyclists are illegal.

But that’s not the point, really. The point is that 72% care so little about their lives that they want to be killed. Cyclists – without lights YOU ARE DIFFICULT TO SEE!!!!!!!

The solution, I suppose, by the last two cyclists I saw as I was walking along the pavement to the supermarket, is to ride on the pavements. The last one, with a child in the child seat, did, in fact, have lights. It was just that they (the front one, at least) were broken. I don’t mean not switched on – I mean, nearly hanging off (although, obviously, not switched on too).

Of the 8 without lights, probably about 4 or 5 did have some sort of reflectors and one guy was wearing a fluorescent jacket. Of the 11, at least two had no reflectors and were dressed, to all intents and purposes, in black.

It beggars belief.