When you have a fantasy about something – like, say, a parachute jump, drinking Champagne under the Eiffel Tower on Valentine’s Day, or riding on the back of a bottlenose dolphin – then living that dream feels like the moment of a lifetime.

But there was one fantasy I didn’t realise I had – until an invite to a fancy dress party brought it home to me: I realised I wanted to cycle a tandem dressed in a pantomime cow suit.

Please don’t laugh; we all have our little oddities – doubtless mine is a result of watching too much of The Goodies as a child. But, still, it felt like an epiphany.

A phone call to a fancy dress hire shop soon secured the outfit, and I managed to negotiate to be the front half (good choice, I hear you say – except that you are then expected to be the one who looks where you are going – which I couldn’t).

All I needed now was a trusty dual-cycle steed to make the fantasy a reality. Alas, the idea collapsed when my plan to borrow a tandem from a friend fell through, and we ended up ‘hoofing’ it to the party on a bus.

Pipe dream firmly gone, I had to console myself with getting ‘the back’ to agree to a trampolining session instead, to make up for it – which was all that was needed to relieve me of my Jim’ll Fix It fantasy, as we quickly collapsed in an undignified heap.

Oh, why can’t I have a simple whimsical desire like a quiet cup of tea/coffee/beer with a book instead?

Anyway, back in the real world, I returned to more mundane journeys on my normal bike.

Come Sunday afternoon, off I went, in ‘civilian’ clothes, to a child’s birthday party, with my son in tow on the tag-along.

This journey proved more taxing than I expected, as before I even reached the end of the road, I realised that my baby (my Trek bike that is) needed a desperate oil of the chain, as it was screeching as if in pain.

I felt very bad for neglecting her – if the RSPCB (the ‘B’ standing for bicycles) existed, it would be after me. Certainly, if my bike were a horse we’d probably have to consider turning it into cat food.

Anyway, I arrived at the party with a soggy wet patch on my behind. I hadn’t realised that my deluxe comfy gel saddle was in such a bad state that it had turned into the equivalent of an exploding disposable nappy.

The insides were bright orange, and were now on all the parts of my bike below the saddle.

I thought nothing else could go wrong with the bike until my handlebars worked loose on the way home. When I went to change the twist-grip gear, the entire handlebar section shot forward.

I only just avoided an embarrassing crash into the road in front of the car I’d been trying to speed past.

I suppose the moral of all this is, if I hadn’t been so desperate to be a cow, I could have been getting my own bike in order. So I’m spending the next few days nursing my bike back to health and perhaps investing in a new saddle for gunge-free riding.

As the warmer weather encourages us back out, leave those cycling fantasies behind, and look after the practical matters first.