He put his foot on one pedal, scooted a few yards and swung his other leg over the saddle. He soared left into the vertiginously sloping hillside road and sped, without touching his brakes... The hedgerows and sky blurred; he imagined himself in a velodrome as the wind whipped his hair clean...

The Casual Vacancy (ed. Little, Brown, 2012) - ISBN: 9780316228558