It's better by bike....
I could say I cycle to work to save the planet. The truth is of course that it's far faster for me to grab my bike straight off the roof of the boat and scoot along the riverbank to Stourbridge Common, up the little alleyway behind the industrial estate, and pull up outside the door of our unit; than it would be to sit in a traffic jam for half an hour in the smog of Newmarket Road.
At least, that's what I used to think.
I was swinging my bike off the roof this morning, when Guiness pounded past with a tennis ball in his mouth. My next door neighbour, Robin, was giving him his morning excerise, and I stopped to pass the time of day. Robin has even more solar panels than I do on the roof of his boat - which is saying something - and a montstrous wind turbine to boot. His boat - like mine - is a perpetual building site, and one or other of us always has a project to sound ideas about. It takes me ten minutes or so to get my head round his latest idea - phase-change materials in an underfloor heating system. Hmmm, intruiging... Finally, I pedal off.
Rhian, on the other side, isn't awake yet, but I stop further down the Common to say hello to Mark and Toni (and new baby) and to admire again the solar panels on the roof of their boat gleaming in the low sun. They were one of my first customers.
Onto the road along riverside, and one of the cycle couriers I share my offices with zooms past with a cheery smile. I wave to a sculler on the river who I used to row with, who nods back - he can't let go to wave or he'd fall in. Further up, the river is clogged with novice college eights. I stop to give some friendly abuse to a crew from my old college, and spend a few minutes chatting to the coach - another old crewmate.
On Stourbridge Common I meet Liz cycling over the Green Dragon footbridge, on her way into my old workplace, BAS. I stop again. 'Coming to the pub tomorrow?"
Steathily, I make it past most of the remaining boats on Stourbridge. But not quite all. Luther is just taking his own bike from his big old Dutch barge. We're both on the Camboaters committee - the association for residential boaters in Cambridge - and we're having yet another skirmish with the Council, who wish to charge us even more for incompetently running the moorings than they do already. There's always plenty to discuss with Luther.
By the time I finally wheel my bike into the industrial unit, the sun is significantly higher in the sky. I could have done it in half the time by car.