Wheels

I've just been out for a walk - it's Good Friday and gorgeous - and everyone's out on wheels. Cycling is BIG in Hamburg, there are cycle lanes on all the pavements. And you've never seen a Hamburger properly annoyed until you've seen a pedestrian stray into the cycle lane - the air turns blue. Plus there's buggies, unicycles and inline skaters (some of whom were men in their forties, oh dear...)

Anyway, I stopped for a little while next to a skate park and watched the kids on boards for a bit - I say kids, I mean boys, as there don't seem to be any more girls skateboarding now than when I used to do it myself. I did wonder, though, why no-one was using the half-pipe. I mean, they were all using the low-level ramps and quarter-pipes but no-one was on the half-pipe, and when I was skating it was so popular you had to queue to even get on it. They all looked really accomplished, too.

As I moved off, I got a view of the top platform on the half-pipe, and realised why. There were about a dozen girls up there, reading magazines, swapping make-up and generally claiming it as their territory. Clearly none of the guys were going to even think about challenging them.