My, that’s a big one	Big enough to swallow a cyclist whole

Calling the average dish-sized indent in the surface of the average London street a ‘pothole’ is overdoig it a bit. A pothole is, after all, presumably a place where ‘potholing’ is done, which means it has to be big enough for a ‘potholer’ to get inside, if not necessarily move around much.

Just such a hole had opened up during the day in the middle of the road along the route of the ed.’s regular commute. On the ride in through Streatham, nothing untoward. On the way home, a vast orifice had appeared smack in the middle of the highway and was being guarded by a police patrol car and two wheelie bins. By the next day, the bins had been retired and proper barriers erected to protect – well – anything short of an Abrams tank from falling in.

That said, the hole was only the half of it. Peering underneath the crust of Tarmac, it was possible to discern a yawning chasm of some 10 feet across, most of them under the Tarmac and therefore ideally placed to catch even a main battle tank as the skin gave way. On a push bike, of course, you’d just bunny-hop it.