Help!

It's getting pretty dark by 6 these days, so I'm trying to enjoy the last days of having daylight to cycle home in. This means leaving at 5.30. So today I'm cycling home at the same time as lots of students finishing their lectures and probably staff eager to get home in the daylight.

If I see someone stopped on their bike I often stop and ask if they need any help. Sometimes they're just texting or talking on their mobile (although some cyclists manage to do this and carry on pedalling), but sometimes they have problems with their bikes. I like to help.

The first person I stopped to help today was a foreign student who explained he was looking at the chestnuts on the ground - he'd never seen them before! I told him horse chestnuts weren't edible - but didn't go so far as to explain the rules of conkers.

The next faltering student had a stuck chain. That seems to be the most common problem I help cyclists with. The chain slips off the cogs, jams up, and they're stuck. This guy had a full-suspension bike, and his chain had fallen off his big cog and jammed. I got him to hold the bike while I dug in and freed it. I then explained how to adjust the limit screws - I couldn't do it there and then because I had no tools on my bike. He pedalled off with my instructions to get his bike serviced hopefully ringing in his ear. He'd only just bought it, second hand.

I rolled on home and finished painting the living room walls yellow.