The bow ramp clangs onto the slipway, or maybe the stern, it’s difficult to tell with the symmetry of the ferry, depositing me behind the Seine. Vanishing points strobe in the sunshine, a zoetrope flicker, rows of netted fruit trees pulling my eyes back to the river and the silver-white rock walls swathed in woodland that rise beyond. Switchbacks lift me away from the river. Present but only half here. Turning the pedals to maintain momentum letting the kilometres tick over effortlessly as my mind whirrs and clicks like a badly indexed derailleur. Thoughts spiral and twist and fold in on themselves as hard to pin down as the lark song somewhere above in the blue. Here but elsewhere, contented in reality and the imagined. My mind drifts further, forward this time, to future possibilities. Oh, I’ve been here before! The heat is getting to me. The ride becomes function over form, get to the destination, make sure the k’s add up to the correct amount to count, get it done, get it logged. The green digital display outside the pharmacy opposite indicates 35 degrees. I pull a can of watermelon and mint iced tea from the patisserie fridge. Find a tree’s shadow.