Bike.

Pushbikes are very important to small kids.

When you’re older, and see kids on bikes, they look pathetic - but this is to foolishly forget how incredible they were when all you had was short pants, no front teeth and a pocket full of trading cards.

I owned a pushbike called “Ella”.

I could lie and say it was named after Ella Fitzgerald, and I will…it was named after Ella Fitzgerald.

No, in truth it was a shortening of Argentine tennis siren and 1990 US Open winner Gabriella Sabatini, who I thought was undoubtedly the most beautiful (and, ahem…intelligent) woman in the world at the time.

I started naming my few possessions very early in my life, and continue to do so to this day. I currently own a mug called “Anthony” and a porcelain phrenological head called “Carlos”. For some reason all items of transport need to be Female. I think the word ‘ride’ and its subsequent openness to double entendre is to blame.

Where I grew up, children under the age of 16 were not encouraged to drive as they were deemed either too small or too irresponsible (in some rare instances, both), so in my infant years I had to make do with a bicycle.

My two-wheeled friend has been gradually upgraded over the years and now resembles an automobile with an engine and four wheels, which I find is able to travel at greater speeds than a bicycle and requires less physical effort to commandeer.

Making do with a bicycle was just fine, though. I was very young, and seeing as I didn’t really know anyone outside a 1mile radius from my house, didn’t have a job, and had no money to buy a car, pay for petrol, road tax or insurance, it didn’t bother me.