Albert Wheeler built things. They often didn’t work. But that was fine, his brain didn’t work like a normal person’s, either. It could be argued his brain barely worked at all. It clunked - a bit like the bicycle he built.

Albert had always been an optimist. When he built a bicycle with square wheels, he claimed it was for “rhythmic cycling.”

‘It’s the bumps that give it character, Andy,’ he’d shout, his teeth rattling like a bag of marbles in a cement mixer.

‘But Albert,’ I pointed out, ‘you’re not moving. You’re just vibrating vertically at high speed.’

‘Exactly!’ he cried, losing another hat to the wind. ‘I’m travelling through time, not space. Space is too crowded anyway. Full of stars and vacuum cleaners.’

‘Er, vacuum cleaners, Albert?’

‘Yes! There’s loads of them up there. It’s all the dust, you see. It attracts them.’

Now, Albert might have a point. Come on, you have to concede that, right? He could have a point. Don’t tell him, though, or he’ll make a bike with pointy wheels.

Anyway, I saw Albert riding off up a hill.

I left him there, thumping rhythmically into the afternoon. The ground was apologetic, but firm.