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stiffie, so I grabbed the bags and asked Larry if he wanted me to open the wine and the strawberries.
    “Wait until we get out along the Backs,” Larry said. “Actually, no—you might as well get it open now.” So I got out the champagne and popped the cork off. It went in the river and started bobbing about. I was worried about littering, but Larry said it was okay ’cause corks come from trees and are natural and stuff. Only he used longer words than that.
    Larry wasn’t doing too bad at punting, but it’s a good thing he’s little, ’cause he forgot to duck when we was going under Silver Street bridge. I think it’s ’cause we’d started heading for the side, and he was worried we’d get stuck. But I gave a shove off the side, and we was all right. I warned Larry before I did it. I didn’t want him to fall in or nothing.
    The next bridge is made of wood. I always thought maybe it was a temporary one and they’d build a proper one when they got round to it, but Larry said no, it’s a mathematical bridge. That’s the one I can never remember about. I thought maybe if Larry explained it I might be able to remember this time. I looked, but it didn’t have any sums on it or nothing.
    “It’s the design,” Larry said, “Popular legend has it that when it was built, no nuts and bolts were used in the construction, because of the precise mathematical design. As you can see, it’s got them now, but they’re supposed to have been a later addition.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust a wooden bridge built by a mathematician neither. You want to get a proper carpenter in to do that kind of stuff.”
    Larry laughed. I did too, ’cause I like seeing him laugh.
    When we got out at the back of King’s College, I poured out the champagne. I like King’s College. It’s the one with the really posh chapel that looks more like a cathedral. I always thought chapels were supposed to be really small, but you could fit a whole row of houses from Larry’s street into King’s College chapel. There’s this huge patch of grass next to it, going down to the river. I don’t do landscapes, but if I did, I’d do this one. Even the bridges are really pretty down the Backs.
    “Al, you’re woolgathering! How about passing me that champagne?”
    I was wondering how Larry was going to manage to drink wine while he was punting. He had the glass in one hand and the punt pole in the other, which was okay to start with, but when you pull the pole back, you need to move your hand on it. Larry shifted his hand down by sort of jerks, and he ended up spilling most of his champagne, but he seemed happy enough about it. “Like riding a bike!” he said with a big grin on his face. “Oops—bugger! Ah. Top-up?”
    So I didn’t have to drink much fizzy wine after all, ’cause Larry kept spilling his, so that was good. But he drank enough that he got a bit wobbly, so I said, “All right if I have a go?” and we swapped over. I didn’t want him falling in. When I got up, I was a bit worried, ’cause I’m a bit big to stand up in a boat, but punts are really flat, so it was okay.
    Punting’s dead easy, ’cause you use the pole to push off with, and when you’ve done that, you can use it to steer with. So you don’t have to think about two things at once. I didn’t try and hold a glass while I was doing it, though. Larry got a bit giggly, and he got me to open my mouth so he could throw strawberries at me. But we had to stop ’cause Larry can’t throw for shit, and people in other punts were complaining about being hit by strawberries. Even though they was Marks and Spencer’s strawberries.
    Up past King’s is this stone bridge with big stone balls on it. Larry said it was Clare Bridge. I said I hoped they’d stuck those balls down properly, ’cause I didn’t fancy one of them coming down on us when we went underneath. Larry thought that was really funny, but I don’t think he’d have been laughing if half a