It was a foolish Mark who suggested, a few months ago while supping a pint with me, that I should borrow his "Brompton" folding bike while he went off on a cycling trip around Europe.

"I won't be needing it, fella - and you've always wondered what it'd be like to ride one of these 'knit your own cheese brigade' machines", he said, off-the-cuff. I was never quite sure what he meant about the knitting and the cheese but I had been curious about the ridiculous bikes him and his lovely wife had been riding around on.

So I reluctantly accepted the folding machine; was shown twice, quickly and confusingly, how it folded down into a small package and then was dispatched home with my awkward new toy.

Three months later (I think it is, sorry Mark) and I have to say I'm a convert. I've been through the torrent of mickey taking I got when I first took it to work. The "it belongs to a friend" line lasted only so long as an excuse against my new found "gay-ness". "What's happened to your old tank?", they all declared - talking about my large frame TREK bike which seemed to be made from lead tubes in comparison to the light Brompton.

But pretty quickly there were competitions to see who could unfold it faster and attempts to "fold" it whilst riding (thankfully very difficult). And for my part there was a very useful possibility to get me from my new girlfriend's house to work in < 30 minutes via train which helped my fledgling relationship off the ground and gave me those all important extra 20 minutes in bed in the morning. It also folds down neat enough to fit in my hallway - removing the previous need to lug a very heavy bike up two flights of stairs - enough to put anyone off riding one.

So I'm converted. It's got new lights on for riding in the dark. It's tires are pumped up thoroughly and I enjoy my speedy, nimble ride to work everyday regardless of where I start from. It comes with me to pubs, restaurants, nights out. It even fits in the lockers at the gym. I love it... But it's still not mine and I'm feeling rather guilty that my test-drive has gone on rather too long. So soon I'll be cleaning up the beautiful machine, returning it to it's rightful owner and I think I'll be entering the market myself. I can't really bear to think how I'm going to get through a week without it so I'd better get shopping.

We're doing some due dilligence at work on a company we're acquiring in France. So I spent an enjoyable couple of days this week listening to mostly French conversation while our appointed French technical consultant, ex-CTO of Kelkoo, did his best to first quiz our French company representative and second ferry the information to me in English, finally asking my followup questions back in French. We got into a rhythm of 20 minutes French, a summary back in English and then question and answer session.

It was amazing how much I found I could understand (even though I have very limited French vocabulary) once I'd tuned in to how they were speaking - and the translation delays certainly gave me longer to frame my questions than I'm used to. I suppose much of the technical jargon was basically in English (in a French accent) and I'm okay with numbers etc. Still can't speak a word - aside from offering coffee and asking "Ca va? Oui ca va, bien". I realised how difficult carrying out diplomacy must be in translated-language - how very difficult it is to build a bond with someone through a translator.

At lunch, we had need to use the phrase "Le petit monde" - the small world - as we discovered that after Kelkoo, Jean-Marc went on to work for Stephen Taylor originally at Overture and later Yahoo Europe. I used to work for Stephen when he was CEO of Safedoor. Small world indeed. And quite nice to be reminded of it.