THERE are many things which may tend to indicate that the judgment of President Bush is not all that it might be.

Consider the continuing hold on power of his Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeldt.

Even so, it does seem a bit harsh to slag off poor old Dubya just for coming a cropper while out on his pedal cycle.

There has been general and undisguised glee at Mr Bush's tumble from the saddle during a mountain bike expedition on his Texas ranch.

He cut his knees, hands and face, despite the fact that he had on a cycle helmet and a mouth guard (just a thought: shouldn't he wear that, Hannibal Lecter-style, all the time?).

Bush's accident has prompted many in the media to take a nostalgic look back at a Presidential cavalcade of mishaps, including the glorious episode in which the leader of the Western World choked on a pretzel and fell from a sofa while watching American football.

Pretzel-eating, like American football, is a minority sport over here, and the President, mouth guard or no mouth guard, is welcome to both of them as far as I'm concerned.

But haven't we all come to grief on two wheels at one time or another? I know I have.

For most people, skinned knees, gravel-strewn hands and trips to casualty are instantly evocative of the long summer holidays of childhood.

For me, the physical scars are only just starting to fade.

Psychologically? I couldn't think how I would ever recover from my mishap when I plunged headlong from my mountain bike into a gorse bush beside the Whitby to Scarborough railway line late last month.

Naturally, the physical discomfort of a gouged left shin and a thoroughly grazed right knee was no problem for a stoic like myself. No, it was the indignity that had me howling like a four-year-old being dragged out of Toys 'R' Us.

You see, grown-up women are not meant to fall. That's something you're supposed to have given up long before you start wearing lippy and sharing a toilet cubicle with your three best mates at nightclubs.

And by the time you've stopped going to nightclubs, there's no excuse for tripping.

So I cried because I was, in a curious way, ashamed of myself. And also because I'd made my legs even more unsightly just in time for the beach - I was going on holiday in four days' time.

I stood there blubbing in front of my chap, who is not good with unfettered female emotion, and who responded by offering me his hankie and by giving me a vague kind of back rub I assume was intended to show sympathy.

It must have been quite a picture for the embarrassed walkers who unsuspectingly rounded the hill to find me in full flow.

It was amazing how quickly their appearance made me shut up, but I doubt if they were entirely convinced by my attempts to feign hay fever compounded by a sudden asthma attack.

Nevertheless, I have somehow refused to give up cycling, and was back in the saddle again at the weekend. And after a day like last Sunday (cloudless sky, birdsong, the solitude of the back roads of North and East Yorkshire) it shouldn't be long before my psychological wounds have healed.

If George Bush Jr likes a spot of cycling, he can't be completely potty.

Not completely.

Updated: 10:18 Wednesday, May 26, 2004