This week I feel the need to tell you about my cheating wife.

The cheating hasn’t begun yet, you understand (not as far as I am aware, although they say the husband is often the last to find out), but it is now a distinct probability.

I even overheard her discussing it with a young man when we were in the bike shop recently, and I suspect he was the one who gave her the idea.

Then again, the subject keeps coming up whenever we get talking to other older couples, and it turns out that the lady is often the one considering the cheating.

I don’t know what kind of cheating you thought was on my mind, but as I am a keen cyclist, I am obviously talking about electric bikes, which some people consider to be cheating.

But they are the future.

Indeed, if you know any of those impatient I-think-I-own-the-road motorists who like to moan about the number of cyclists on the roads these days, costing them valuable seconds in their race home, you had better tell them the news that E-bikes are going to be everywhere soon.

And my wife will be riding one of them.

She just has to overcome that notion that anything that gives you some help (even if it doesn’t do all the work) is somehow “cheating”.

It really is the main thing holding her back, but I have asked all of my friends in the cycling club, and they are fine with the idea.

In fact, the more people who are turned on to the pleasure of cycling, the better it will be for all of us.

That especially applies to those yet-to-be-electrified partners that we currently reluctantly leave at home when we go off for long club rides on Sunday mornings.

Most would-be cyclists are put off by a pathological fear of the road going uphill, and they never believe us when we tell them that’s why God gave us gears (‘All things bright and beautiful/All gears great and small’).

But nobody can deny that E-bikes will give hills the knockout punch and - just as importantly - massively extend the range of novice cyclists.

So please don’t let false guilt get in the way of investing in one, nor converting to it if the pedalling gets too much.

The E-bike dilemma is neatly summed up in a charming little book by Wanborough author Sue Birley, called Travels with a Brompton in the Cévennes and Other Regions.

It’s about her and her husband exploring France on folding bikes, and ends by saying:

‘It is good to know that electrification has arrived, and when the day comes when we feel we need help, it will be there, and we can carry on with our cycling holidays.’

And if you think about it, that philosophy works with most things in life.

Although you probably don’t want to apply it to your love life.