WEEK 11: Long chain polymeric fibres maketh the Man

I don't do lycra. I don't dress up as Superman, I'm not a ballet dancer and at school I didn't wear a leotard for P.E. Lycra and I have never been introduced, unlike Poncey Cycling Git who was born wearing his, and Sunday Cycling Poof who was a reasonably normal human being until he had a mid-life crisis, remortgaged his house to buy a bike and had his lycra grafted on. The rest fall into a very broad category of Plodder's. Your true Plodder is never seen without his unsightly panniers, his high visibility vest, his polycarbonate dome and wrap around polarised glasses. He's a cautious, courteous individual who is often also a qualified and practicing driver. He is also secretly the most smug bastard on two wheels. He revels in his sense of moral and intellectual superiority over the likes of PCG and SCP and is justly scornful and dismissive of No Hopers (sometimes known as Laughing Fools). He feels that he is a genuine cyclist, the proper kind, the sort with a mortgage, with responsibilities, a proper job and people who rely on him. He has a purpose when he rides out each morning. He doesn't cycle for cycling's sake but because it is a means to an end. When he first began cycling himself, he was overcome with the memories of watching his Dad grind away up the road on his terribly practical bike each morning, and when at last he did the same himself he felt, in some small way, as though he had come of age. He rides in the tyre tracks of millions of other respectable pillars of the community who have gone before.

That smug tosser. I know him well. He stares back at me each morning when I look in the bathroom mirror.

Other breeds of Plodder are more like hybrids of Plodder and other things. There are those that will not even wear a vest nor fix a light to their frame, never mind condescend to muss their hair with a naff looking helmet! They drift along in ignorant bliss, assuming that drivers will always see them well in time in all circumstances and will always have the necessary room and opportunity to manoeuvre around them. They tend to be seasonal riders who got the bike out 'cause the the weather was nice and they never exceed a walking pace, which betrays their heritage as the unnatural offspring of some deviant cyclist and perverted pedestrian. These weirdo's got together once upon a time to perform unthinkable acts of flesh and frame intimacy; their awkward fumblings with wing nuts and blouse buttons where no doubt excited by the sense of all the taboo's and unwritten laws of nature they were breaking. Smug Bastard refers to the results of this carnal sin as In My Way.

At the opposite extreme are the Immortals. They share many characteristics with Sunday Cycling Poof, like always riding amongst the heaviest traffic on the busiest roads, most especially when alternative routes such as quieter roads or the occasional, and rare, safe cycle lane are available. They have some sort of stubborn philosophy to do with having a natural God-given right to ride in the middle of the road and bugger up faster moving traffic and would never dream of once using a cycle lane or even an empty stretch of pavement. They are Road Users and damn you for suggesting that they should ever do otherwise. Their favourite habitat is busy roundabouts or complicated junctions, the bigger and more complicated the better. Their favourite time of day is any time that it's rush hour. Their favourite activity is riding right through the middle of it all, sometimes so far out in the traffic stream and among so many vehicles that you can only ever see their heads. The visual effect is strange, as though their heads are creating a wake made up of the tops of cars jostling and dodging to avoid creaming them all over the tarmac. When not on the move, Immortals can be identified by their combination of Plodder and Poof plumage. They have the requisite panniers and sometimes a high visibility vest and lights too, but they also wear lycra. Typically just the shorts with a loose shirt, but it's there, wrapped around their nether regions and clinging to them like paint.

Speaking of nether regions, the weather has been rather hot lately. This has driven almost all the pedestrians to the extremes of sartorial acceptability. Most look as through they just opened the wardrobe door and fell in, sometimes backwards. Happily, I discovered that some of my trousers are in fact “zip-offs” and, well, zipped them off. Great! Or maybe not. It's very strange and probably worthy of scientific investigation, but for some reason long legged trousers don't seem to do it. I refer, of course, to the effect by which one's shorts wrap themselves around one's crotch like an amorous Boa Constrictor and try to screw one's nuts right off at the roots. Each subsequent rotation of the peddles and movement of the thighs tightens the knot until you're either riding along in a delirium of masochistic bliss or an agony of self-inflicted castration. Why does this happen? Why doesn't it happen with trousers? What difference does it make if your ankles are showing?

All I know is that at these times the mantle of Smug Bastard passes to the lycra lovers, for when I pull up behind one at the lights and am treated, as usual, to a marvellous view of his perfectly proportioned and toned buttocks, perched on a saddle so narrow it could fillet a sardine, they are clad in soft, pliable, flexible, breathable, untwistable lycra.

Perhaps that's why there are so many of them and so few of us?

WEEK 10: Some Lessons I have Learnt

The patient has been discharged and is doing well, although I doubt it will ever be quite the same as it was before. Now and then I experience an unidentifiable clunk or tremor when changing gear, but the gear changes and stays changed no matter how hard I stamp on the peddles. At this point I'm inclined to follow the old maxim “If it ain't broke, don't fix it.”

Looking back over my illustrious cycling career so far, I realise how many silly things I've managed to do in a very short time, not all of which found their way onto these pages! The fact that the last few weeks have been relatively quiet is encouraging as it may mean that I have taken some of these hard learned lessons to heart. So, for the betterment of humanity I present some of these pearls of wisdom in the form of questions I have asked myself on occasion, and the answers I have divined from bitter experience.

Presenting...

The Good Cyclist's Guide to Etiquette

Q: What are cycle paths?
A: Cycle paths are individuals suffering from a chronic mental disorder who respond to the presence of cyclists with antisocial or violent behaviour.

Q: Why do drivers hate cyclists?
A: Drivers, otherwise known as Insane, Blundering, Arrogant, Homicidal, Self-Appointed Kings of the Road, are offended by your good looks, robust health, rippling thighs of steel and ability to filter through a traffic jam and get to work on time. However, be aware that there are some cyclists who do not behave courteously to other road users, do not signal turns and fail to obey traffic signs or signals and that Drivers everywhere are making you pay for the mistakes of this minority.

Q: I consider myself a member of the fashionable elite. Do I have to wear a silly helmet?
A: No, you do not have to wear a helmet. Especially not if your name is Robert Hanks and you write for The Independent, in which case only people who don't ride bicycles need to wear safety helmets. This, presumably, is to save them from spending the rest of their lives in a care home where they will pass the time drooling, filling their nappy and thinking with less coherence than your average carrot.

Q: OK, but what about that tasteless high visibility vest? That won't protect me from injury.
A: No, it won't, but it might prevent an injury. As a cyclist it is your job to make yourself as visible as possible to other road users at all times. Unless you are the Immortal Robert Hanks, in which case, by all means, stick to your dark grey T-shirt, dark jeans, black rucksack and complete absence of lights or reflective surfaces. Drivers of articulated lorries shall be alerted to your presence by your amazing telepathic powers, motor cars will pass through you as though through early morning mist and pedestrians crossing the road shall leap over your head like human grasshoppers.

Q: What do I do when a cycle lane is blocked by pedestrians?
A: Remember at all times that Cyclists and Pedestrians are two different species who often speak different languages. For instance, Cyclus expeditus understands that the raised area flanking the road surface may be further sub-divided into a pedestrian lane and a cycle lane. Pedester inertia has no concept of the 'cycle lane' and this, coupled with P. inertia's inability to read simple road markings, often causes it to react with hostility to the presence of a Cyclist within it's territory. This can take the form of intentional obstruction, verbal abuse, threats of violence against one's mother or a combination of the above. There is no sure fire solution to this problem, except perhaps selective sterilisation.

Q: What should I do if I encounter a cyclist while I am walking?
A: As a pedestrian you know that cycling is a mortal sin, that practitioners of cycling are goat worshippers and that the infernal machines upon which they alight are the work of the devil! It is thus your Holy Duty to obstruct these pawns of Satan in any way possible before they corrupt the minds of our women folk with the sight of their well-muscled, sweaty, lycra-clad bodies. The following tactics have been found to be successful: throw yourself bodily in the path of the cyclist at the last possible moment. Scream insults at the cyclist so as to distract him from his evil purpose. Invoke a curse upon the cyclist's debauched progenitors. By these means shall we cleanse the public highway of this foul menace!

WEEK 9: Requiem for a Way of Life

How different life is these days. You never stop to think about it while you’re on the go, but your chosen method of transport has a dramatic effect on your day. You can sit in an air conditioned box, shunting a few feet at a time down a queue of traffic a mile long, picking your nose, listening to the radio, feeling the cramp spread through your left ankle, slowly getting more and more agitated about how late you’ll be when you finally arrive, and how sick you are of spending you life sitting in a car capable of 140 miles per hour but which rarely tops 25 in the rush hour. Or, you can sit in a bus and think much the same thing, except you can’t pick your nose and your agitation is compounded by a vicious, deep seated loathing of every old biddy who spends 10 minutes boarding the bus and half an hour locating her money or bus card whilst suddenly, as if on cue, the traffic begins to speed by and then, finally, just as your bus pulls out into the road again, the lights turn red. And so does your vision.

Or you can adopt the most efficient form of transport known to man. You can cycle. It really is the most efficient way of getting around. A bicycle is a beautiful piece of engineering built around simple, robust and proven concepts. Like computers, 90% of problems are caused by the User. Unlike computers, a well kept and properly maintained bicycle will function for 90% of the time without a problem. And even when it does breakdown, whether it’s a puncture or a broken chain or a blundering pedestrian, you can pick it up and walk it home again, and most of the time you can repair it yourself. The only thing that I don’t understand about bicycles is why more people aren’t riding them more often!

The only other thing I didn’t understand about bicycles is how easily you can take them for granted. How you miss their easy freedom: hey, I’m a road user! Now I’m a pedestrian! Now I’m a cross country recreational vehicle! Now I’m “parking” in the garage or the shed or the hallway or anywhere else that’s convenient and I don’t have to pay road tax, parking fees, insurance or inflated petrol prices. Now I’m super fit in a way that months of gym bashing never achieved, because cycling as exercise motivates you in a way that a gym coach screaming down your ear while you abuse a tread mill cannot match: if you stop peddling you’re spending the night by the roadside, sunshine. Plus, the view is nicer. Even the ride to work is nicer than spending 30 minutes staring at the sweaty, heaving backside of the over-weight middle-aged woman on the treadmill in front. The ride to work has trees and some grass and relatively fresh air, not the musty, acidic rank of nylon drenched in body fluids in a crowded and badly ventilated space, the pleasure of which you pay for by monthly subscription!

No thanks. I’ll take the open road every time. No matter idiot drivers still suffering from last nights binge, unpredictable lorries with drivers half-asleep at the wheel, insane cycle paths that lead you under the wheels of buses or clueless pedestrians with glazed eyes who step out in front of you without warning. At least you’re wide awake when you arrive in the morning, unlike the rest of the office fodder who’re still REM-ing when they get behind the wheel. And here is, perhaps, one of the biggest bonuses. It makes you ten times the driver any of these caged animals are. You will develop keen observational skills, learn how and when to give way in all circumstances, read the road as carefully as the instructions on powerful medication, anticipate and plan ahead. And when you next climb into a cage yourself, you’ll be a better driver for it.

WEEK 8: Get Well Soon

The South East bakes under a relentless sun and drought orders are issued in 3 counties. Buildings not owned by Government agencies are forbidden from being cleaned and clowns may not hose each other down, however badly they may need it.

And it’s pissing down in Warrington. Hurrah! It’s the wettest drought in recent history.

The Great Cycle God continues to smile on me, for each time I set off the weather breaks, or at least rains less heavily, so that I am rarely caught in the full fury of it’s downpour before I’m a few hundred yards from shelter. The sacrifices are clearly paying off. My only problem is ensuring my supply of Bicycle Virgins until the end of the rainy season. Perhaps I can import them from Beijing? Made In China. One Bicycle Virgin. Never Been Ridden.

Unfortunately, it seems the Great Cycle God’s good favour only extends as far as the weather. In matters mechanical I seem to be on my own. There was something wrong with my gears. I could feel it in my lubricating oil. I didn’t know exactly what it was but they felt unreliable. The gear changes didn’t always feel solid. Sometimes I didn’t feel confident about leaning on the pedals. I thought that I could occasionally hear little chinking sounds on the edge of my hearing. But when I looked at them, they seemed fine. A little row of sprockets huddled around the axle of my rear wheel like a pathetic bundle of lost puppies sheltering under a baked bean tin. But I wasn’t buying this sweet and innocent act! I started mounting surprise inspections at irregular intervals, lurking outside the door and then dashing in suddenly, flicking on the light to try and catch them with their cogs hanging out and groping each others locknuts. Dirty little sprockets. They must have heard me coming. I wasn’t fooled! There was something wrong and I would know what it was!

And the next day, I knew what it was. Came time to head home and I studiously donned my cycling garb. The weather was fine; a bit overcast and breezy but not too bad. Traffic was light. I mounted the saddle just as a glorious ray of sunlight broke through the clouds and a fresh scented breeze filled my nostrils. Ahhhh. I pushed off. Three yards later my rear wheel disintegrated. Ever slipped off the saddle and landed on the top bar? Oh yes, you know what I’m talking about.

So, eventually, I regained the power of walking upright and me and my bike mutually hobbled back inside where a committee of well meaning persons offered a variety of advice on the problem. The problem was that my rear wheel was hanging off by the chain. The solution turned out to be the application of a spanner to the wheel nuts. The committee decided I must not have tightened them properly when repairing the puncture. That was fair enough. It seemed likely. By the time I’d cajoled the wheel back into it’s place, the weather had turned and beyond the door was a solid sheet of vertical water. And by the time I’d pulled on my waterproof trousers and set off again, this sudden squall had passed and I was bathed in glorious sunshine all the way home. I always wanted my own personal sauna, and now I was wearing it.

Next day the wheel fell off again. Suffice to say that this was becoming a tad annoying. As were the mocking calls and whistles of some drivers and pedestrians when they saw my road side repair shop in action. I cobbled things together as best I could and ground my way down the road in first gear, the chain screaming and yoweling like a cat trying to go to the toilet through a sewn up bum. Every little bump and twist in the road threatened to derail the entire assembly again. I dreaded having to stop at red lights in case pushing off would be too much for the hub to bear. I never rode so gently in my life, as though the bike was made of rice paper and I was a 200 lb gorilla.

Well, tonight my bike slumbers in the local bike shop, suspended from a workstand like a cadaver on a meat hook. The gear hub assembly is knackered. It seems to be an internal problem, most likely a crushed washer. There is also some surface damage. One or two of the cogs are actually bent over, which I never spotted, and the cable guard is hanging much lower than it should, which brings the cable conduit into frequent contact with the chain, amongst other things. Bike goes into theatre on Tuesday when they will dismantle the whole assembly to see if it can be repaired. If not, we could be looking at transplant surgery, but the waiting list for 4 speed Shimano gear hubs is a long one. All we can do now is offer moral support. Grape, anyone?

WEEK 7: Eternal Shame

Bright and early one mid-morning afternoon I set off on my bike, luxuriating in the usual uncanny cessation of the downpour that had been pulverising the window glass into sand just moments before it was time to leave. Off I went down the road, stopped at the give way, patiently waited for bus driver and white van man, crossed the road and slowly freewheeled down the gradient towards the lights at the junction. I’m so practiced now I can vary my speed so that I arrive at the lights just as they turn green, then I increase my RPM, hit the next gear and am away sometimes before the first car has released his brakes.

Most days I avoid the potholes along the margin between the resurfaced tarmac and the messy bit where three generations of road surface collide opposite a bus stop. Near where new grates for the drains have been shoehorned in there are several deep holes that I like to avoid as they rattle my panniers and squash my gonads. This morning Mr. Bus Driver didn’t leave me any room so I had to grit my teeth and take the plunge.

CLUNK

Hmm… that was heavier than usual. Probably just something loose in the panniers.

Across the junction and onto the cycle lane, the surface here looks like someone dropped a pebble in it when it was wet and the ripples expanded all the way up the road. It’s not a problem. Mostly it’ll just rattle loose objects in your panniers.

GA-DUNK GA-DUNK GA-DUNK

Aye? What? What’s doing that?

Very slowly my clueless monkey brain begins to come to terms with the physics involved and concludes that no, my branch is not being rattled by a Sabretooth Tiger and that no, I’m not being humped by the local Alpha Male. It’s something much, much worse! Stop, get off, bend down, squint at rear wheel. Oh my God! I’ve got a flat!

ARGH!

When did this happen? How did this happen? This morning? I haven’t gone a hundred yards yet! Why did I not notice this earlier? Oh the shame of it. Having to get off the bike and turn around and wheel it back home past all the drivers I just swished past at the lights.

It’s been a long time since I repaired a puncture and never on an internal gear hub. 45 minutes of creative swearing later I was on the road again… and it was raining. I will admit that I was a little less than careful and considerate the second time. Visibility was down, the rain was turning everything into a grey static haze, my front tyre spewed a fountain of water ahead of me and the speed of my passage streaked the raindrops left and right across my lenses. I sped down the cycle lane, flashed past near stationary traffic and came to a sliding, skidding, splashing, squealing halt at the lights. Panting heavily, eyes glazed from oxygen deprivation, I stared around me, taking in the three other lines of waiting cars across the way. I watched the lights turn and spotted an opening. They’d switched seconds too soon and I could get across before anyone else! And I was flying again, carving through the rapidly forming puddles like a horizontal power shower, my trouser legs soaked and the taste of acid in my mouth. Imagine how surprised I was to get pulled over by a Police car.

Mr Policeman was not very impressed. He pulled up beside me after I had stopped, wound down his window and gave me a stern talking to. The lecture included words like stupid and references to brown jam. I very quickly came down off my speed high, nodded, tried to look contrite and agreed with him completely that I was a prat and assured him that I would be much more careful in the future. All the while cars were passing by and drivers were getting an eyeful of an errant cyclist getting a good dressing down. How marvellous for the reputation of cyclists everywhere. This only increased my sense of embarrassment even more.

I slogged into work against a sudden headwind and even more driving rain and slunk off to the kitchen to mope over a cup of tea.

WEEK 6: Death By Cherry Blossom

Green things are growing, flowers are in bloom, mammals small and large are getting randy (some of them have been watching the wood pigeons rutting in the tree outside the kitchen window) and so it’s no surprise that my route to work, once so barren, is now verdant like the hanging gardens of some biblical city. The branches of tall bushes and the boughs of trees are so heavily laden with new leaf growth that where they lean outwards and downwards over garden walls and fences, they create a serious hazard for your average cyclist, zipping along with his head at just the right height to snag a tree limb with his throat. Cherry blossom is evil stuff. It’s so dense it’s like approaching a huge cloud of candy floss moored to a tree. It always grows on corners where it’s guaranteed to reduce your forward visibility around the bend just when you need it the most. I think you can see where I’m going with this.

Oh yes. As I said, from a distance the pernicious pink stuff reaches out so far and so low that your view of what lies just 20 yards beyond is completely obscured. It’s not until you cautiously approach the outer limit of the blooms radius that you can make out the legs of pedestrians on the far side, and then you have to duck so that your chin is almost resting on the handlebars. But in this manner the careful and considerate cyclist may avoid a collision – unless he’s very late for work!

Red light ahead, divert onto the pavement, over the pedestrian crossing, back onto the road, stopped traffic behind, road clear ahead, shift up to next gear, bastard headwind, check watch, feck feck feck, this bits downhill, use it to shift up, argh my knees, work it, work it, lorry behind, blind fecker’s in the cycle lane, speed up beat him to the lights, too late, gone red, onto the pavement, no pedestrians, smooth surface here, pick up speed, corner ahead, take the outside line, nice and easy, nice and easy, CHERRY BLOSSOM CHERRY BLOSSOM! SOUND GENERAL QUARTERS! BRAKE BRAKE BRAKE! TOO LATE, I’M GOING IN… ARGH!

I was lost in a blizzard of billions of tiny soft pink things swirling in every direction, plastering my lenses and gluing themselves to my clothes and tyres. A dense, dark mass swished by my head. A branch? Dozens of tiny whips lashed at me, scittering over my helmet like claws raking a chalk board. The blizzard grew thicker as I ripped even more blossoms free. I had no idea which way I was going or how fast or where I would end up. In the road? In the fence? Just as I thought I would emerge under the wheels of the lorry I burst out the other side into daylight, my vision clearing just in time to catch the look of horror on the face of the unsuspecting pedestrian who very nearly became extremely intimate with my front tyre. Still on the pavement, still moving at speed and still extremely late for work (and too cowardly to stop and apologise) I pedalled on, sparing time only to glance over my shoulder and call back,

“Sorreeeeeee…”

I have an image, very briefly registered, of a tall man in a suit holding a briefcase, staggering backwards and slowly becoming engulfed by a gentle falling rain of millions of tiny pink blossoms, like the fallout from a powder puff bomb.

I arrived at work late, sweaty, exhausted, agonized and bearing multiple small lacerations, but did I get any sympathy? Hell no. I suffered merciless piss-taking the whole day because when I got there I had a big, beautiful cherry blossom flower lodged in one of the ventilation slots of my helmet, right over my left temple.

For the record, I am not New Age, I didn’t leave my grass skirt at home and I do not know the Hula Hula dance.

WEEK 5: Worship The Great Cycle God

Every serious athlete is superstitious. They believe in luck and fate and the power of ceremony, but more than that, they believe that they can bias the outcome of the competition in their favour by appeasing fate through an act of obeisance. And so, before each trial of physical stamina, skill and strength, the professional athlete performs their warm-up rituals. Call it a meditation, call it Zen, call it the conscious manipulation of biochemical processes. Whatever you call it, they do it, and if they get it wrong, they lose. Because they believe they will.

I believe in physics. I believe that if my unprotected cranium strikes a poured concrete kerb stone with just a few newtons of force, it will split my skull and damage my brain and change my life forever. So I take the obvious precaution and encase my brain bone in a layer of expanded polystyrene beneath a polycarbonate shell. However, this won’t protect my body from being crushed by 2 tonnes of steel, plastic, rubber and inattentive Homo sapien, so I wear a high visibility vest and mount lights on my bicycle frame and attach reflective strips to the panniers. This won’t save me in a collision, but it helps to mitigate the risk of one occurring. Even so, there may well be occasions on which I come off the bike and don’t strike my head and am not run over, but suffer minor injuries which could be debilitating, especially injuries to the hands. I can lose skin from my shin or my shoulder and still function day to day, but damage to a complex instrument like a hand can be very painful and hard to heal and make simple tasks difficult. So I wear leather gloves with impact foam built into the lining. Finally, I wear wrap around sunglasses with polarised lenses to keep insects and airborne detritus out of my eyes and prevent me from being blinded by the sun or reflections off surfaces.

And so it is that each time I take to my bike, I first spend 5 minutes packing the panniers and donning my equipment. I have a routine now. After I’ve arranged the baggage into a reasonably aerodynamic bulge on either side of the rear wheel, I start with the high visibility vest. Then the sunglasses are removed from their case and hung around my neck. They’re replaced with my glasses and stowed securely in a pannier where they won’t be crushed. Then the helmet goes on and the sunglasses are fitted with the arms over the chin straps. Finally, the gloves. These are actually fingerless rappelling gloves with a suede palm in addition to the impact foam over the knuckles. The only downside is that it takes a little longer to get a snug fit, but the few extra seconds are worth it. Now I wheel the bike to the roadside and prepare to mount. The gloves and sunglasses are my amulets of confidence; I do not fear low, whip-like branches, tiny bullet-like flying insects, crushing encounters with bollards in tight corners or reaching out in emergencies for purchase on abrasive surfaces. My helmet is inscribed with the holy word ‘Bell’ to ward off evil spirits and strike terror into the hearts of Light Jumpers. The high visibility vest is my most powerful talisman. Across it’s surface a secret sect of bicycle monks have etched the holy incantation ‘Scotchlite: Reflective Material’. And so, I have completed my ritual.

Praise be to the Cycle God.

Just then No Hoper happens by. He is riding a mountain bike hybrid, a cheap mountain bike derivative designed to look sexy to people who find studded tyres and derailleur sets with astronomical numbers of gears a turn on. He is wearing a dark coloured track suit, a base ball cap and a bling watch. He’s carrying a supermarket carrier bag in one hand, steering his bike in a wiggly course up the yellow lines of the gutter with the other and looking back over his shoulder at me and smirking. It takes me a moment to realise what he finds so amusing. It’s my equipment.

As I watch him meander uncontrollably along the margin between gutter and road surface, I don’t share his amusement. Even though his frame is about the right size for his height, his saddle is lowered so far that the crotch of his baggy tracksuit rests on the top tube, which means he is in danger of smacking himself in the sternum with his own knee caps. His tyres look semi-deflated, probably intentionally. The carrier bag waves in every direction, creating a hazard to pedestrians and himself and compromising his balance, which already exists on a knife-edge. He doesn’t seem to know exactly where he’s going from one minute to the next and wanders along in the gutter, then swerves onto the pavement, then makes a hasty turn and dives over a pedestrian crossing without even looking for traffic, then back down into the gutter, his tyres millimetres from the kerb. If he was a pedestrian, people would assume he was drunk.

As I watch him totter off into the distance, blackening the reputation of cyclists far and wide, I debate whether or not he is, instead, a Laughing Fool.