The Village Bike

There’s nothing quite like zipping downhill on a bike when you’re a kid, gleefully pulling wheelies with the wind whipping through your hair. These days, any attempt at a wheelie would be likely to end in both disaster and broken limbs, while the only hair the wind will be whipping through is likely to be that which protrudes from my ears.

My wonderwife recently bought me a bike. Not a motorbike as I’m not due that for at least another decade or two when my mid-life crisis is scheduled to take place, but a glorious pushbike with spangly gears and those little nobbly bits you get on brand-new tyres and everything. After tightening up the nuts and bolts and adjusting the seat to a height where it wouldn’t bisect my scrotum, I jumped on and started pedalling.

However. during my first embarrassingly slow and wobbly ride around the village, in which I seemed to be overtaken by both elderly pedestrians and a variety of molluscs, I started to seriously question my fitness as the effort required to achieve any degree of momentum was nothing short of Herculean.

Eventually, and with enormous relief, I arrived back home where I dismounted onto trembly legs, only to discover that the reason it had been so exhausting was that a spring had pinged off, causing the rear pads to clamp the wheel like miniature limpets and I’d been I’d been riding with brakes on the whole way round.

I fear the Tour de France will have to wait.