I’m sure no one will notice. I didn’t.
In my lore, Finestre is CEO of Hell, executive level demon of such things, resident of Dress Down Friday, Hell’s most prestigious neighbourhood. Jess is an undead ex-librarian with a taste for blood and a fraught homicidal relationship with archangels. She lives in Elephant and Castle and hangs out with three morally expeditious exiled angelic assassins and a ghost named Julie. It’s complicated.
Cycling. My wife makes me wear a helmet, though I confess if she’s not watching, I’ll abandon it to the garage. Though I can’t say I actually have an opinion on the matter, not one worth arguing over.
I grew up with a bike, one of the cohort of BMXers who spent every spare hour bashing his Mongoose (pads removed, of course, though I don't suppose it sounds any better) around tracks until one day it broke in half (a casualty of the summer we spent building bigger and bigger ramp to jump into a disused boating lake, I think by the end of that six weeks we were close to attaining orbit – or the nearest A&E. Got a Super Burner to replace it, though by that point I was slipping into cider and sideways looks at uninteresting girls, such is the wend of male adolescence. Girls were (and probably aren’t) – for reasons – not swept off their feet by rad bike skills. Leastways if they were swept off their feet, it was likely in an inadvertent rencounter of metal and limbs. Or possibly too much Woodpecker.
After that, I was a practical cyclist, I bumped back and forth between flat and university campus on a salvaged Raleigh Arena, suicide brakes and fossilised gearing. It was a pleasant way to get around. Then, one fine day, I was dead for a brief while and came back with a more attuned sense of mortality and a strong disincentive to get on a bike. About twenty years back, I thought I’d give it a go again, I was walking daily from home to what was then the Ladywell Pool and now is identikit flats (33 metres and a Turkish bath, alas there’s inefficiencies to rooted out of every splendour) and it occurred to me that I could condense that 40 minutes of bipedalism into 10 minutes of pedalling. So, one Saracen Rufftrax later, that’s one I did. One Sunday afternoon, I had a meeting at the Royal College of GPs by Regents Park and what the hell, I cycled there, and then became a regular commuter from the steppes below Crystal Palace to the glinting glamour of Hatton Garden. Around that time, it became necessary to replace a pedal on Mr Rufftrax. I tried. My wife tried. The big Nigerian from across the road tried. Him and his friend tried. The entire street tried. That pedal was in it for eternity. For every problem, there’s a solution, and sometimes that is to be found on the internet. Ah ha, look cycling people! In their natural online environment. Who better to ask?
So anyway, I was nudged toward a bike shop in Honor Oak, where a nice gent with the aid of a large vice and the leverage of the entire bike managed to loosen it. Admittedly it was touch and go whether I’d be adding another snapped bike to my collection.
After that bit of advice, I think I stuck around for no good reason other than it was a random group of people who, were it not for the internet, I wouldn’t have met otherwise.
I cycle rarely these days, maybe the more pungent whiff of mortality in my nostrils, but the days of gladiatorially circling (the now tamed!) Elephant & Castle roundabout are behind me. I have a few bikes in the garage, but I mostly only use the Brompton these days as I can escape the tyranny of local roads via the train.