Back to the 1930s then! Fun, fun, fun.
I contemplate all this with gloom. I have never loved bikes. I didn't have one as a child, being both disinclined to push a bike up the steep hills of Barry, and afraid of gross injury if I dared to freewheel down them. My parents did offer me the chance of having one, but I was resolute. I forget what else I had, but I'm sure it was safe and secure and gave my brain a ride rather than my body.
I was not an outgoing, 'look at me', show-off, competitive kind of child who liked to display physical skills, certainly not the things you could do when messing around on two wheels. I wanted to do grown-up things - most especially, learn to drive a car. I yearned for that, as early as nine or ten. A bike would be a poor second-best, a distraction. And I must have thought that if Mum and Dad bought me an expensive bike, then they wouldn't fund driving lessons later on. A child's logic.
Thus it was that only when grown up - when nearly thirty, and now in a relationship that included a young step-daughter - did I have a motive for getting into the saddle. I was living near Wimbledon in south-west London then. Wimbledon Common was close by, criss-crossed with tracks to ride on, and places to make for. Adrienne was eleven, and she had a red kid's bike. Here she is, one May evening in 1982, near Rushmere Pond on the Common:
At that stage I was still on foot, still bikeless. Suddenly I wanted to ride with her. Of course I did. It was a bonding thing.
So I went to a bike shop and bought a second-hand Raleigh in metallic brown. It couldn't have cost much: £50, say. It was made of steel, not one of those fancy alloys, and it looked very traditional. I thought it was good enough for a starter bike.
And it was, really. The only problem with it, as a machine, was that it was so 'old-fashioned'. It said 1962, not 1982. It didn't look cool (though it would now, in 2020, obsessed as we are by things retro). I quickly made the mistake of reading about the latest 'mountain bikes' and 'city commuting bikes', and suddenly that humble brown bike (which was fine for recreational use, and nobody would ever steal it) had to go, so that I could own something nice and modern, and trendy. With more gears too: my brown Raleigh had only a three-speed Sturmey-Archer gear mechanism, worked with a handlebar trigger. I was ignorant. I couldn't see that steel and simplicity meant strength and reliability, and very easy maintenance. My brown bike could have become a cherished workhorse, even if I did end up pushing it rather than riding it. But my head had been filled with thoughts of riding the North Downs Way.
A familiar tale - abandoning something old but perfectly good for something new that would fulfil an unrealistic aspiration. I had dreams of cycling to the office every day. Hah!
I laugh because I was such a bad cyclist. From the first, I'd wobble and fall off. Again and again, and I'd hurt and humiliate myself. I wasn't a lightweight, so falling off was a serious matter.
It wasn't easy, this cycling business. It needed fiendish concentration. Where was the fun? How could one enjoy it, when so fearful of losing one's balance? It was so difficult and frustrating. I could never do it smoothly or confidently, especially going round bends, or while making hand signals, or if I suddenly had to brake hard - a frequent event on London roads, even on quiet backstreets.
This is when not learning as a child came home to roost. Cycling had never become second nature, a skill hard-wired into me. It couldn't now be any more than a nervously-acquired accomplishment. After more falls, and particularly after several close shaves with passing buses and lorries, I gave up. It seemed like certain suicide to continue. Just a matter of time before I was mangled beneath bigger wheels. One fatal wobble would do it.
Fast forward to 2020, and this latest urging to leap into the saddle.
Nothing has changed. I haven't magically become an expert rider. In fact, I haven't even got onto a bike - anyone's bike - since the 1990s. To my mind, a bike is a flimsy, top-heavy contraption at the mercy of the merest puff of wind or pothole. As a motorist, I regard all cyclists as unpredictable hazards, and I give them a wide berth. They are a dreadful nuisance. I especially deplore cycling parents who take a string of children along busy roads, all horribly vulnerable. What are they thinking of? And I would be like that: horribly vulnerable. I'd be mad to try. It's just not safe.
Even with no traffic, it wouldn't be safe. My balance has not improved over the years. My fear of falling has intensified. And if - no, when - it would be inevitable - I fell over, my much older bones would probably break. Sprains and lacerations too. Great.
And for the last twenty-five years my knees (especially my left knee) have been weak. I ruined the ligaments in the mid-1990s playing too much badminton. That's partly why I shall never climb any Lake District fell, never take in the view from Skiddaw, Helvellyn, or even Haystacks. The knee pain would be too much. And I can't help thinking that renewed knee pain would be my fate if I got a bike.
Give me a car any day. At whatever the cost. I can't fall in a car. And my knees stay happy. And I can carry things safely - like shopping - and keep warm, and dry, and safely locked in.
So if the government offers people like me £300 towards buying a bike I shall ignore their kind offer, and stay safe and pain-free.
