Cycling On A Spring Bank Holiday Monday

And so it begins. The summer, I mean, or the lead up to summer...

Today was probably the first day when I realised that I was overdressed in my usual 'Winter Gear'. I have a winter hat which today felt like it was crushing my skull with the heat my usually sedate peddling was generating. I have a summer hat which is light and breezy but I hold off getting it out of the cupboard because the longer I can delay, the more I can deny that summer is coming.

Today was my usual early week run to Tesco and I took my usual route along a scenic cycle path. Except it was a warm day and a bank holiday and that meant, for the first time since last Autumn, I was not alone on the path. There were men in shorts and vests drinking lager as they swanned down the country lanes shouting crude things at the women in revealing clothes who were themselves a constant distraction. There were prams parked, tramps on benches, kids screaming, dogs pissing, and then there were the motocross bikes...

We're plagued by motocross bikes in this corner of the North West. Their throaty whines can be heard throughout most of the summer as they blaze up and down the local bumps and dips. The landscape in this part of the country is scarred by the coal industry. The industry was  destroyed in the years of the Thatcher and has been romanticised by some but I'm not sure it's entirely missed. There remains a generation of men with lung conditions and 'white finger', a nerve condition caused by the heavy machinery used to dig the coal. The pits have gone and the wheel towers demolished. Now only the slag heaps remain, the spoil turned into nature walks but then spoiled again by the chunky motocross wheels which dig up the paths and grass and butterfly meadows.

To combat the brainless cash rich louts on their motocross bikes, the council recently erected an anti-motorbike gate across the cycle route, meaning that my usual relaxing walk is now punctuated by five minutes of my trying to squeeze a large bike, my larger frame and even larger bag of shopping through a narrow six in gap. I was squeezing through today when the motocross boys blazed past me. Though it was designed to stop them accessing the country park, the gate has done nothing to stop them. They smashed down an adjacent barrier and now have even quicker access to the dirt trails than they had before. There is, I suppose, a lesson in this about new laws and prohibitions only curtailing the pleasures of people who obey laws and prohibitions. The only difference the turn style has made to the country park is that it's now more inaccessible to the cyclists who legally use it as the cycle route it is meant to be.

The other thing that struck me today was how bad the roads have become in the last twelve months. Because the usual paths were crowded, I was forced to take a slightly different route which took me onto main roads I hadn't used since last year. I'm amazed I didn't chip tooth enamel given that my bike was bouncing so much. The road is used by a lot of commercial traffic and is now almost unridable. I don't supposed it's been repaired in years and the reason, I guess, is 'austerity'.

I'm not convinced entirely by austerity. The problem with the Tory vision of austerity is that I'm not entirely sure where austerity ends and their natural preference for low taxation and even lower government spending kicks in. I hit one pothole today that brought me to an abrupt halt and had I been going any faster, there'd have been a blogger sailing over his handlebar and wondering how to turn his resulting broken wrists into a funny anecdote.

Tesco was quiet except for a few Bank Holiday shoppers. One woman, pushing a trolley, was wearing a skin tight bright pink dress that revealed every inch of her body and left nothing to the imagination. I'd like to admit that I didn't look but I did briefly until my higher order thinking kicked in. There's often something spectacularly non-erotic about the people who dress that way. Perhaps it's a symptom of a working class  town but the way they reveal themselves is often a rather abject display of ungainly twisted underwear, pimples and sag. There is also a kind of desperation in the act. They're rarely the beautiful people but, rather, people with a kind of twisted beauty, which is peculiar, individual, and only attractive to some. The woman wasn't what you'd call a classic beauty and I sensed that she was compensating by revealing every inch of her body. Feminism doesn't really have much of a hold in these parts. There are far more primal games afoot.

Not that it's always like that. Like all towns, we have rich people living here and you occasionally see the beautiful people fresh from the gym, nipping into the supermarket for their expensive energy drinks. They exist on a different physical level. Perhaps they just have money to ensure that everything is tucked and nothing is twisted. They buy quality underwear that rides up in the rear just the right amount. Cheap underwear ends up splayed across a buttock. Or so it seems to me, a casual observer of the phenomenon. But what do I know? I ride a bike and wear hot hats in warm weather and I hate the summer.

After the louts, the pink dresses, and my least favourite checkout assistant blathering on about Pyrex dishes, I chose to return home by a different route. I hate to admit it but I think spring has arrived. I have to start thinking about how to arm myself for summer.

Let’s Just Shoot All The Cyclists

I’m beginning to see the sense of it. As a cyclist, I mean. After all, I’m nothing but a drain on local resources, a constant thorn in the side of customer service departments. How is Willard told to deal with Kurtz in Apocalyse Now? With extreme prejudice? Well, I feel like Kurtz, muttering ‘the horror, the horror’ here amid the brutes. I’ve clearly gone rogue, off reservation, or, if you prefer, quite quite mad. I’ve lost all rational sense having gorged myself on a diet of existential cycling philosophy and the foolish belief that we were born free to choose how best to live our lives.

Even if you’re a cyclist, you must see that there is a hard-knuckled truth to my words so open your mind and let them in. Society carries on not through the rational will of individuals but because the great barrelling mass of the majority is steeped in some husky pheromone and brazenly ruts behind council refuse bins when dim on Bacardi and sad dreams. Evolution happily coincides with the squirting dash of sperm towards eggs. It’s no more profound than that and for every conscientious couple concerned about world population there are a thousand drunken pricks with immortality on their tips.

Yet all societies eventually neutralise their radical elements. I’m now beginning to see that we cyclists are more radical than most. We try to present a better vision of the world, of communities, and of towns. Yet we’re also immensely disposable since we lack the genetic code for survival. We’re like the dodo birds so friendly to sailors that they never learned to run away even as they were having their necks wrung. Cyclists have a naïve quality. We put ourselves in harm’s way, laying our necks before the heavy vulcanised tread of wiser souls protected by air bags and 4x4 traction. What benefits do consideration, moderation and environmentalism provide for the species other than to weaken it and turn us all into Guardian readers? So I say again, they should just shoot the cyclists. We’re an evolutionary dead end.

Cycling is for dreamers and who needs dreamers in a world of bankers and rat-tailed business suits? Being a cyclist is for another me in another lifetime. It’s of that same mad idealism that made me think I might make it as a writer, humourist, or cartoonist whilst living in small town England. Dream followed dream and now look at me. Tesco’s customer complaints department already treat me like the horsemeat they deny exists in their burgers. Shoot the cyclist. Some hot fragment of lead placed at considerable speed into my ear would solve quite a few problems. After all, I don’t conform to the identikit picture of the British working male that these companies encourage in order to exploit. To do that, I would need to impregnate at least 2.4 women, buy myself an old arse rattler of a car, and then do the shopping once a month at Tesco whilst sucking on a Mayfair king size or packing the Bud.

Yesterday highlighted how selfish I am by continuing to dream. It was one of those mornings at Tesco when my bike got in people’s way. I would have gone to shop elsewhere but there was no alternative but to endure their bike racks. It was also a Friday which meant the town was busy and the bike racks full.

Well, I say ‘full’ but there was one space and I bet you can’t spot it…

This photo illustrates why we cyclists are an extravagance and why Tesco are right to hate us. Here is a perfect example of a cyclist demanding too much. The room taken up by that bike might have held another trolley, pram, baby, mother, other woman, and another oddly angled youth. Just ignore that sign saying ‘bicycle parking’ above their heads. That’s just a little in-joke between Tesco staff. This is actually an example of high level ergonomics and how to maximise space in a dwindling world. This is people folding done the Japanese way. The message is a simple one: let’s just shoot the cyclists…

But even as I type that, I finally feel my sarcasm running dry. I’m left only frustration and a shrug of the shoulders... These are dog-eat-dog days requiring snarling teeth not smiles.

Yesterday showed me that I’m fighting a pointless battle. Tesco have still haven’t adequately replied to my complaint. It’s now over a week since the polite email from ‘Alex’ the Customer Service Manager and, as is shown in the above picture, the situation hasn’t changed. I’m tempted to write again but I’m deciding whether I should give up or open a second front in this attritional war.

A second front, you ask?

It was almost predictable that as soon as I ask for more cycle stands in one part of town that my local council should rip out the bike stands in one of the few places where they were providing a good service.

Bike stands! I can’t believe my life has come down to something as meaningless as these hoops of metal in the ground. Yet here I am thinking of petitioning my local council leader, Barrie Grunewald.



Since he took office in a local government coup earlier this year, I’ve been impressed by Barrie and his ability to grab a headline. He plays labyrinthine politics like some Greek sandal slapper on the trail of the Minotaur threatening to cut council budgets for the third year in a row. Believe me when I say that this man is marked for the national stage. In ten years, look for him on the back benches, quickly shuffling his way to the front. Government posts. Minister for God knows what. Perhaps party leader, Prime Minister, and the world… He also looks like the kind of forward thinking folder snapper who can explain local cycle policy without looking at his notes. To be fair, I can also do that without notes but only because St Helens Council has what appears to be a simple cycling policy:

Let’s just shoot all the cyclists...

Barrie will probably say that he doesn’t make every decision but I bet he knows which pencil chewer in St Helens Council decided to remove these bike stands.

For the last few years, we had two bike stands at the ends of a small street running through our town. They appeared one day as part of a town upgrade and proved very handy if you were going into one of the nearby banks, shops, or opticians. I went there yesterday expecting to leave my bike at the same stand I use three or four times a week. Only I discovered the stand gone. Another stand down the road had also been ripped out. There are now three stands around the corner at the end of the street. I guess it’s a provision of sorts and I also guess that I’m just being lazy. I’ll just have to leave my bike there and walk back to whatever shops I need...

Except, isn’t this another example of the mentality that councils have towards cyclists? Isn’t this the same begrudging nod we always get? Somebody in the last five minutes of a long dull town planning meeting has said:

‘But what about the cyclists?’

And somebody else has tutted, chewed the end of their propelling pencil and then scratched their oversized car-friendly behind.

‘Oh,’ they’ve said, ‘we’ll give them some stands out of the way somewhere so they can’t complain.’

Except I can complain and I do complain. Why did the council take one step back after making a good step forward? Cycle stands aren’t like car parks. You don’t centralise them. You spread them out to aid mobility and increase access to different parts of town. And what harm was there in having bike stands outside shops? That’s just good planning. One small hint of civilisation in this rabbit hutch town.

Of course, they’ll say it’s the cuts. They’ll say that the council once had money to spend on painting bicycles on pavements and putting up cycle racks. They’ll say that austerity has now bitten so hard that they’ve been forced to spend yet more money ripping out the bike stands and building a large and frankly pointless flower bed further up the road. They’ll say the town has been improved.

Except it makes no sense to me. Enlightened thinking has gone back to inside-the-box thinking.

Perhaps I’ll write to Barrie and ask him to explain. Or perhaps I’ll just ask him to shoot me. One way or the other, at least he’ll have put me out of my misery.

Do Non-Smokers Really Play The World’s Smallest Violin?

A comment on the blog last night left me thinking. Not all of them do but this was a good comment and began with a quote from my previous post.

"And I’m tired of being forced to breathe in second-hand smoke,’ I said"

It appears you're happy to drive past, and close, to hundreds of cars pumping out carcinogenic fumes, however, the smell of a single burning leaf is enough to near kill you!

*plays worlds tiniest violin*

It’s a good reply but doesn’t apply to me or to what I’d written. The comment presupposed a few things about me that aren’t actually true. For example, as a small town cyclist, I don’t come into contact with hundreds of cars. Mainly out of cowardice, I generally avoid traffic by taking empty residential streets, paths through parkland, a road through a largely quiet industrial estate, and I very rarely spend any time sitting in traffic smelling engine fumes. The second mistake is to assume that my objection to cigarettes is based on their perceived harm. It’s not. I object to having smoke blown in my face because I find that the fetid hot breath of wizened nicotine addicts sickens me to my stomach. My argument would be the same if I was forced to smell raw effluent or the rotting carcass of a feral dog left tied to the bike stands.

Despite my primary objections to the comment, at the heart of the argument there was still a good point that needed exploring. Why should cyclists have a problem with smokers given the pollution they’re exposed to in the average cycle journey?

That question intrigued me, though I knew immediately that my reply would take me into morally dark waters. Having an opinion about smoking is like holding a position on the Arab-Israeli conflict. There is no position from which you won’t annoy somebody and possibly need a deep bunker.

Yet I’ve never seen myself as a real anti-smoker. I don’t agree with pressure groups that turn these issues into territorial disputes so badge wearers can shake their fists at the rival camp. I like to think I’d defend people’s right to do whatever they want with their bodies, their lives, and their actions. My only restriction is that those choices can’t intrude on the rights of others to do what they want with their bodies, lives and actions.

Naturally, this tolerant approach leads me into some problematic areas, such as my belief that it’s wrong to outlaw any form of speech. Censorship of thoughts, however repellent, merely pushes people with extremist sentiments into the shadows where they eventually do more harm. Let the hate-filled bigots stand in the open where they can be addressed through rational argument, humiliated through ridicule, and revealed for the true louses these people are. Political Correctness, though noble in its aim, merely turns bigots into quiet hypocrites. Silencing people doesn’t make them change their attitudes but it can harden a prejudice into hatred.

I’m not denying that this liberal attitude doesn’t sometimes leave me gritting my teeth when I find myself defending the rights of people I find deeply repellent. Yet it also allows me to retain a defence for satire. Freedom of expression means that I also reserve the right to argue that the choices people make are dumb and where appropriate, mock them savagely for that, as I too can be mocked for the dumb choices I make and opinions I express.

So, although I’m not a smoker, I wouldn’t ban tobacco, as I wouldn’t ban alcohol or even drugs (again, this slides into difficult areas but I’d like to think that arguments against those perils outweigh any argument in their favour). It comes down to a matter of personal choice provided the context allows those individual choices to be made whilst not impacting on the identical rights of others.

Smokers rightly defend their activity by saying they have made a choice as individuals and the rest of us have no right to curtail their activities. And they are absolutely right. Yet the problem that smokers repeatedly fail to acknowledge is that this individual freedom/personal choice argument also works the other way around.

Again, my own objection towards smoking has nothing to do with the harm it might cause. If smoking were good for you, my argument would be exactly the same and it’s this: I have made a choice not to smell something I find repellent. Smokers believe that they’re victimised because they smoke. That’s wrong. They are only victimised when they take away other people’s right to choose and force them to share the consequences of their personal choice. It’s this that lies at the heart of the great Steve Martin joke that has one person ask ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ and the other reply ‘No but do you mind if I fart?’

Would smokers complain if a large section of the public, gifted with highly pungent arseholes, spent large portions of their day stinking out the entrances to every mainline station, bus stop, or, in the case of my post yesterday, supermarket? What about people who might enjoy standing in a bus queue making a high pitched whining noise? What about people who might have a passion for hosepipes or water guns? What if every time we walked through town we were suddenly doused with harmless water? What if it was tear gas? What if it was raw sewage?

My examples are ridiculous but no more ridiculous, to my mind, than people burning dried leaves and blowing the smoke into another person’s face. And this brings me to the difference between cyclists exposed to smokers and cyclists exposed to pollution: there is no difference except you don’t choose to be a cyclist so you can expose yourself to car emissions in the same way that you don’t choose to be a non-smoker in order to expose yourself to smoke. We can, however, we can do something about the former in the short term, whilst working to solve the problem of the latter.

And we definitely have the right to do something. It’s true that I could endure them like I’ve endured them for years. Perhaps I’m even making a big thing out of a very petty quibble. But don’t I have as much right to choose to avoid the stench of cigarettes as those people have the right to feed their craving? I’m not saying that I’m any better or worse than they are. I’m just saying that I’m different and I would expect others to respect my choice.

The world’s smallest violin? It’s only small if you perceive it as small.

A Small Town Cyclist Going Green At Tesco

There’s nothing glamorous about being a small town cyclist. There’s no talk about carbon alloy frames, cadence, or even how great my buttocks look in Lycra. I don’t wear Lycra. I cycle in my jeans, wear an old coat, a rucksack and a shabby NY Giant’s baseball cap. I have an old bike with twenty four gears but only sixteen that work. I don’t clean the bike as often as I should yet it can go at a good rate, climb some pretty steep hills, and occasionally overtake some recent convert to cycling dressed as a Wiggins and riding some spank shining new Claude Butler racer.

I’m the sort of cyclist that rarely gets talked about when people talk about cycling. I don’t cycle into cities and I don’t jump red lights or make taxi drivers shout obscenities about the Lib Dems. I don’t ride hundreds of miles a week, though I do cycle a few miles most days. I’m not a cyclist who wears a camera on his head and then gets featured on the BBC news moments before he goes under a cement wagon. I don’t have my articles published as part of the The Times’s 'Cities Fit For Cycling' campaign explaining why cyclists are victimised and how government transport policy is misguided. I think those things and believe The Times’s campaign one of the best things done by a major newspaper in a very long time but I don't live in a city. I also don’t have a bell on my bike and would feel too much of an enthusiast if I wore a helmet.

I’m just a small town cyclist, one of many you might recognise but not really notice. We don’t protest that we want more cycle lanes. We’d be happy if the local council gave us just one. Our concerns tend to be so meagre that they’re not considered newsworthy: less glass on roads, fewer dead hedgehogs by the curb. I’d like my council to leave decent gaps beside speed bumps and people to stop hanging plastic bags filled with dog shit from the trees and bushes along the routes I take. I’d like wide T-junctions to be properly marked for the safety of cyclists who are too often forced to stand in the middle of the road and are liable to be hit by the lazy bastards who confuse Murray Walker with the Highway Code and think they have his permission to clip the apex of every corner.

Most of all, I’d just like a safe place to leave my bike when I’m shopping at my local supermarket. And if this last thing sounds trivial, it’s also this crazy dream that has recently caused me to put in some serious miles on my keyboard.

If Tesco has perhaps unfairly gained a bad reputation for some things, then it’s probably equally true that we don’t give them credit for other things they do so well. Irrespective of what grievances we might have, Tesco’s dominance in the market is a sign that lots of people like the services they provide. I’ve always been of that mind myself. Like they do in many small towns across the country, Tesco own and run our main local supermarket. Even though we do have a small Morrissons, Tesco is where most people do their shopping. It’s ideal for those of us without a car, especially when I can go and pick up most things we need on my bike. I can cycle there three, four or five times a week and keep the cupboards reasonably well stocked.

Yet my local Tesco really hates cyclists or, at least, probably think we’re some kind of inconvenience. I suspect their local management think we’re overly demanding, indicative of a middle class attitude in this staunchly working class town.

At the front of our Tesco, benches line the taxi pick-up point. Most days, the benches are full of customers waiting for their rides and most of these customers are smokers sucking on tar-heavy cigarettes. Dead tabs lie at the feet of these people with their corrugated skin and voices like smashed accordions. And this wouldn’t concern me too much except Tesco, in their wisdom, chose this very same spot to put their bike stands.

Locking my bike usually involves a fair degree of second-hand smoke and my overhearing more than a few grisly tales of medical procedures. I got rid of my old combination lock so I could shave seconds off the time I have to spend listening to these old croaks explaining their last lung op. Packing my bags is the worst part. Ever listened to a lifelong smoker describe the variety of their morning mucus when you’re trying to stuff a loaf into an overfull pannier? It’s rare these days that I get to eat bread that hasn’t been hammered into a bag just so I get away from the gorier details.

If locating the bike stands next to the smokers wasn’t bad enough, Tesco have another way of showing their disdain towards cyclists. They don’t provide adequate cycle stands.

A year ago, my local store had three cycle stands. Three stands meant room for six bikes. That was just about adequate and you’d be unlucky to turn up and find all six slots being used. But then, without apparent reason or explanation, one of the stands disappeared. There was then only room for four bikes and most days it was a fifty/fifty chance if you’d have somewhere to leave your ride.

After the third stand disappeared, complaints were made. My sister was the first person I know to take the bull by the horns and send an email asking if we could have more bike stands. She was told that Tesco themselves agreed that the bike stands were insufficient and that the problem would be addressed at the store upgrade in July. So we waited and when June arrived, just to be certain, she emailed again. Yes, she was told. The bike stands would be improved.

Then it’s July and the store upgrade begins. On Monday, the store upgrade was complete.

I arrived there on Tuesday and discovered that little had changed. The same two inadequate bike stands were still in the same place but a new bench has been situated to the left of the bike stands, providing room for up to four additional smokers. On Tuesday there were only two women sitting there but hawking enough phlegm for four and puffing away between Eastenders gossip. They didn’t move when I tried to put my bike in the stand and they laughed as I cursed when I realised that the bench was about three inches from the stand and the gap too narrow for my wheel.

I hate confrontation and I rarely complain in person about anything. Yet, Tuesday, I found myself standing at the Tesco customer service desk explaining all this to a woman who was wonderful: helpful, polite, and sympathetic. She was exactly the kind of person you think should be working at a customer service desk. I’d nominate her for an MBE if I could.

I explained about the lack of stands. She nodded and noted the problem. ‘And I’m tired of being forced to breathe in second-hand smoke,’ I said. She looked aghast. ‘Then that’s a legitimate complaint right there,’ she said. I felt lifted. My complaint was being taken serious. She thought for a moment and said she’d go see if the person in charge of the upgrade could talk to me. She disappeared for a few minutes. When she came back, she looked deflated. She had a message from the guy in charge. The bike stands weren’t going to be changed. I would have to learn to put up with them. End of story.

I couldn’t have had a more indifferent response. The guy couldn’t even come out and tell me that himself.

The whole thing is now descending into farce. I complained by email and was told I’d get a reply by Wednesday evening. Wednesday evening came and went without hearing anything.

I emailed for an update again yesterday and received an apology but little by way of understanding of the situation. Every time I email, a new person replies. One reply implied that I’d misled them. They said I’d suggested there was only one bike stand when I’d actually said there were two but with only three usable spaces. More emails were exchanged and we are now on amicable terms again but I’m still left waiting to hear if anything will be done.

Yet isn’t this how it always goes? It’s not the customer service people in the middle I’m angry with. It’s the local store who make feel like I’m in the wrong asking them to move their bike stands out of the designated area for smokers and to provide enough stands so I can actually go into their shop and spend the small fortune I spend there every a month on behalf of myself and others.

It’s a typical trivial matter faced by small town cyclists everywhere. There’s no inherent drama in it. You couldn’t interest a newspaper in a story this boring. Yet the green agenda is too often about the huge world changing events: power stations in China and flatulent cattle. The green agenda should really be about quality of life. We shouldn’t pollute because it makes our surroundings unpleasant, not because science is having a high-level debate about consequences. We should be driven as much by common sense as by science.

I live in an area that is routinely listed as one of the UK’s worst areas for quality of life. In 2009, a nearby town, Warrington, was named in a government report as having the worst quality of life in the country. That was news to me. In these parts, Warrington has always been considered a classy place to go, with the best shopping (it has book shops!), a big library, museum, a rugby ground, and even (hold your breath) cycle lanes. If that was the worst place to live, I don’t know what government inspectors had made of my home county of St Helens, which has always been one of those grim examples of northern life.

And that’s why Tesco’s attitude is so galling about the bike stands. It’s these small things that can change the underlying nature of a town and help establish a better ethos and quality of life. Good bike stands encourage more people to cycle. Cycling promotes health. It takes cars off the roads. It encourages people to use the countryside and the council to improve cycle routes. I’ve seen more people cycling this year than I’ve ever seen cycling in my life. It’s probably why there are never enough cycle stands. I’ve even noticed the council making some small changes to help cyclists. In parts of the town, they have even painted whilst bicycles on the floor amid all the crushed glass. It’s almost like cyclists are welcome.

Welcome everywhere, that is, except at Tesco, where going green takes on a quite different meaning when some ancient shrew is blowing smoke in your face and cackling at your through walnut teeth because you didn’t think it funny that she tied her dog to your bike so she could enjoy a quick fag. Most days I’d laugh something like that off. Other days you just see it as symptomatic of a bigger problem that everybody recognises but nobody does anything about.

Luck

This morning, bad luck hounded me. I could smell its feral breath and feel its bloody teeth brush my heels as I tried to stay one step ahead of the snarling beast. You probably know the sort of morning: you get up and drop the soap, put on your t-shirt backwards, pick out odd socks... They are small inconveniences which warn you that some rampaging evil is about to fall into your path. Well, all those things happened to me yet I still thought it would be a good idea to make the bike ride into town I’d had planned.

The problems began when I grabbed my bike and discovered that the back wheel was flat. Deep sigh. Last week some local devil had been spreading two inch nails over the pavements and I’d found one embedded in my tyre. Clearly my repair hadn’t held. I pulled off the tyre and inspected the inner tube only to discover that last week’s patch was fine but there was a patch I’d put on some months ago which had peeled loose. I’d been trying  a new kind of pre-glued patch and it was clear that the heat of the morning sun on the bike had softened the glue. So, off with the old patch, fixed the hole with traditional rubber solution and patch. Tyre back on and inflated. 75psi. Looks good. Off I go...

All way going well for the first fifty yard. That was before there was one almighty explosion. I felt myself jump about half a foot in the air followed by the concussion of a pressure wave that knocked me off my bike, made pedestrians leap for safety into bushes, and red lights flash on some NORAD early warning command console. It became quickly apparent that my back tyre had blown like I’ve never known a tyre to blow.

Chagrined, teeth clenched, ears still ringing, I wheeled my bike home. Some builders working next door were talking about the noise and wondering if they should get on their mobile phones to say goodbye to loved ones. They asked me if I’d heard the explosion. I said it had been my tyre. They laughed, clearly relieved that they weren’t about to enter into a Mad Max scenario in which builders are doomed to roam a world where the skills of the plasterer are not in demand but there pale chubby bodies are. I also laughed like the poor naïve bastard I am…

I pulled off the tyre to find that the inner tube now had a one inch split. Deciding not to risk it again, I grabbed a brand new tube, reassembled my wheel, inflated it, 75psi, but decided that I wanted a coffee before I set off again.

I was sitting with my morning coffee, taking a moment to reflect on my bad luck, when a second explosion rocked the house. This one was even louder than the first. Doors rattled. Birds fell from the sky. I spilled coffee down my shirt. I ran out to discover that the brand new inner tube had gone the way of the last and I knew then that there was something going on that had nothing to do with punctures.

That’s when I found it. The wall of my rear tyre was shredded. This tyre was barely six months old and I’d bought from a proper cycle shop instead of the cheap wheels I usually buy from local supermarket. The weakness in the wall had probably been caused by the first explosion and then caused the second. Perhaps I’d had a pinched inner tube earlier that I hadn’t noticed…

So, now without a tyre and needing a new inner tube, I set off on the long walk into town, spend £20 on a new tyre and inner tubes, did a quick bit of shopping, thought of a few cartoon ideas (a relief since I hadn’t had any in days) before I walked all the way back. Hot and tired, I arrive home and finally repair my bike.

But this story isn’t about tyres. It’s about luck.

Despite my general atheism, my belief in rational things, there’s a part of me that believes that good luck and bad luck often come together. I want to think that we have bad luck so Fate can also gift us with some good.

Imagine my delight, then, when I look at my inbox and discover an email from ‘The Guardian’ asking if they can publish one of my comments in their weekend edition. ‘Great!’ I think. ‘Something I’ve written is actually going to get published! Doesn’t this prove that sometimes bad luck is what you pay in order to get some good luck?’ And it was immediately obvious to me which comment they’d want to use. I’d written 2000 words in the discussion on Frank Lampard’s new book. I was proud of the way I’d defended my position and it had been a genuinely interesting debate. They were obviously going to use some of my scathing one-liners, my well-reasoned defence of author’s rights…

Just to be sure, I checked the link they’d sent to the comment they wanted to publish.

That’s when I had the fourth puncture of my morning. I felt a small hiss as excitement departed my body. My shoulders sank. The comment they’d picked out is possibly the single blandest comment I’ve written in my entire life.

‘Great article and wonderfully written. This is why I read The Guardian.’

Ye gods! Why do you mock me?