Death of a Bicycle

My bike died today. Okay so I'm exaggerating a bit, the tyres are flat. The little bit of breath left in them hissed itself out into the ether as I rode into Headington to buy food. If I had realized it was on its last wheels I would have walked but I didn't (realize, or walk) and so I had a very strugglesome journey there and an infuriatingly slow and tragic journey back home. It is very strange cycling a bike with flat tyres, it is as if you are the weakest person ever, you apply all your energy and the bike moves less than a meter at about 1mph. One full circle of push on the pedals and you feel like you're in the gym attempting to use some crazy contraption that a huge muscley guy has fiddled with and set to the most horrendous gear known to man. At first I thought it was me being unfit but logic interveened-I last cycled two weeks ago, surely a fortnight of bicycle neglect wouldn't reduce my legs to useless, withered lengths of skin and bone. So I checked the tyres, yep they were squidgy, and squidgy tyres are not good, they are totally rubbish actually. I didn't discover the squidginess until I had cycled too far to turn back so I went food shopping knowing I had to walk my bike back. There is nothing worse than walking with a bike. It is sooooo annoying, the whole idea of having a bike is to speed up your journey, but mine was slowing me down, it was holding me back, aghhhh the stupid piece of scrap, the hunk of junk, I have grown tired of its tyreless ways. I would have kicked it but I was too loaded up with shopping and I didn't want to break my eggs.

On the upside I did go charity shop shopping and found three Douglas Coupland books in Oxfam which is pretty good.




Right, off to see Ellie and Ben's rabbits Floss and Fidel (they get lonely when Ellie and Ben are away) And Ellie-I shall bring back your hoover I promise.

Now that my bike is dead I shall start using the old Penny Farthing again, trusty old fellow, but murder to get on and off, and there isn't any way of fitting a bicycle helmet over the old top hat so a bit on the risky side if you ask me, but spanking great fun I tell you. Toodlepip.