Friday, August 25, 2006

More lies that Capitalism tells

Capitalism's mouth is like a pit of snakes - hissing, writhing and inscrutable.

Among its lies are "I can't believe it's not butter" (shit butter perhaps), "the wealth trickles down" and "I'm a straight kind of guy" but these are as nothing to the greatest mendacity of modern times.

It's like riding a bike - you never forget how.

Oh yes you do - or at least I did.

As a kid I was always riding about, but as I grew older and more attracted to going to gigs and getting funky the old bike began to rot away in the garage next to the half deflated space hopper.

My time as a postie was always eventfulI only discovered I'd forgotten how to ride a bike a few Christmases ago when I took a part time job as a postman. The memory of wobbling erratically around the chilly streets of Colchester laden with a heavy sack of parcels is not one that will be easily forgotten.

I was always last back at the depot, and the whole experience was one of fear and physical exhaustion - primary because of my work relationship with that bloody bike.

When I moved to the city of bikes, Cambridge, I made a small, whispered promise to myself that I would once again cycle. After pavarication and much frowning I eventually did it today and got the old bike out the shed.

I took myself up to Fen Ditton and found a deserted field and got on. Jeez, it was hard work jiggling round that field - I did manage to do something that looked a little like 'riding' but if you added traffic or small children laughing and pointing I'd have been a goner.

I only came close to falling off the once. I found myself steaming towards a bush of stingers and instead of steering away or braking I just stared at it thinking "I'm going in that - eeek!" Eventually I made a controlled crash landing and no one was harmed despite my top speed of, oh, several miles an hour.

I really should learn how to use the brakes - I'm sure they'll come in useful. I'm also ashamed to reveal I could not work out how to turn the light on. Sigh.

But come on bike experts - why have I got two sets of gears? One for front and back wheel? Why would I need to have front in top and back in bottom gear - it makes no sense. Madness. Insanity.

4 comments:

badmatthew said...

Wrong choice: you never forget how to space hop; put the bike back and refleat the hopper!

Jim Jepps said...

I don't know if you've ever seen a thing called monkey dust but there is an institutionalised long term prisoner on it who's released having been in jail since the seventies, dressed in flares, etc and travels on a space hopper.

Anyway he talks in a comedy birmingham accent and it is now inprinted on my mind that if you travel by space hopper you'd have to speak like that - so alas i must keep up the cycling practice.

badmatthew said...

Yes, but think what that space hopper would do to your enemies...

Jim Jepps said...

Good point

I could attach scythes to it like in Ben Hur - squashed, chopped and gored with those horns it had for handles... nasty