I learned how to ride my bike last year during the tube strike. I mean, OK, I knew how to ride a bike but I had never dreamed of actually riding it in to Central London - riding it further than the park or the Sainsbury’s - until it was not possible for me to get to work any other way.
I climbed on Sebastina (my bicycle) that morning with fear and pedaled with timidity towards EC1, and by the time I was at the Old Street roundabout I was hysterical, but without any choice in the matter: I had to carry on. I was surrounded by a thick pack of other cyclists - a clowder even - many of whom, like me, were attempting this particular challenge for the first time. Sort of like a roller derby on bicycles; Mad Max as re-interpreted by Guardian readers.
And then, just as we were coming up the crest of the small hill on Clerkenwell Road where it intersects with Farringdon Road, a man in a suit that was far too nice to be cycling in, on a bike that clearly had been living on the wall of a garage for many years until it was disturbed that morning, creaked past me. And just at that moment, his bike fell to pieces in the middle of the road - just disintegrated in a crash and a clatter of parts. And he just stood there, astride a seat that was attached to a frame that no longer had wheels.
And no one stopped to help him. Obviously.
