47. re cycling
Most students in Oxford had a bike.
I needed one for the last three terms, the long journeys up the hill to the house in Headington.
But I did without one for the first two years. Oxford was small enough to walk around - and I've never liked bicycles much.
There's always someone saying you should use one in London. Keeps you fit and doesn't cost anything: no need to pay for tubes and buses. But I kept fit by jogging, the gym, and walking everywhere - and bikes make the weather worse. If it's hot, you get hotter. If it's cold, you freeze to death. When it rains, your thighs get soaked as well as everything else, and wet thighs never dry. In any weather, you sweat all over. I've never understood the benefits. Plus you reach a certain age and stop paying for public transport!
Besides, I wasn't much good on a bike.
I eventually cycled to my grammar school so the four bus fares a day could become my pocket money, and I did a bit at the evil boarding school, which was out in the sticks. But whereas other boys were always bombing round to the gravel pits for swimming or into town, I hardly ever bothered. One day I cycled from the school to my dad's house in Reading, about forty miles, which was fine on the way there but took hours coming back because I was knackered.
I never really had the leg strength for cycling. Odd in a way, because I did all the sports at school. Not just rugby, football, and tennis but events that specify some leg muscle: I won the junior high jump and senior triple jump, finished second in long jump and 200 metres, and helped win the sprint relay and road relay.
But I was never very good at these events. And I've always believed you put your bike strength into your legs early or not at all. As a scientific theory, I doubt it holds any water, but that's how it was with me. My mum and dad didn't cycle, so I was never encouraged. Same with swimming.
My son's the opposite. He learned very early and started riding hills like Pantani. At kindergarten, they entered him in the bike race on sports day. With stabilisers, we presumed. No, they told us he could ride a proper bike, a two-wheeler. We had no idea. He was three years old. He won that race, the first one he ever entered, by twenty yards. Loves the water, too.
But me I didn't learn to cycle or swim until I was eleven. And even then it was only the family honour that got me up on two wheels.
*
Italy 1966 was a glorious time. Six weeks of sunshine, I'd just passed my 11-plus, and I watched England win the World Cup in a bar that's still there. I also learned to ride a bike.
My cousins on the farm were horrified that I couldn't at my age, so they made me. They stuck me on a bone-shaker that seemed six feet high and held the saddle while I pedalled across the farmyard. One day I'm pedalling, and I look behind me, and there's no-one there. I promptly fall off. But from that moment, I cycled all over those country roads. It helped that they were pretty empty in those days, so I wasn't bothered by traffic. Some of them were no more than dirt tracks.
I still fell off, once when an army lorry caught me in its slipstream (I remember the conscripts remonstrating from the back), another time when I wobbled into a roadside ditch and tried to save myself by grabbing what I thought were lianas, and the thorns shredded my palms.
Back in Reading, I cycled to school but I was never very comfortable with it. I didn't try wheelies or jump off ramps. My fearless friends would bomb down hills in Caversham without touching their brakes, swerving past cars that pulled out of side streets. That's a death wish, the mad sods, so I used to follow at my own pace, squeezing the back brake.
But one day, and one day only, I let go.
*
In 1990, Bernie the bass player was about to leave Oxford after twenty years to go back to Yorkshire with his wife and young daughter. I set off from Reading to say goodbye.
I'd borrowed a bicycle by then. Can't remember who from, maybe my brother again. I used it to go birding in a country park called Dinton Pastures. My bird logbook (yes I keep those) claimed I was 'Getting good at cycling!'. But in later years I took the bus there.
Here in 1990, I didn't want to spend money on trains or buses to Oxford, so I used the bike. I thought of this as a repeat of the ride between my dad's house and the dreaded boarding school. All these years later, my legs were stronger, so the trip was no problem physically. But it confirmed why I was never much of a cyclist: I don't see the attraction in speed.
I was a teenager when they built a new road from Reading to Oxford, to take pressure off the only other one, along Oxford Road. Reading named a lot of roads after the place at the other end: Tilehurst, Basingstoke, Wokingham, Henley, Bath, London. Proof that people want to get out of there! There's also a Reading Road, for people who can't face leaving.
This new highway to Oxford went up Caversham Heights and through some woods, then started a long descent onto a level stretch. I told myself to leave the brakes alone all the way, until the flat part slowed me down naturally.
That was one of the hardest things I ever did.
I had no excuse for touching the brakes. I could see for miles, and the road was straight and empty, with no others coming in from the side. So a man's gotta do.
I didn't use the brakes, and I wasn't too nervous. But I can't say I enjoyed the sense of speed or vulnerability. How thin the wheels looked at that velocity. How one mistake or bump in the surface can grate the skin off your limbs - or worse, since you're not wearing a helmet. When the road eventually flattened out, I was glad to use pedals again. The whole thing lasted maybe a mile and only a couple of minutes, but I never did anything like that again. And I had to climb that hill on the way back.
It was the last time I saw Bernard Cook for thirty years, after being close friends for so long. He agrees it was his fault, the fool. When we finally met up again, I took the train.
*
For my last year at Oxford, I borrowed a bicycle back from my brother. A friend of my dad's gave it to me just before I went to the boarding school, a heavy red thing which looked like a racing bike: drop handlebars (the bane of any normal cyclist) and five gears.
Like everyone else at Worcester College, I'd chain it to the railings at the front. Going downhill from Headington was fine, of course, but the way back was always a slog.
There were various routes up onto the Slade. I avoided the main steep hill to Headington, and I'd use Cowley Road if I'd just been to Bernie's. One night, two in the morning, I'm at a crossroads with just a policeman for company, on the other side of the road. No idea what he was doing there, maybe hoping to catch lone students jumping a red light. Even though there was no-one else in sight, I didn't move till they turned green. Everyone knew what Thames Valley police were like.
I still walked most of the time (if I'd been cycling, I'd never have met the First Lady in the street). You usually had to be several places every day, and there wasn't always somewhere safe to leave your vehicle.
Oxford had various places selling secondhand bikes, and I doubt they were particular about how they rebuilt their stock. Bicycle thieves abounded. I kept them at bay till almost my last day - then I left it outside a public toilet off the High Street. I was in there only two minutes. Paid my brother compensation, but I've always wondered if he suspected I sold it...!
Since that 1990 trip, I've cycled only twice, brief outings to the shops in Bristol (with Pat Slade's wife) and Italy. In 2020, I tried my own wife's bike to accompany our kid to his circuit in the woods, but it was too small for me, so I walked. It's what humans are good at.