The fifties, part 2: the bike, part 1

1952.  My father had started to become disappointed in me by then, because I wasn’t becoming him.  It took years for me to escape from that double bind and accept that actually, I was.  So when he tried to teach me something, I automatically refused to learn it, until I was left on my own, when I determinedly taught myself.  

I remember very clearly the afternoon – it must have been during the summer holidays when I was between schools – when I got the old bike out, worked out how to balance (don’t stop), and by the time he came home was proudly doing daring circuits of the back lawn at 3 Stourwood Road.  I don’t know where that bike came from – it was a very heavy black thing - but then, for my twelfth birthday, I was given a proper one, or at least my parents’ notion of proper. There was some subterfuge which somehow meant I had to go down to the garden shed, there to be unveiled this gorgeous Raleigh, in a colour I’d now call magenta but then saw as very displayable red.

It wasn’t, of course, my dreambike.  That would have entailed full drop bars, alloy rims, 10-speed Derailleur gears, many other features I can’t remember:  all mounted on a Claud Butler racing frame with, crucially, cutaway lugs.  These latter were supposedly designed to reduce weight, which was obviously ridiculous – they were an early manifestation of teenage designer bling, and hence heavenly. Ian Kitchen had all of that, but I didn’t.  My bike had semi-drops, chrome-plated rims which rusted if not oiled weekly, a sprung saddle, three-speed Sturmey-Archer, old lady mudguards and, most dreadfully, a chain guard, in matching colour trim!  But it was still near enough to the top of the local game, and I loved it.