Getting my bike nicked was like losing a pet. I didn’t want a new one; I wanted to go back in time and not lose my old one. But, in the end, an inanimate object is not infinitely grievable and I need wheels. This is how I fetched up with a Liv bike, my precious first born putting the seat up for me. I said how proud and heart-filled I was, watching him do a little job that I didn’t want to do myself for the first time, and he said: “I’ve been showing you how to use a remote control since I was six years old,” and I thought: OK, fair, but, more to the point, look at my lovely bike.
Freshly re-enamoured of the world of two wheels, I have plunged straight back into the cycling discourse, the perfect microcosm of the wokeness split in all its forms. Take the ex-footballer Joey Barton, who is being sued by Jeremy Vine for calling the broadcaster a “bike nonce”. Meanwhile, the socials are full of people furiously agreeing that aggressive cyclists pose more danger to them than articulated lorries. The fervent attacks on low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) and low-emission zones such as Ulez in London are really just a full-throttle loathing of people on bikes, aggrandised by acronyms and libertarian bat signals.
