On your bike

It's been, in a meandering sense, a productive day. I took my old boneshaker into Halfords (a car and bike stuff supermarket) for a service before going for a painful 60 lengths. I've tried to arrange Euro for my long weekend in Germany, and failed, and still need to look at places to store books. I mean, places to live.

There are two excellent bike shops in Wolverhampton, into which it's a geek pleasure to venture.

But. My main bike is a Viscount Apollo tourer. It's at least tenth-hand and is probably thirty years old, but was apparently a very decent cheap racer, despite the Death Forks, which I need to check. The two proper bike shops would laugh in my face. I love all the gear associated with proper cycling, and dream of owning a new Moulton NS Double Pylon (pictured below), but I wouldn't do it justice, and can't afford it anyway.

Going into a bike shop is like going to a record shop - you have to run the gauntlet either of sneery, superior gits who see your choice of bike/record as emblematic of your invertebrate status, or of pitying experts. My bike, bank balance and ego aren't up to it. And so I crawl off to unjudgemental Halfords, where they take my money and don't pass judgement.

Also, the main posh bike shop is manned by a guy with a goatee, baseball cap and facial piercings who addresses me as 'buddy', though we aren't acquainted. The man at Halfords, of similar age, talked knowledgeably in a genuinely friendly fashion without resorting to the trappings of false bonhomie, and for that, he wins my respect.