Dad's bike free week (but still the stories flow)!

Monday 19th – Friday 23rd March

No bike this week, for 3 reasons
Busy at work so can’t afford the extra time it takes to cycle to and from work, get showered etc.
Snow on Monday, so wintry weather not very enticing.
Matthew, who usually has the car for school, and consequently gives a lift to 2 other lads from the village the 6 miles to North Halifax, is on a Geography field trip Tuesday to Thursday. So I use the car to do the school run, continuing in to work.

Further shock news, regarding Sheldon Brown, whom, apropos of nothing, I decided to name-check in last week’s blog. The man has begun to develop symptoms which are very akin to MS (although he has three neurologists baffled). This is all very ironic, as we are doing our charity cycle ride in aid of the MS Society.

Reading his journal (www.sheldonbrown.org/journal/health) I was immediately struck by the similarity between what he is having to endure, and the sort of problems which afflicted my father as he slowly succumbed to this debilitating disease.

In more optimistic times, my father had bought a 1956 model Raleigh gentleman’s roadster, with the 3-speed Sturmey Archer, Brooks saddle, rod brakes, full chainguard and chrome plated all over. I particularly remember the chrome ‘bullet’ on the crest of the front mudguard. “Raleigh – the all steel bicycle” was the strapline in those days. I used to wonder how this could be true, since such things as the tyres were obviously made of rubber. I suppose the Trades Descriptions Act put paid to that. Anyway, nowadays they wouldn’t wish to make such a claim, because the “All Alloy bicycle” or the “All Titanium bicycle” or the “All Carbon fibre bicycle” might be more appealing.

Back to my dad. We lived on a post war council estate in Longbenton, and he had a job at the Ministry of National Insurance just up the road. Every day he would return from work on the bike, and I would run up the road to meet him. He would be wearing his working clothes of sports jacket and cavalry twill trousers (or maybe a two piece suit – not sure of the details). It was only a short commute, and the chainguard ensured clothes remained clean, although bicycle clips were also de rigeur - cotter pins could do a bit of damage to trouser legs. Of course it never rained in those days, but if it did, a cycle cape could be worn, and by keeping the speed down, everything under the cape stayed dry. A trilby would have probably kept the hair dry. This is me at the age of 4. He would pick me up, and plonk me on the crossbar, clinging anxiously to the centre section of the handlebars (me, not dad). Then we would set off the couple of hundred yards to the block on which we lived. My first taste of the exhilaration of cycling (not to mention the pain of sitting on something hard).

That bike, and Dad, are long gone. But I still have the handbook with the date, and the stamp of Halfords in Newcastle, where he bought it. Which brings us back to the modern day equivalent, which I’m now using for my all-weather commute. This is the Carrera Subway 8, with the Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub gear. Similar colour (dark grey), aluminium frame, hub brakes, and not a piece of chrome in sight. And bought from Halfords, too. Nearly 50 years separate them. Like me and my Dad, bearing a family resemblance, but different in so many ways.