Doppler Read Free Page B

off again. The pavement is a bit higher than normal just there and not only that there’s a slight incline, it’s a bit risky, and sometimes I land with both wheels wedged between the tramlines. It’s showy, but I don’t make a big song and dance about it. Whoever sees it, sees it. Perhaps some of them might be inspired to buy a bike. The thought of that is reward enough. I feed off that for the rest of the day while cycling to the next hurdle, which is the Bislet roundabout where I’ve also got a consummate technique that occupational drivers dislike and which may not be entirely legal. But as a cyclist you’re forced to be an outlaw. You’re forced to live on the wild side of society and at odds with established traffic conventions which are increasingly focussed on motorised traffic, even for healthy people. Cyclists are an oppressed breed, we are a silent minority, our hunting grounds are diminishing all the time and we’re being forced into patterns of behaviour which aren’t natural to us, we can’t speak our own language, we’re being forced underground. But be warned because this injustice is so obvious, and it cannot surprise anyone that anger and aggression are accumulating in cyclists and that one fine day, when non-cyclists have become so fat that they can hardly manoeuvre themselves in and out of their cars, we will strike back with all our might and main.
    I am a cyclist. And I’m a husband and a father and a son and an employee. And a house owner. And lots of other things. We are so many things.
    Well, I was out cycling. This spring.  And then I fell. Quite badly. As you know, the path goes downhill into the forest. And the margins are often small. I had left a kind of path and found myself in the heather on my way down a gentle slope when the front wheel got stuck between two rocks. I flew over the handlebars and hit my hip on a root and the bike landed on my head as well. I was knocked flat. At first it hurt like hell. I couldn’t move. I just lay still, looking up at some branches swaying in the breeze. And for the first time in several years everything was so quiet. Once the worst of the pains had subsided I experienced a blissful peace. There was only forest around me. The usual mixture of all types of complex feelings and thoughts and duties and plans was gone. Suddenly there was just forest. And I didn’t have any of the enervating children’s songs on my brain. Which I usually had. The songs that accompany the films my son and his chums watch on DVD. They’re so insistent, so insidious. And they sit so heavily on my central nervous system. When I fell they’d been buzzing round my brain for months. They had been tormenting me for the whole winter. When I was at work, in my free time and when my father died. I considered seeking help because of it. Pingu, for example. This German-produced video-penguin that my son loves. Baa, baa, bababa, baa, baa, bababa, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baba, baaa, ba, ba, baa, BAAA! It could churn round my head for days on end. From when I opened my eyes in the morning until I went to sleep at night. When I was having a shower, having lunch, cycling to work, at meetings, cycling home again, shopping for tea, fetching the kid from the nursery school, and so on and so on. It was Pingu morning, noon and night. And on other days it was Bob the builder. For crying out loud. Booob the builder, can we fix it? Yes we can! Boom, boom, boomboomboomBOOOM! Or the Teletubbies. Horror of horrors. These, pardon my language, bloody quasi-cuddly figures which apparently were devised by a British psychologist to satisfy small children’s curiosity and hidden needs. It grooves like crazy if you’re two years old, but drives all the rest of us up the wall. Tinky Winky! Dipsy! La La! Po! Teletubbies. Teletubbies. Say HE-LLO! You feel like shoving them through a compost grinder. And Thomas the Tank Engine. Well, OK. Perhaps not so bad. At least not the first fifty to sixty