In the darkest depths of lockdown, trapped in a subterranean flat in South London, I struck upon an idea: I would buy a bike. I’d had one at university and remembered enjoying the meditative effects of gliding through parks and down streets. It would mean something to do other than fighting over who got to work at the kitchen table or staring mutely at our little telly.
I met the seller in a multi-storey car park in Woolwich. He popped his trunk, revealing a jumble of metal tubing and cables about the size of a suitcase: a foldable Brompton bicycle. As he lugged it onto the concrete floor, Taut explained that he loved the bike but had just bought a super-lightweight, modified Brompton. It was time to part ways. He encouraged me to unfold it as I stared, bewildered, at this miracle of engineering. ‘Open up the handlebar stem first,’ he said, ‘then unclip the seat post and raise it up to your hips’. We got there eventually.
I can’t stop my eyes from flicking over to wherever I’ve left the bike to make sure there isn’t some shifty bloke getting ready to pounce
The Brompton looks like a reconstruction of some ancient ancestor of the bicycle; the compact single bar body, far lower to the ground than any normal bike, the overextended handlebars and of course the silly little wheels. I hopped on and began to pedal as my head filled with images of cycling circus monkeys. After a few laps of the car park, I started to get the hang of it. Go on then, I said to Taut, and transferred him the best part of a month’s wages.
The Brompton is an absurd invention. How they were able to build a bike that can fit into a train luggage compartment I don’t know. The trade-off is that you feel strangely vulnerable balancing on top of it. Most riders get used to it pretty quickly and the benefits are obvious. If you live outside of London, a few miles from the station, you don’t have to spend a tenner a day on commuter parking. Simply fold the thing up, shove it between your legs and unfold it at the other end. It’s excellent, too, for people who like a drink after work. Cycle into work in the morning and in the evening hop on the tube home from the pub. No need to teeter back in the dark. I’ve taken my Brompton in taxis, on buses and aboard cross-country trains.
There are other, less obvious, benefits. Most Brompton’s have hub gearing. I won’t pretend to explain how it works, but it means you can shift gears while stationary. Hit some red lights and you can simply switch down to first gear, much like you would in a car, meaning the bike will shoot off much faster than a standard bicycle can. The clip-on bags at the front are, though expensive, excellent. They attach straight to the body of the bike, so although they look like they’re hanging off the handlebars, you barely feel their weight.
So why have I fallen out of love with my Brompton? Well, I could blame the ridiculously small wheels, which make turning any further than 15 degrees quietly terrifying, for fear the wobbly little things will slip out from under you. Or the fact that, faced with anything other than the most minuscule hill, the gears are unable to match the terrain. But the real reason is that I’m terrified it’s going to get nicked.
There is no way in hell I’m locking up my Brompton, even if I did fork out a hundred quid for a pair of gold standard bike locks. Bromptons are madly conspicuous and any thief worth his salt would gleefully fire up his finest angle grinder the moment he spotted one. So instead I fold it up and lug it with me wherever I go, pleading with friends to keep an eye on it as I potter off to the bar, terrified it’ll disappear and I’ll be cast into penury. Restaurants are horribly awkward. I find myself sweating and pleading with the poor waiter, insisting like some entitled buggy-wielding mother that it needs a spot in the cloakroom or, even better, at the table.
I’ve splashed out on insurance (£15 a month) and still worry that they wouldn’t pay out if it did get stolen. After all, I leave it unlocked and hidden under coats and bags. It’s an inescapable feature of these British-built bikes that they’re extortionately expensive and are only getting more so. Thanks to a global shortage of bike parts, my one has gone up in value by at least a couple of hundred quid. The flip side is that they’re hugely expensive to get serviced. It’s better to find a specialist, which of course means it costs almost twice as much to get it fixed.
The sheer expense of the thing is always on my mind. I can’t stop my eyes from flicking over to wherever I’ve left the bike to make sure there isn’t some shifty bloke getting ready to pounce. Last summer, I got a puncture and was unable to jimmy the tyres off the wheel to change the inner tube, so the bike sat in the corner of my living room for months gathering dust. Rather than carry it off to the bike shop at the end of my road, I got into the habit of using Lime bikes, those green and white electric monstrosities that clog up pavements, which can be rented for a couple of quid. It was a revelation. I could happily zip across London and dump the bike next to some bins without a second thought. It’s a sad realisation to come to but no amount of Brompton engineering can overcome the simple truth: they are horrifically expensive and even more horrifically vulnerable to thieves. So if there are any undaunted millionaires out there, do get in touch. I’ll meet you at the multi-storey car park in Woolwich.
Comments