Great Britain: a name only accented correctly by either a stiff upper lipped, handlebar moustachioed flying ace from 1944, or The Queen. A name evocative of motor cars handbuilt with the natural understatement of lashings of cowhide and burr walnut; of green liveried steam engines with red pinstriping; of complex machines controlled only by rods and levers and valves; of a land where everything stops for tea. I'm British, and therefore I crave disappointment. Far be it for a train to arrive or depart exactly on time, like the trains in Japan do to the millisecond. For the fact that we, the British, invented train travel two hundred years ago in a land of hills and consequently have no geography-be-damned racetracks, the challenge to surmount the Cheviots, the Pennines, Exmoor, the Lake District, is such that control of time is at best limited by human experience. British trains should not run on time: it isn't wrong, but we just don't do it. And there is a legend, however unqualified, that during those fateful two and a half hours in April, 1912, in the ensuing scatter of organisation, disproportionately fewer British passengers were rescued than American passengers because we queued politely to board the lifeboats.
Britain does not have icebergs, nor does it have seasons; it only has weather, in the sense of outbreaks of sunshine turning to scattered showers in the southwest, heading north, temperatures dipping down to freezing and rain turning to snow on higher ground. Drifting is likely in exposed areas with snow lying elsewhere but dying out eventually, heavy showers expected in the west and hail to the north, turning to sunny spells for a time but staying overcast in most places, ten degrees (50 Fahrenheit) across most areas, reaching 25 degrees (77 Fahrenheit) in the south -- warm for the time of year. That is the weather forecast for the year ahead, but equally it could be tomorrow's forecast.
Despite this, they've worked out that statistically the average British commuter cyclist will be rained on just twelve times a year. Although my records began in 2001, no notes were ever taken with a view to proving or disproving this theory, but a back of a fag packet calculation suggests it's not far from the truth. Of course, a proper British bicycle has to be designed for more than 12 hours of rain a year. That's why hot-dang Sram hub gears stop working with their oil and grease gradually turning to inky black salt while Sturmey-Archers, being made of sterner stuff, keep going. It is entirely possible to use a dérailleur geared bicycle year-round, as long as one keeps one eye on the jockey wheels, one eye on the parallelogram pivots and one eye on the cables, but technology can help. The eponymous Scottoiler, invented by a Scot called Fraser Scott, has its beginnings in the grimy M6 motorway between Manchester and the Weege, saving the lives of many a motorbike chain. One of its derivatives lives onboard Annie the Blue Bike, which when coupled with spiky tyres becomes my snowbound winter transport. Too many people, mostly those with carbon fibre road bikes I think, scoff at having a little dispensing device on their bike instead of just carrying a bottle of Triflow. I think it's rather better because it's self-contained and puts the lube exactly where it's needed whenever it's needed. Some say it's nothing more than chainsaw oil, and I couldn't comment with any certainty, but it's a device that is suited perfectly to weather where it rains in the morning, washing your chain clean, only for the sun to come out at lunchtime and bake it dry, or when you're ploughing through slush and grit and you just know that it can't be good for your bike. Hub gears with their innards hiding away are ideally suited to British weather. So suited, in fact, that for some reason none of my bikes has one.
My brash American upstart of vélo origami, known more fondly as the Little Dahon, hasn't weathered the weather quite as well as one would wish. Its back wheel went bang one winter when a single spoke, one of 16 strung so tightly their voices bordered on ultrasound, let go, the salt of the roads having set in the rot in the cavity of the rim drilling. Its rear dérailleur, itself a product of a company which when only two years old sued the mighty Shimano and won, reacted equally badly to salt ingress. Of course, some time and some careful workshoppery solved those issues. But most of all, while indeed a brilliantly lightweight machine for handling both the zipping around from home to railway station to workplace and car booting for assorted trips, its original purpose of accumulating mileage has been taken up by its recumbent siblings. For an almost car-free (and to all intents and purposes, also motorbike-free) owner, foldingness is becoming important, and three bicycles must come to the fore: Dr David Hon's beautiful Dahon Curl, Jon Whyte's mechanical Mezzo, and Andrew Ritchie's resolutely British -- nay, English -- hub geared Brompton. The Curl, notwithstanding occasional forays into Taipei bicycle shows, maintains an almost mythical status that has bettered even that of Philip Brook's Canadian GoBike. The Mezzo, coming from the man who for a brief year was the star XC mountain bike designer, promised a future of gunmetal grey angularity and clever frame design and somehow delivered an uninspiring whole. And yet the Brompton bicycle, first brought into being more than 30 years ago and refined ever since to a refined audience by an uncompromising engineer who crafted the ultimate compromise, still ranks at the top of smallness and convenience. You may have any colour you like for free, as long as it's black. Or black with red bits. That the most recognisably national edition, painted in dark green, is a custom colour currently asking of you up to 50 of Her Majesty's British Pounds is to me a singular mistake. One can only assume that Ritchie was not an ardent international motorsport enthusiast, or that quite simply black paint was more readily available in the early days on which tradition must be based.
I am not, as you will be patently aware, a Brompton owner, but this was supposed to change at the turn of this year. I was looking forward to it greatly in fact, for I had my red, white and blue Union Flag sticker poised and waiting to be applied; I had everything mentally planned for rail journeys free from mucking about with bicycle bookings; and like Juliane Neuß, Harry Bickerton and countless engineers before them, I had a series of ideas to improve upon something that was good but not quite good enough. My Speedy, another bastion of British cycle industry (in the loosest senses, admittedly) had gone to live with a recumbent dealer, and everything was set. All I had to do was wait for my brand new little Brompton to arrive. Like a proper British citizen, I had patiently waited eight, then twelve, then sixteen weeks, calling in for occasional updates and being assurred that all was well and forthcoming. And then came the call. The problem was, it seemed, that the shop with whom I had placed the order -- and henceforth the custodian of Speedy -- found itself quite suddenly cast adrift from London's folding bike maker, and there wasn't a bike with my name on it.
A bit of telephoning around revealed that not only was there not a bike with my name on it, there wasn't even a pile of parts in the factory with my name on it. But I could have my Speedy back if I wanted, or have the shop sell it for me. A number of e-mails plied the information superhighway, in one direction only it transpired, and a lot of telephoning around to Government organisations and much studying of sales legislation revealed that I had a case, but somewhat frustratingly not much of one. I picked up the telephone again. I sent more e-mails, and I waited. Days passed. Since my efforts weren't being reciprocated for whatever reason, I picked up the telephone yet again. More e-mails circulated, this time with more success.
Twenty-three weeks -- nearly half a year -- from my original order, the big yellow and silver cheetah has made its way back to the tall athletic girl who seven years ago looked kindly upon it, tended to its front paws and made its insides all better. Unfortunately, while Annie might have been missing its low-slung friend, Tabitha and Victoria have no such qualms, and they were quite looking forward to meeting their new British stablemate.
But the cat came back, it just couldn't stay away.
