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I started cycling by accident. Living in central London I’d vaguely toyed with the idea for years but never did anything about it. It wasn’t the traffic that put me off, a few years of riding a motorcycle had left me super-aware of road users around me. Then a generous massage client gave me an old electric bike, one of the originals, as they upgraded to a newer and lighter model.
It was a monster. Weighed a ton even without the hefty battery pack. But oh how quickly I fell in love with zooming around the backstreets, finding the quiet routes. So I was eased into the pleasure of navigating around London without using the Underground on a power-assisted machine that required little physical effort. So I began to load her up. Cheap but capacious panniers acquired, a variety of elastic bungees in different lengths, thicknesses and hook configurations meant I could carry just about anything I wanted.
I was told she was at the end of her life but with not much intervention she lasted for more than seven years. She took me to work on Hampstead Heath, the London Wetland Centre, a community garden in Islington, to Whittington Park and Hyde Park. And then one evening she finally came to a grinding, grating screeching halt as the gears and motor finally gave up.
By this time I was much fitter after years working outdoors and made the leap to a regular bike. One that would be entirely powered by my legs. Most people do it the other way round. Not wanting anything fancy I opted for a cheap, all the extras, hybrid from Decathlon. I would join the B’twin gang, owners of the own-brand bikes. Not a road bike, she lacked the superlight frame and narrow speedy tyres. Not an off-road bike, no suspension, no fat knobbly tyres. But something in between. And I fell in love all over again. And I began to load her up.
Matilda
I’ve started dressmaking again. Rummaging through the boxes and bags of stashed fabric is room to find forgotten yardage. It’s lockdown and there’s time to think and no visitors to necessitate the clearing up of a floor covered in pattern bits and discarded bits of thread.
Only problem is my size. The last time I was actively sewing was before the middle aged droop, bulge and spread. My patterns will produce clothes that are, well, a bit snug. I need to adapt them, to change the figure hugging and thigh skimming to a more comfortable capacity and decorous length. I need a dressmaker’s dummy on which to model my creations.
Half an hour on eBay and I’ve found what I want. An ‘antique’, fully adjustable dummy, missing its stand and going for a song. ‘Antique’! Made about five years before I was born. Am I antique? I put in my bid (low) and don’t expect to be successful. But I am and three days later become the proud new owner. Only problem is I now have to collect her. In lockdown. Rules are relaxed but she’s just outside London and I will need to use public transport for at least part of the journey.
Guiltily I book a train ticket. It’s only one stop from Marylebone Station so I don’t feel too bad. It is a transgression but I’ll be as careful as I can. The following Saturday morning, avoiding any possibility of meeting the still much reduced commuter traffic, I cycle to the station. Masked, I follow the one way system through the practically deserted concourse. A pigeon is also following the yellow arrowed floor stickers and it increases its pace as I step in line, its beak rapidly stabbing to indicate our forward route. Spooked by my encroaching steps it lifts off with a whistling beat of wings, rising into the rafters.
I heft my bike up the step onto the train. There’s only one other person in the carriage, far down the other end. I relax and less than 20 minutes later arrive at Gerard’s Cross. The exit is on the other side of the station and I’m glad to find there’s a lift to take me and bike up to the walkway.
I’m now in prime commuter belt, at the start of the rolling and beautiful Chiltern Hills. I cycle through the leafy streets of Gerard’s Cross, large detached family homes with generous gardens on either side, each driveway home to a clutch of prestige cars. Tanned dog walkers are out wearing high end casual. I see a cockerpoo, a King Charles spaniel and a chocolate labrador, then a brace of fluffy white little things.
I wind my way to Chalfont St Peter, puffing uphill and free-wheeling down. Past a common, through some woodland. It’s sunny and pretty and farther from home than I’ve been for months. The last stretch is a steep downhill and I whizz along for half a kilometre, effortlessly making progress, straight past my destination. Realising, I back up, lock my bike to a lamp post on the market square – not a bicycle parking place in sight – and walk the few metres back up the hill.
Two men are up ladders, painting the outside of the little clothes shop that I discover is the address I’m looking for.
“Is this number two?” I ask.
“Ah, you’ve come for the mannequin?”
I discover they’ve decided to modernise and redecorate before lockdown lifts and they can reopen. The antique dummy will be out of place in the new decor. They ask if I need help carrying her to my car and look shocked when I explain my journey and method of transport. I reassure them saying I’m quite used to unusual cargo and have come prepared.
I wrap my arm around the dummy’s shapely waist, hoist her under my arm and head back to the bike. There’s an elderly couple sitting on a bench in the square, waiting their turn in the queue for the bakery. They watch as I take a number of different sized elastic bungees out of a pannier and lay my purchase across the bike’s carrier. We chat and I again recount my journey, to the same rather incredulous response. Am I really so crazy? Having grown up in Zimbabwe where bicycles transport everything from firewood and families to market stalls and mattresses mine seems a modest load.
I strap her on, around the waist and diagonally, shoulder to hip both sides. Instead of a head she has a nicely turned black wooden handle protruding from her neck. She’s in really good condition, unmarked original covering and all wheels, screws and bolts for adjusting to different shapes and sizes in good working order. I’m very happy. She does protrude a bit either side so I attach bits of an orange bin liner to both ends, marking my extra width and abnormal load.
I walk back up the hill before mounting, not wanting the extra exertion of cycling up such a steep incline. Then I’m off, the journey in reverse as I head home, a headless torso trailing streamers of orange strapped to the back of my bike.
The trip home was largely uneventful once we’d bumped down two flights of stairs at the station after discovering there was only a lift on the northbound platform. Once we’d negotiated the much narrower doors on the homeward train.
She’s home now and adjusted to my more generous proportions. Oh, and her name is Matilda.
Coco
I work at the education centre in Hyde Park and during late spring every year a few members of the public ring our bell asking what to do with ‘abandoned’ baby birds they have found in the park. Usually these are fledglings, not abandoned at all, but newly fledged and still being tended by adults. We walk back with the well meaning rescuers and replace the little birds where they were found explaining how birds are raised.
But one year a frantic woman rang the bell and said she didn’t know what to do because she had found a duckling in her Kensington garage. She was carrying a large and glossy Chanel shopping bag and scrabbling about in the bottom was a tiny mallard duckling peeping loudly. It must have been left behind as Mum and the rest of her brood headed for the Serpentine, Hyde Park’s lake, from their nest site. Many breeds of duck will nest a considerable distance from water and move their precocial offspring in procession to water once they are all hatched.
It was a feisty little thing but dehydrated and needing food. We smuggled it into the office (not allowed), found a box to house it and googled “what to feed a mallard duckling”. Oats were picked out of someone’s breakfast muesli and a small bowl of water placed in the box. Immediately walked through and knocked over. We tried to keep it quiet and calm but of course everyone wanted a glimpse of our visitor and soon the office ‘secret’ was secret to only a very few!
And then the discussions began on who would take it home for the night. A bus or tube journey seemed one step too far after its already stressful day. So guess who took it home? I lived closest, could put the box in a pannier and carefully cycle home. Or that was the plan. Coco (already named after his/her delivery method) had other ideas. As soon as I started cycling the peeping became louder and panicked.
This was not going to work. I lifted the box out of the pannier and quietly talked through the holes in the lid. The cheeping becomes less frantic almost immediately but didn’t stop. Now I was walking through the park with the box tucked under one arm talking to an invisible duckling and trying to wheel my bike with one hand. I couldn’t get all the way home like this even though it’s less than two miles. Negotiating irritated pavement traffic annoyed by a bike in their space would be impossible. I was already attracting some strange looks.
There must be a solution. A basket! I don’t have one on the front of my bike as my capacious panniers have always been enough. A basket would allow Coco to have some light, see what was going on around it and I could talk to it in front of me. There was a bike shop nearby and I decided to cycle there quickly. I put the box back in the pannier and headed up Oxford Street, as fast as possible while trying to avoid every bump, drainage grille and manhole cover and watching out for buses. The stressed calls became louder and more insistent. I felt awful. Would it survive this trauma? Was I doing the right thing. I was talking to it loudly as I couldn’t turn round. My heart was pounding, I was sweating and panicky not from exertion but from worry and anxiety about the little scrap I was carrying.
I reached the shop and thankfully wheeled my bike inside – there’s a customers’ parking area. Approaching the counter, I explained my predicament and fielded the amused and intrigued questions of the assistant. Yes, we have one left, he said. But it’s ex-display and the attachment bracket is missing. Relief quickly followed by disappointment. But he was sympathetic and helpful and offered to call another bike shop nearby where his mate worked. A bracket was located.
I paid for the basket and wishfully asked if I could leave the duckling in the shop while I nipped down the road to collect the bracket. I couldn’t, understandably I suppose. So we headed back outside and I managed a dangerous and wobbly cycle to the other shop with the box under my arm. Coco was much happier with this arrangement.
They were waiting for me at the door, two assistants expecting the mad, sweaty lady with a loud duckling in a box. One of them offered to fit the bracket for me and I accepted with relief. I went inside to pay and put the box on the counter. And instantly Coco was running like lightning over the counter display. Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch over the energy bars, tripping through the wrist sweat bands, a poo on the tissue packet display, evading every grab of my flailing arms and hands as I desperately tried to halt its steady progress towards the gaping hole of the open door.
The string securing the lid must have slipped while the box was under my arm and as soon I put it down Coco had escaped. The tiny bundle of fluffy down reached the end of the counter and flung itself off. But before it reached the floor miraculously I caught it. Its beating heart thrummed in my cupped hands but the frantic cheeping calms and it soon stops struggling. I was close to tears and desperate to get home.
The basket worked. I put my work hoody in the bottom and Coco spent the final leg of the trip home snuggled down but able to see out through the mesh of the basket. My shopping bag securely covered the top, fastened by much string. There is always string in my panniers and it is often needed.
And this was how we travelled for the next week. Coco in the basket on the way to work in the morning and again in the evening on the way home. The little thing grew rapidly but hated being alone. I initially tried to keep it in the bathroom as the mess from feeding and out the other end was prodigious for such a scrap. But Coco was not happy with that arrangement. Soon he/she had the run of my little flat and I resigned myself to cleaning up in its wake. It was clear who was boss.
I learned that the cutest sound in the world was miniature webbed feet slapping on linoleum as it ran across the kitchen floor. I learned that a warm spot was needed for preening and marvelled at Coco’s mountaineering skills climbing to the top of the sofa for the morning sun, crop full after breakfast. And I learned that a duckling needs other ducklings.
One morning , instead of being snuggled into the stuffed toys and hotwater bottle, Coco was cuddling up to the cold mirror and her own reflection. I’d been told to provide a mirror so that she could identify with her own species. This was not right, she needed other ducks no matter how much I loved caring for her. With the help of the Royal Parks wildlife officer, I located a rescue centre. And the next day after work we took our last journey together on my bicycle.
I left her in a warmed pen with nine other ducklings whose mother had been killed by a car. They would all remain there together until old enough to fend for themselves and then transfer to a swan sanctuary outside London. It was hard to say goodbye.
This tiny little creature had become the centre of my world for a week. I’d fretted and worried about what I fed it, if it was warm enough, was it too hot, did it need more food, less food. And it had fallen asleep on my shoulder. Stood on my feet while I cooked in the kitchen, it’s little flippers cold and restless. Poo-ed everywhere. Impressively flicked food and water half way up the walls in the bathroom. Ran around and climbed and peeped and cheeped. Sat in the basket on front of my bike, looked around cheeping and delighting other cyclists.
And stolen my heart.
Wild About Life 