A SHORT HISTORY OF.................................................................... BICYCLES -1.

My sister had a purple and pink one, with white tyres. Mine was blue. Contrasting blue mudguards. We wobbled together around the perimeter of Eaton Park. I remember both our infant legs whirling the tremendously low gear, at an unfeasible rate, to create almost no progress. My parents strolled behind, admiring. My sister showed more talent than I did.

Those machines were tiny things in comparison to the curved tube Vindec which was my true boyhood bike. Nobody else had one. And that was not a good thing. Oh, how many taunts I had to bear about the curved top tube. How pathetic were the wide white saddle, the gold anodised mudguards, the chain guard and the straight handlebars. The bike was neither one thing nor another, and therefore absolutely uncool. It was an outcast amongst bikes. It had nothing of the cocky elan of the Choppers, even if their owners did rather often flip their inherently unstable bikes up, and fall on their arses. Equally it could not come anywhere close to the Carlton and Sun racers, that the really classy kids had. For God's sake, it didn't even have gears, and this was a time when the number of gears on your bike was a rough proxy for the measure of your manhood. Even the puniest kid around, who played the violin, and ground away on his granddad's old black sit up and beg, with an iron bath of a chain cover, and the weight of an ocean liner, had the kudos of a Sturmey Archer three speed.

The Vindec had as its destiny only one possible route, short of wanton destruction. Modification. I became a bike tinkerer. The mudguards went. The saddle went, replaced by a Brooks narrow leather job. The padded pedals went - superceded by evil rat traps. The chain guard went. The flat bars got changed to Maes pattern drops, finished off with masking tape. The bike started to look like it was meant for business, albeit designed by a committee of blind, aesthetically impoverished halfwits. I wanted a racer, and unable to have one, the Vindec would have to have the Overfinch treatment.

You cannot make a silk purse from a sow's ear. The Vindec was simply hopeless, and the realisation was all the starker when I joined a cycling club. Eventually, even my parents, blinded by eccentricity and extreme poverty, could no longer hold back the inevitable. The new horse in the stable was a Puch, an obscure (and I guess cheap), Austrian brand, but, joy of joys, with derailleurs . A full five gears, which I would count over and over and over again, with deep satisfaction. The Puch was not up to the job either, but it was a start, and I happily struggled to hang on to the peloton of a club run, whilst, when I was so knackered I could not even manage a bit of toast at the tea stop, kindly hands would be placed in the centre of my back to keep me hanging in there. Even now it brings a lump to my throat to remember the gentle words of encouragement, and the club cyclist who always just happened to be going "right past my door" and would see me safely all the way back home in a dangerous state of exhaustion.

Whereas the Vindec was utterly useless, the Puch was overweight and underpowered. I used to dream at nights of bikes that were like the other club members' - 531 tubing, and perfectly geared and greased transmissions. Genuine lightweights, from an exotic world of craftsmen frame builders, whose brand was carried on the down tubes of the frames they made. Every town had its builder. Harry Quinn in Liverpool. Mercian in Derby. Bob Jackson in Leeds. Geoff Butler in Croydon. Ours was Les Bryant - a softly spoken man who rarely ventured even into the ground floor of his shop from the frame building workshop in the basement. The shop was supervised by his brisk and business like wife, who would occasionally summon him with a cry of "Les - ley...." There she transacted tubular tyres, wool mix jerseys and shorts and embrocation, the smell of which takes me instantly back to 1970's time trialling.

It was on the start of a club ten mile time trial that the limitations of the Puch were bluntly indicated. "Bloody hell," said the club marshal pushing me off, "ride this thing around and you'll have muscles like a blacksmith." Even now, the musculature of my legs owes a lot to this early resistance training. The starter was not alone in noticing. Another club member noticed. "Come and have a look at this" he said, taking a polished lightweight out of his van, a Jacques Anquetil, all chrome and Reynolds tubing, with inch thin tubular - shod sprint wheels.

"Lovely," I drooled.

"About your size..."

"Yes - I'd love one."

"See if she fits you."

I get on. "Perfect."

"Give her a ride up the road - remember she's fixed wheel."

I didn't ride up the road, I flew, on tyres as hard as boards, and a frame light, whippy and fantastically responsive.

"What do you think?"

"Amazing."

"Well you'd better give her a go in the time trial then...."

"REALLY?"

"Go on boy."

That evening as I built speed away from the starter, I very nearly lifted the thing off the ground it was so light. I caught a rival schoolboy cyclist who was renowned for having all the right gear for three minutes, before the turn. The ride improved my best by about 20%.

"What did you make of her?"

I know not what words came. Too good, Too fantastic. Beyond words.

"Well, you'd better have her then."

Speechless.

Does sportsmanship, support exist like this in sport now? I don't know. I hope so.

I do know that I cannot bring this scene to mind without my eyes filling, as they did then.