Gone with the wind … my life on a trike
Inspired by my heroine and role model, the actress Olivia de Havilland, 104, I have got myself a tricycle. ‘It may change my life,’ I said to my wife. ‘It may kill you,’ she answered, tartly.
I got to meet Dame Olivia, the last surviving star of Gone With The Wind, a few years ago when The Oldie magazine made her The Oldie’s Oldie of the Year to mark her one hundredth birthday. I am the proud host of the annual awards ceremony. Dame Olivia won in 2016 and I am happy to say we have kept in touch since. She kindly invited me and my wife for ‘champagne and canapés’ at her home in Paris (her two Oscars discreetly placed on the sideboard) and she sends me the occasional email. A few weeks ago she sent me a snap of her outside her house sitting on a tricycle. ‘Wow!’ I thought, ‘If Errol Flynn’s Maid Marian can ride a trike as she rolls into in her one hundred and fifth year, I can ride one in my seventy-third.’
Supplied by Jorvik Tricycles of York, my trike arrived as lockdown began to ease and it’s a beauty. I’m calling it Zephyr, partly as a breezy nod to Dame Olivia and Gone With The Wind, but chiefly because Zephyr the cheeky monkey has always been one of my favourite characters in the Babar stories and I last rode a tricycle around the time I first discovered Babar - when I was about six.
I loved my tricycle when I was a little boy and I am loving my tricycle now. It’s a joy to climb onto. I love sitting on it and feeling steady. I love the basket in the front and the basket at the back. I love the bell - and the horn! I love the fact it offers me 7 gears, though I haven’t moved out of first gear yet. I have been taking my trike-riding quite gently, because I’m in no rush. In week one, I just rode round and round the lawn in circles, but I didn’t fall off and I got up quite a speed and a bit of a sweat. In week two, I got myself an ace instructor (Fiona from CycleWithMe) and she put me through my paces in the side streets near where I live in south-west London. In week three, Fiona kept me company as we took to the main roads for a proper trike hike - riding north over Putney Bridge, riding east along the Thames Embankment and then up through Chelsea (via Tite Street and the home of Oscar Wilde - I am the President of the Oscar Wilde Society) and ending up in Sloane Square. Then we came all the way back - twelve miles in a couple of hours, with some interesting crossings to navigate and turnings to survive along the way. Riding a trike is good for your thigh muscles, good for your posture (you’ve got to sit upright), and good for the little grey cells - you can’t let your concentrate go for a moment, given all the other monkeys on the road.
Riding a trike is not like riding a bike. Taking the corners is very different! I think I’m riding my tricycle rather as I drive my car - “That’s very worrying,” says my wife. The challenge, of course, is to be confident without being foolhardy - taking the lane when it’s mine to take, signalling clearly without feeling embarrassment, ignoring the honking of impatient motorists and the yells from cyclists wanting to overtake - not that there’s been much of that. On the whole, fellow road-users have been very friendly, greeting me as an amiable eccentric rather than as a public menace.
Actually, I don’t think my trike is the least bit eccentric. I think it’s the way ahead. I’m looking forward to riding it until I’m 104. It has two baskets for the shopping and I have a helmet for my head. Who wants to be a masked man risking his life on public transport? I’m heading for the open roads on my sky-blue tricycle. Poop-poop!