Resistance is Phutile

A humble piece of the criminal pie.

Kingston upon Thames is apparently the borough which saw the highest level of bicycle theft last year. While applauding the boroughs residents on their achievement of this dubious honour, I feel I should stake my claim for a share of the accolade.

Late one night after visiting my mate who lived in the borough, I had decided I didn't much fancy staying in his flat until the morning. My drunken wisdom told me it would be much better to steal a bike from the row of them chained up in the shed round the back of the building and cycle home. Problem was, most of the locks didn't look like breaking when pulled (surprisingly) and in fact the only one that did belonged to a complete piece of junk with no tyres. Worse, it was the sort of old fashioned bike you might see a granny riding. Memory is a bit hazy, but if it didn't have one of those little baskets on the front of the handlebars, it should have had one.

Unperturbed, I yanked the bike from its harness and saddled up, realising it was quite small, a fact not helped by the absence of inflated rubber around the wheel frames. In all honesty, the ridiculously long journey home might have been shorter if a sober person had walked it, as I spent as much time zig zagging off course as I did moving forward in a straight line. It was a painful journey, and the lack of tyres made it very hard to actually make the thing move, which would have been more obvious to me in any other situation.

For a while, the police followed me. Trailing along on the road beside me they might have looked like curb crawlers with a bizarre interest in drunken bike thiefs if their car wasn't covered in neon. Bet they had a right laugh though, I would have done. So anyway, if you're the granny or young person with suspiciously pensioneresque taste in wheeled transport affected by my dreadful crime - cheers for the bike.

posted by Phu @ 10:11 am