The Bicycle Book. Bella Bathurst

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СКАЧАТЬ your body, and you’re sitting on 1,000cc of engine, and doing 80mph – I mean, how dangerous is that? I just find it mind-boggling every time I think about it. Stay on four wheels, or on two wheels where you’re travelling at a speed where you’re much more in control of what happens if you come off.’

      Muratori’s Café is at the junction of Farringdon Road and Margery Street opposite the Royal Mail’s Mount Pleasant sorting office. It’s an old-style kind of café – a London greasy spoon with warmth and Formica but without the reek of grease. There’s wood panelling on the walls and tabloids on the benches, and once in a while someone emerges from the kitchen with a comment or a joke to refill each cup with tea. Outside the huge corner windows, the view is of rain and wet cyclists. Muratori’s has been a cabbie’s refuge for years, and this particular afternoon – slimy, cold, early Feb – the place is half full.

      The following lively exchange of views is interesting not because it’s unexpected, but because, for an hour or so, it’s salutary to imagine what it must feel like to be a cabbie driving in circles round London’s endless frustrations. Cabbies have always felt an enormous sense of ownership about any city they work in. They’re part of the place; London would not be the city it is without them. And since they feel they belong to these streets, then one of two things happens. Either they’re completely secure in that knowledge and very laid-back about everything, or they’re monumentally pissed off at all the things on the road that they feel don’t have as much right to be there as they do.

      BB: So have you ever cut up a cyclist?

      Les (taxi no. 30839): No!

       Unanimous shouting from everyone round the table: No! No, no, no!

      Les: Seriously! Because the last thing I want is a cyclist bashing my cab.

      Keith (taxi no. 30729): Because we know we’re on a loser. Even if you do nothing wrong, you’re on a loser.

      BB: That isn’t most people’s experience. Most people have been cut up by a cab at some point.

      Mickey (taxi no. 54316): Yeah, OK, but let’s say that happens, come up and talk to me, don’t bang on the wing mirror and when I get out, cycle off. I’ve seen a cab and when the guy got out, the cyclist rode round and round tormenting him because he knew any time the guy got near him he could just cycle off.

      Keith: They’re so aggressive, aren’t they? They bang your bonnet, bang your wing mirror and then they cycle off, they won’t stay around to argue. That’s what really pisses me off.

      BB: Do you think all cyclists are the same?

      Keith: Yeah. You can generalise with cyclists.

      BB: So you don’t discriminate between people who are cycling for work, couriers, and other cyclists?

      Keith: They’re all the same.

      Les: You do meet the odd one with the lights on and the yellow stuff all over and the backpacks and everything, and they generally stick to the rules. But the ones who are riding around with next to nothing on, just a bit of Lycra, zooming about delivering stuff, they will take the mickey, no doubt about it. I don’t go out of my way to get in their way, but I just find it’s hard to avoid them sometimes.

      BB: They’re just doing a job, same as you.

      Les: I understand that, but if they come up the side as they do, if you look at any of our cabs, there’ll be little scrape marks along the paintwork. Now, if I go in the garage for that, they’ll go, £50 mate. I’m not going to get that back off them, never in a million years. And that happens every day.

      Paul (didn’t give his driver number): You know what it all boils down to? There’s no punishment. They don’t think the law applies to them.

      Steve (over at table in corner): There’s a place where all the paramedics go, the guys who deal with all the bad accidents and things, and their entertainment when they’re sitting waiting for a call is watching the traffic lights to see how many cyclists stop. They say they actually take a tally. Nine out of ten don’t bother.

      Les: I don’t understand why they’ve always got to push to the front.

      BB: Because if you don’t, you’re invisible and you’re stuck behind some trucker’s exhaust.

      Les: Yes, but I still don’t think, well, I’ve got to commit suicide, push myself in front of a lorry, just because I’m breathing a bit of crap. I’d sit a few yards back.

      Keith: There should be some sort of registration for them.

      I know it’s difficult and it should be free at first, but they should be registered. Because every cyclist, that’s one less car on the road, and that’s great. But you still can’t have them all banging and breaking things.

      Mickey: If they knock off your wing mirror, scratch the side of the cab, smash your back light, there’s nothing you can do. There’s no comeback. They just ride off. There’s no way of recognising them again. The old cabs used to have a diesel cap on the back. Many times, they just hold onto that and get dragged along by a cab rather than cycle.

      Les (reflectively): There’s a lot of anger, isn’t there? A lot of anger coming out of people. See, most cab drivers know we’re not going to get anywhere quickly. So we don’t drive fast. We know – I’ve had twenty-nine years’ experience of knowing I’m not going to get anywhere. We’ll get there eventually, but there’s no point in rushing.

      BB: But the point is, you can get somewhere quick on a bike.

      Keith: See, that’s the trouble. That’s their mindset – I can get past that, I can go faster, I can get across town. But they’ve still got to realise they’ve got to stop at a red light.

      BB: If every cyclist suddenly stopped at every red light, would you start respecting them?

      Les: Well, I don’t know …

      Keith: Get ’em off the roads. Cycle lanes, whatever, just get ’em off the roads.

      Les: License them.

      Mickey: Round ’em all up and nuke ’em! (general hilarity).

      Paul (looking out of the window at a couple of cyclists coming across the junction towards the café): Hang on, watch that – watch that! He’s coming up to the red and … (the cyclist stops). Well, he’s done it safely, but nine times out of ten they don’t. Look! Look! Guy’s just gone straight through. He’s gone through a red light. Look! He’s overtaking! BB: He’s allowed to overtake!

      Keith: Yes, and he’s wearing a dirty jumper. And that ain’t right (gales of laughter). We don’t like cyclists, do we? We hate ’em.

      Mickey: Last summer, June or July it was, there was a naked cycle ride. I was amazed, I was sitting there and there must have been a thousand of them.

      BB: So if all cyclists cycled naked, would it make you like them better?

      Keith: Yes. Definitely. They shouldn’t be allowed to cycle unless they’re naked.

       After an hour or so I put away my Dictaphone and get up.

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