The Bicycle Book. Bella Bathurst

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      In fact, this turns out not to be a comprehensive list. The next time I took a cab, I asked the driver what he thought of other road users. In addition to cyclists, motorbikes and bus drivers, he added Post Office vans, dustbin lorries and anyone driving a Mercedes.

      On a cold clear day in mid-November, Patrick Field is spreading the gospel at Speakers’ Corner. Field is in his late fifties, bundled up in a couple of well-worn jackets and a fleece hat – no helmet, no hi-vis, and what looks like a home-built bike with a plain blue lugged frame, drop bars and CDs slotted between the spokes. The only obvious concessions to safety are a very powerful front light and his red jacket. Clearly, here is a man who knows his stuff. Field has been cycling and thinking about cycling for a very long time. In addition to running the London School of Cycling, he’s known as something of a two-wheel guru, writing articles, appearing at conferences and teaching the rules of good behaviour to everyone from complete beginners to experienced racers. He knows the city very well, and he has a lot of strong opinions about it. The feelings are obviously reciprocated. At some stage London has imprinted itself on him so completely that, if you look carefully, you can probably find the route from Kingston to Stratford mapped through the lines on his face.

      Anyway, for today the plan is to find out about how to cycle. Not how to cycle with government approval, or how to cycle by trial and error, but how to cycle realistically. After Field has given my bike a quick check, we set off along Upper Brook Street to practise positioning. Field echoes Alison Parker: what, he asks, is the most common type of accident for cyclists? Parked cars – hitting the open door of a parked vehicle. To avoid doing so, ‘Your default position should be the middle of the leftmost lane of traffic.’ The important thing is to take a nice smooth line. If you know you’re just about to have to swing out back into the road to avoid a line of parked cars, the best thing is not to tuck yourself too far into the kerb to start with, to look behind you to see what’s coming and to make it plain either by indicating or by your trajectory what your intentions are. But here we run into another familiar issue – the way men and women behave on bikes. ‘Girls tend towards, “I’m not really here, don’t worry about me, I don’t want to be a nuisance.” That’s dreadfully dangerous because these drivers have all got busy lives and they’re distracted and they haven’t had enough rest, and if you’re doing your, “Oh, don’t worry about me” act, then you can’t be surprised if they don’t notice you at all. The other side of the coin is what we can call the male problem, and that’s, “Well, fuck you, I’m going to ride my bike.” It’s like making an enemy out of everyone else on the road. And I think that’s quite English, in a way – no one’s ever told these poor boys that they can be powerful without being furious. No one’s ever encouraged them to be a powerful friendly cheerful adult – “Yes, I do own the road, let’s share it.”’

      The best thing to do is to learn to take what’s yours – the full six feet, the car-sized space on the road. You cycle at least a metre out from any parked cars, but you don’t tuck too far back in when the cars disappear. And once you start realising that you need exactly the right amount of road – not too much and not too little – then in all probability you’ll stop being scared as well. ‘The truth is that you’re not as desperate as everybody else, because you’re on a bike and if you need to hurry, you can. You can actually be generous and kind and friendly and helpful. But underneath, you can only be generous with this commodity because you’ve owned it – “This is my space, and I’m happy to be generous with it.” But if you’re only letting other people take from you, then you’re in trouble. So at the beginning, I try and encourage people to be more tough-minded than you need to be later on. You can relax into a smaller place when it’s appropriate because you know that when you need a big space you can take it right back. And, anyway, why would you want to pick a fight with someone who’s fifty times more powerful than you?’

      Part of the trick, Field says, is to be visible. Many rookie urban cyclists assume that the best way to be seen is to festoon themselves with lights and colours in the hope that if they dress in head-to-toe electric yellow, the traffic will be dazzled enough to get out of the way. Unfortunately, if everyone who cycles wears the same thing, then everyone looks anonymous, and as soon as they start being anonymous they become invisible. True visibility has very little to do with wearing fluorescent vests and everything to do with the way in which you cycle. You could be lit like the Post Office Tower but if you cycle in the gutter, then no one’s going to see you. ‘What people take notice of is what attracts their attention. So your job is not to be a plastic cone, your job is to be a person. And if the hi-vis jacket helps you to be a person, that’s beautiful. But the jacket on its own doesn’t make you noticeable. What people see is your personality. So whatever helps you to express your personality is going to help.’ The most conspicuous cyclists I can think of, I say, do not own any item of cycling paraphernalia at all. Field nods. ‘If I’m driving my truck and I come up behind you and go’ – he gives my bike an ostentatious once over – ‘“That’s interesting, why a basket on the back, oh yes, leather boots, that’s an interesting idea”, or I come up behind you and go, “Get out the fucking way, you should be on the pavement”, that’s really up to me. But in both cases, you’re safe because I’m thinking about you. And, of course, there are wonderful pragmatic and humanitarian reasons to want to be popular, but if you have to choose between being popular and being safe …’

      Field’s favourite role models are ‘Knightsbridge matrons. I think they’re becoming extinct because the Russians have priced them out of Mayfair and Belgravia. They don’t have to be good at riding a bike, they’re just good at being themselves. And you see them coming, and they’re not nasty about it – they probably would be in a shipwreck, but that’s another story – they’re just, “Hello! Thank you!”’ First rule, says Field, is to be able to ride a bike to a minimum standard. Next is to understand the rules of traffic, which, he says, were devised to be simple, ‘because stupid people need to be able to understand them’. Traffic is formal, and it works on the principle that no one wants to crash because crashing is painful and expensive. And ‘because they’re nice people like us and well socialised and with responsibilities and families and all kinds of stuff, but even the gangsters, even the idiots whose parents didn’t love them enough, they don’t want to run over random people. They might want to run over their enemies, but they don’t want to run over you or me. So if you give them a chance not to run you over, they won’t.’

      We keep going, down Rotten Row, over South Carriage Drive and into Knightsbridge, cycling at a reasonable pace to keep warm, moving from busy main roads down quieter side streets. When we get to a convenient place to pull over, Field gives me a few more tips on safety. How you treat a red light, he says, depends on how you’re feeling about both yourself and the rest of society. ‘I tend to always stop at red lights. And the reason I like doing it is because I can show off that I can still have my feet on the pedals and my arms folded, and I’m a very vain old man, but I like doing it because I know I don’t have to. It’s like an ostentatious show – you know, I’m making a social contract with you people, I’ll follow these stupid rules, but if I do run a red light, I have to be in a hurry. The ones who make me laugh are … you know, I’m waiting at a red light, and these kids go past, desperate to move, as if their bike will explode if they stop. And then thirty seconds later, fat granddad overtakes them and I’m not even breathing heavy. The people who can’t stop at red lights aren’t happy – they don’t have the psychological resources to be themselves, so they’re infected with this anxiety, this, “I’ve got to get going.” I’m not saying I’ve stopped at every red light even today, but it’s my default, to stop.’

      But, I say, there may be too many cyclists out there who have now learned to love cycling in a place where reds are considered optional. The rest of the world would still like us to stop. If possible, for good. Field is dismissive. Why try and fit into a system if that system is already faulty? ‘There’s an authoritarian optimism – if we’re really obedient, then everyone will treat us well. But when Tesco wanted to smash the Sunday trading laws, what did they do? They opened on Sundays. They challenged the law. If you СКАЧАТЬ