Viva Brighton Issue #66 August 2018

COLUMN
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John Helmer
Reframed
Illustration by Chris Riddell
‘Adventure is just bad planning.’ ~ Roald Amundsen
“Aren’t they a bit heavy and clunky?”
“It’s not the fine Arabian steed I’m used to, granted
- more of a carthorse…”
The first time I take a BTN Bike Share to work is
a bit of an adventure. Getting to a dock at Preston
Park without consulting the app first, to find that
Brighton’s pissheads of the night before have left all
the bikes in the town centre. Then when I’ve found
one, negotiating the rather laggy interface that
necessitates a lot of pressing buttons with differing
levels of finger pressure to punch in a four-digit
code (‘punch’ eventually becoming the operative
word). Trying to adjust the seat height without
sleeving an arm in grease...
But any adventure repeated often enough becomes
routine, and pretty soon all this is part of my daily
groove.
“…They’re so convenient: just drop them off at the
dock. With my own bike, I’d worry all day about it
being half-inched, or vandalised - or rained on…”
Pretty soon I work out that I can mitigate the bikes’
hill-hating heaviness by sticking to the flatter parts
of Brighton; weaving through the North Laine to
the seafront, then along the prom to dock at the
Peace statue, just a short walk from the office. And
one windless, rosy-fingered morning, with the sun
rising in a clear sky and warm breezes blowing from
the Channel, I actually catch myself whistling. This
is my commute, I suddenly realise. Thinking of
those poor individuals crammed into cattle-trucks
at the daily mercy of Govia Thameslink fills me
with pity and smugness.
And then this happens.
Stopped at lights I’m gripped by a visceral unease.
Something is wrong. I pat myself down and
discover that my glasses - the varifocals with which
I do 90% of my looking - are gone from the hip
pocket to which I rather boneheadedly entrusted
them. Nightmare. If I can’t see, I can’t work.
In a sweat of panic I retrace my route. A solitary
side piece (they’re called ‘temples’ in the trade)
shows up almost straight away, indicating that
my specs are in pieces; but it takes a good hour of
searching under cars and in gutters (not easy when
you’re missing 90% of your looking power) before
I find the rest of the frame. At the office I make a
Sellotape repair and whinge about my misfortune
on Facebook. Ex-punks from the olden days want
me to go one further and redo the mend with
masking tape or even Elastoplast - but already
strangers are looking sympathetically at me and
asking if they can help find my carer.
In the end I decide the frames are so buggered they
have to go back to the shop. Days of blurred vision
pass before I finally get the text to tell me they are
fixed and ready for collection, and the world comes
back into sharp focus once again. Phew.
And that little adventure is over.
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