Flaming Trousers

Cycling Trousers – July 2003

Last Friday it was my birthday and since Hilary thought that a flagpole would be wasted on someone so unaccustomed to rituals as me she took me instead to a bicycle shop to get me somewhat better kitted out for the rides in the hills I try to do most days. I especially wanted some tight trousers with a pink and purple flame motif, but if not then with a flamboyant yellow chevron or two. The 14-year-old sales assistant looked amused when I asked for this, saying with a smile that that was the 1970s and 80s, here in the New Millennium all cycling trousers are a fashionable black.

So black it had to be. I did manage to get some tight-fitting ones with a shifting sheen to them, so that with them on I look like I am about to appear in a Shakespeare play. Hilary thought that I needed a jersey too and we settled upon a bright yellow one. Yellow is the colour that the winner traditionally wears in cycling and this doesn’t fit terribly well with my position as founder member and patron of the never-quite-learned-the-song society and honourable company of wastrels however Hilary felt it would help me to be seen better by onmcoming artics and also it matches my bicycle and helmet, both of which are yellow.

And lo, it seems to make by bike go faster, exactly as intended.