Saturday 8th March

One of my earliest memories is of riding crossbar on my Dad’s bike.  I must have been under five I suppose but this was such a common experience that I cannot isolate one single time from all the others.  In those days all bikes looked much the same; black or dark green, heavy beasts with chrome handlebars and looped-under brake handles.  And all men’s bikes had crossbars; women’s presumably because of skirts and modesty had a second swooping low-slung strut just above the main link from the front wheel forks to the chain mechanism.  There was also a metal chain case, a wide sprung saddle and in my dad’s case a heavy headlight on the front, and a dynamo wheel to generate the back light.

Everyone had a bike, very few had cars and consequently the roads were far safer.  Cycle helmets hadn’t been thought of for adults or kids.  I would be hoisted up and perched on the crossbar, balancing with your bum and gripping the handle bars to steady yourself.  I am sure you felt every single bump in the road.  A while later Dad fitted a little dickie saddle for me and this was easier to balance on, still in front of him and grasping the handlebars, no safety harness of course.  We would go on bike rides, the four of us; Mum with my sister on a back seat and I on Dad’s crossbar.  Sunday afternoons we would go for bike-rides.  Then when I was about eight Dad got a car, the first on the estate, and I hardly ever rode crossbar anymore.

For my own son in the early seventies I had a little seat on the back of my bike too, and would take him to Nursery early every morning, crossing through London, trying to avoid the busy roads.  It was the only practical way as I had to get him to Nursery by 8, and then into work by 9.  The return journey was the same as I had to pick him up by 6.

And even now, when I see a day-glow be-helmetted young child sitting on those little yellow back-seats on a Mum’s cycle.  It always brings back such happy memories.  I wonder if the majority of car-seat kiddies will also have such fond memories.