Just before I went out this morning I saw an item on the local news which said that B
radley Wiggins was in Nottingham. The reporter was outside the Castle, so I made a mental note not to go anywhere near there on today’s lessons.
I picked up my first pupil at 10am from her house just off the ring road – miles away from the castle. Then we got stuck at traffic lights for nearly 15 minutes because the bloody convoy of about a hundred professional cyclists (plus a few dozen straggling Bradley-wannabes) were making for Wollaton Park. We got there exactly the same time they did, to the second. Someone up there has got it in for me, I know they have!
I’m not exaggerating when I say there must have been 40-50 police motorbikes, and at least half as many other police vehicles in attendance (any Nottingham criminals today who did their homework would have known to hit the other side of Nottingham, because there’d have been no police to worry about).
It was funny to see a group of women clap four cyclists who went by several minutes before the main cluster – I reckon they were just clapping nobodies!
When the lights changed, the jackass in front of us had just decided at that very instant to open his door and start fumbling with some papers on his passenger seat. I pipped him to remind him the lights had gone green, and just him and us got through – which would have no doubt endeared US (in a learner car, of course) to all those who had to wait again.
God knows what the police were doing directing traffic into the estate we were coming out of. It’s a dead end. And at one point there was no police bike blocking the crossroads, and yet the lights our side were on green – but about a dozen more motorcycle and support vehicles (police and non-police) sped through the red lights on the main road.
Then we had to wait at another road block for a further 5 minutes or so because the bloody cyclists had only ridden through the Park and were now off somewhere else.
As we waited, we admired the motley collection of middle-aged people carrying SLR cameras with telephoto lenses, but fiddling with small snapshot cameras and iPhones. Oh, and one or two were swathed in Union Jacks and wearing those silly felt hats you see at the FA Cup Final.
Then, for the whole lesson, everywhere was peppered with Bradley-wannabes riding very badly, with no regard for their – or anyone else’s – safety. That’s cyclists for you.
I’ve got a horrible feeling about all this. It’s taken 46 years – since the 1966 World Cup – for us to shut the hell up about the past. Now we’ve got the bloody 2012 Olympics to rattle on about until we get the next big event (and do well at it).
My money is on 50 years of milking on this one.