The Wheel Deal

The Wheel Deal
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday November 14, 2015

In my twenties, last century, I became captivated by a book called The Third Policeman. It was a darkly comic novel penned in the 1930s by an Irishman, who wrote – sodden with whisky – under the pseudonym of Flann O’Brien.

Several of his characters had spent their lives on bikes, traversing the rutted roads of their country parish. So attuned were they to their metal steeds that a transmutation occurred: the rider’s body began to merge with the molecules of his bike.

The postman, for instance, became 71 percent bicycle. He developed strange behaviours: regularly leaning one elbow against walls, or standing in the street with one foot propped on the kerb.

I wonder if I, too, am becoming half-woman, half-bike. My metamorphosis began after the calamity of losing my driver’s licence. In the wake of a disastrous double-demerit-point weekend, I found myself forced into two-wheeled servitude by the local constabulary’s speed cameras. The curtailment of my freedom was shocking: so accustomed was I to holding a steering wheel. How I would manage three children and my life without a car?

The first week, I rode across four suburbs to reach the nearest Officeworks. There, I discovered I had no hope of fitting two cartons of printer inks, a telephone book of photocopier paper and an impulse buy of several lever-arch files into my bike panniers. Ignoring Newton’s first law of shopping bags, I hung a pendulous sack from each end of my handlebars. My bike seemed stable enough while stationary. But as I panted up the first hill towards home, the brick of paper dangling from my right handlebar began swinging wildly, banging painfully into my shin. The lever arch files champed at my knee cap with their metal-teethed corners. After ten minutes, my saddle had stiffened to concrete. I cursed the westerly headwind as my legs screamed for mercy. My bike, as transport vehicle, was a bruising ride. And worse, it depended on me for its engine.

The friction between us only escalated the second week. Grocery shopping became a saga of misfit: milk and bread jammed under the metal carrier behind my seat, fruit stuffed into the panniers, tinned tomatoes and baked beans strung from one handlebar, cheese and yoghurt from the other. I gently wedged a carton of eggs into my backpack. As I cranked through my gears to tackle a long rise, the chain jolted on its cog, dislodging my foot from the pedal. Clipping the kerb, I toppled onto the verge, a tangle of spokes and bags. Hauling myself up, I saw the milk had split open and was chugging its contents into a drain. My avocados were mush. Only the eggs had been granted a soft landing. I checked myself for missing skin, collected the foodstuffs strewn across the grass and trundled for home, nursing grazed ankle and bruised ego. My cycling enslavement, I decided, would be hell on wheels.

But three weeks into my driving proscription, the bike and I found our rhythm. Our personalities slid into one. Together, we looked for smooth detours around storm drains, tree root speed-humps and the glitter of broken glass lying in wait by the kerb. Potholes became our common enemy. We travelled to the soundtrack of the wind, breathing in the sweet smells of the slow lane.

My life constricted. Or loosened – I’m not sure which. Without a car, my world had shrunk, but I discovered new freedoms. Each day, I calmly calculated where I needed to go. Bike and I rode as fast or as slow as our mood. We scooted through traffic jams and took short cuts across park paths. I learnt the contours of my suburbs by heart. In my car, I’d flattened big hills with a gentle nudge on my accelerator. On my bike, every dip and rise was committed to muscle memory.

Sights that had passed me in a blur from the inside of my Swedish steel box became suddenly intriguing. Why had I never noticed the recluse on a nearby corner? Wild-haired and hump-backed, always in the same tatty shorts and t-shirt, cataloguing his latest collection of oddments. Some afternoons, I’d ride by and catch sight of him, surrounded by rusty tins, painting sheets of scrap metal – for what, I didn’t know.

Stopped at traffic lights yesterday, I paused to look wistfully across a sea of cars and drivers and remembered with a stab of shame, why I’m in the bike lane. But all I saw were stony faces, staring dully ahead. Riding a bike is one of life’s simple pleasures, like skimming stones, or baking a cake, or interrupting my husband.

Justice has smote me with her flaming sword, as deserved. When I’m back behind the wheel, I promise never to take an eye off the speedo. But for the next few months, I’ll respectfully ride out my punishment.

Closed Book

Closed Book
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 26, 2015

My teenage son’s dislike of reading is a pall between us. I am alternately saddened and infuriated by his sudden rejection of books. A pile of them sit idly on his bedside table, attracting dust. Their spines are stacked to face his pillow, the titles shouting to his deaf ears.

Every few weeks, I add another book to the pile, hoping it will ignite some glimmer of interest. I encourage, I cajole, I coerce. I paint him word-pictures of his smaller self, bewitched by the favourite stories of his childhood. I remind him how he had always been a rapacious reader; his books as precious as his Lego. I pull the Roald Dahls from his bookcase. We had bedded down with them night after night, the pair of us in raptures. I leave them lying around to serve as small mnemonics of the delights of reading. He is unmoved.

I lose my patience. I rant. I thrust books into his hands. “How can you not want to read?” I demand. “You’re so good at it. You’ve always loved reading. He shrugs: “Not any more.”

Later, to mollify me, he flops on the sofa and makes a pretence of being bookish with Stephen Fry. But I can see his heart’s not in it: he cannot find the stillness required to slip into another’s skin, to listen to another’s voice. Instead, he monitors the clock so he dare not read a minute more than the 30 minutes he’s promised me.

That night, sensing my exasperation has expired, he fronts me in the kitchen. “You’ve gotta let go, Mum,” he says, gently. “Reading’s not my thing, ok?”

I carry his words to my desk and remember the narrow-mindedness of being 15. He must discover for himself what the rest of us already know: that reading will give him a safe place to go. Reading will teach him what it’s like to be someone else. Reading will make him forget himself.

As an only child, I escaped to books early. Aged 12, my library card became a precious ticket for transporting me elsewhere. Our local library had soft carpet and high ceilings and a knack for absorbing my Saturday mornings.

The silence was mesmerising. If I tuned my ear, I could detect the low whispers of conversation at the front desk, the thud of a dropped book or a series of metallic thumps as the librarian stamped a stack of borrowings. The shrill voice of a child would shatter the stillness, followed by an urgent “shh!” from a parent. And then the quietness would envelop me again. Against a warm window overlooking the park, I retreated into my book, only to emerge an hour later, elated but mentally exhausted.

My favourite librarian was a flamboyant gent with a halo of wild silvery hair who’d stop by my desk each Saturday and mime his request to see what I was reading. I’d flip shut my book to show him the cover. He’d nod his approval before sweeping away with his armful of books. In a library, all readers are created equal.

A new book still delivers me its own small thrill. Perhaps it’s the promise of deep reading: slow and immersive. I hanker after that meditative state induced by concentration. With a book, I can sink beneath the everyday. I become oblivious even to the mechanics of reading – the gentle turning of pages -propelling me through a gripping story.

Books have left me euphoric but withered by tiredness; I have fought sleep to stay with their characters long past midnight. I have woken, bleary-eyed after a reading marathon, desperate to begin again.

Is it just me, or is online reading somehow less engaging? Less satisfying? I find myself repeatedly sidetracked by banner ads and neon signage. Click this link? Close that window? Visit that site? My brain splinters. I need the speed limits of ink on paper.

Perhaps my son’s boredom with books is not from lack of reading skills, but his inability to focus his attention. Reading for pleasure takes discipline and practice. It requires a stillness of mind. In his world, no book can compete with the endless frivolity of the internet. I tell him books will be his most constant of friends. He sighs and rolls his eyes.

I am not alone in my disappointment. I hear the despair from other mums whose teenage sons have shunned the pleasures of reading. “Where did I go wrong?” I ask a friend over coffee. She shakes her head: “You didn’t. He did. But it’s your job to fix it before it’s too late.”

“How? I’ve tried everything,” I reply, deflated.

I stop in at the book shop for counselling. “Try these,” says the bright young assistant. “Find the right book and he’ll read again.”

I leave $100 poorer but full of hope. Wish me luck.