Image borrowed from Yahoo"This your first shot at this, lad?" Wally sneers,
"Giving up netball for a push-bike, then?"
Wally. Iron-founder. Hard as horse shoes.
Me. Grammar School. Sixteen. In Wally's eyes
I'm toffee-nosed and wet, no match for storemen,
strong-men, welders, checking out their bikes,
choosing the chainset that will see them fastest.
Little upstart, me, a time-trial virgin,
poncy, all pale knees and Latin. Wally
thinks racing's not for the likes of me, and so
his next veiled insult is my "handicap."
More than two minutes! For ten miles! Big girls'
blouses ride off less than that! He's telling me
I might as well not start. "No one will laugh,"
he says, "if you get lost, fall off, or faint."
"Get lost yourself," I think. So I don't say
I've trained long for this "ten," and half asleep
can clock his fucking course in twenty-five.
Which is what I did. My time screwed Wally.
I won the handicap event, in fact
lopped eighteen seconds off the previous best,
hauled home their crappy little cup. Stowed it.
Never looked at it again. And Wally?
Wally never spoke to me again, because
we both well knew I should have told him.
What we both learned of class, insults and lies
that night has stayed with me, remembered
from time to time with glee and hot-faced shame.
Richard Cavendish-Westwood
aka: DoctorFTSE
In cycling "time trials" competitors ride "against the clock", starting at one minute intervals to eliminate "slipstreaming" and pacemaking. In the 1950's hundreds of these events were organised by local cycling clubs. They were described by the miles to be covered on an "out-and-home" course as "tens", "twentyfives", "fifties." etc. Hard to believe that in those days, on summer evenings or Sunday mornings, competitors rarely encountered much traffic on British roads.
Posted over on his site The Doc's Homeopathic Poems
Listed as #50 over on Magpie Tales 42
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