Bike Thieves

Marissa was a tomboy, her curly black shin hairs and skills at football on the playing field making her the talk of Primary Five.  Early on in our acquaintance I had fallen for her.  My first real crush, I always went for her at 'kiss, cuddle, and torture'.

The Triangles, a set of deep-pocked sandstone cliffs along from school, were passable by beach right up until high tide.  Marissa and I walked home that way if it was stormy, legs drenched by the fearsome waves.  This was too early for computer games really - though my friend Chris had an Atari - so we would go inside and watch cartoons, drinking Coke floats whilst her mum dried my things in the tumble drier.

Down the Far End of the village was a caravan park where, Chris whispered one night as we crawled SAS-style across the backyard of a goose farm, a hundred unused bicycles lay in a shed.  Word went round at school the following day and everyone from Primary Four upwards set to gather.

The playing fields, where the helicopter still lands in emergencies, were in their old state, rolling like the waves.  In the minds of many a connoisseur, this made South End football comparable to the Premier League, given the complexity of playing on such a tumblety turf.  As the lights of day began to flee the scene, seventeen of us crowded by the old gate that let out to the shop.  Unlike the game that Chris and I played most evenings, this crowd was not so hot on subtlety.  We walked the main street of our city like a pack of dogs bounding to the meat factory on the last day before Glasgow Fair.

And, like a pack, we had our leaders: Marissa number one, in charge of all the boys; Chris the knowledge man; I, due in part to being their friend, gained myself a place in the vanguard.  It felt good.  It felt right.  It felt... adrenaline.  The mob that ruled the road ran forwards in bursts like a stormy sea, roiling.

Chris went over the top first.  A rough, red, Victorian sandstone wall, rounded on top.  This being an island, there was no wire nor glass shards.  He rolled around, giving a hand-up to the next.  In season all this would have been folly, but September is a quiet time in the country places, especially back then, and we somehow managed to get all in without a single adult shout.

I'm an adult now, I do not know how we got into that shed.  If we broke the door or the lock or its hinges in any way then truly I am sorry, but we got inside.  And there they were.  Piled-up one above the other.  Perhaps not a hundred bikes, but certainly enough to furnish us.  The kids all got away like mist on a sunny morning.  I was nine and had never ridden a bike, so I took a powder blue ladies' one with basket and pushed it the two miles home.  Hid it in the shed behind a green tarpaulin.

Marissa came round the next afternoon with her boyfriend, Andy.  They were known to be the school's 'couple', they would probably get married some day.  Rolling up my sleeves to hide my crushed heart, I allowed myself to be taught to ride.  It was a tough afternoon.  I found the skill of only falling off into nettles, unless there was a bramble thicket to be had.  But little by little, with Andy holding my seat post and Marissa the handlebar, they helped me find my balance.  Zipping back and forth across the lawn, then around and around the house, Hoopla-ing and Hooray-ing!  We grabbed a juice, then cycled off down to Chris' to go on our first adventure together.  Standing outside his tiny cottage whilst he finished his spaghetti-on-toast tea.

I can smell the West Coast in its greenery.  That smell comes back to me now, dreaming of those days.  Gorse, oak, sorrell, bracken, and wild garlic, all dripping in the frequently humid air and soaking your trainers through.  The four of us span down through this emulsion to The Triangles, dumping our bikes at the crest and diving out into the swell.  Calling each other’s names as we kicked around to gaze back on our homeland.  Bikes on top of the cliffs crowning our glory.  We laughed with the thrill of children, wild in their element.  Bobbing along on the tide like seals.