A Hard Day’s Night was all we could talk about. I’d seen the film three times and knew the words to every song. Walking by the lake one sunny afternoon, I caught sight of something in the shrubbery. I moved closer. It was a red bicycle, rusty, battered basket,...
It is the sound of squealing wheels skidding hard over the road surface that startles me awake. A second earlier, the driver himself woke to see the brake lights of a stationary vehicle ahead; a red stop sign on Interstate 95 just outside Jacksonville. It is early...
When the Spring came the river unmuddied itself. I could see the bicycle beneath the surface. I pictured the day when the owner must have wheeled it proudly home for the first time. Perhaps a gift – of movement, balance, direction. What must have flowed since to...
Bicycle Thieves (Italian: Ladri di biciclette), also known as The Bicycle Thief, is director Vittorio De Sica’s 1948 story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the...
About twenty years ago, my bike was stolen because I had locked it, with a U-lock, to a street sign I didn’t realise was broken. It was a man’s mountain bike, a bog-standard white one I’d bought for £50 out of the local paper. I’d put...
