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| The Wreckage Yesterday |
Well it's an end of an era for Mr. Books. The shop bike has served me well but, as you can see from the picture taken yesterday, it is no more. In the words of the Monty Python team it has ceased to be! Originally the Mr. Books bike was bought (on ebay as a matter of fact) to get around the fact that our county council didn't seem to like having small businesses who wanted to promote themselves by putting signs out on the pavement. When one morning they confiscated my A-board it forced me to think up a more creative way of having a, in a manner of speaking, High Street presence. Mary Portas would have been proud of my ingenuity in the solution I came up with. So the sign on the bike was repainted and the old 1940s delivery bike has been wheeled out every business day ever since. Of late though I must admit to having got a little lazy in not bringing her in every night and leaving her to the will of drunks, oiks and yobs passing by. She's been kicked, ridden on with people giggling and shouting whilst sitting in the front basket at 3am; she's been sat on, jumped on, twisted about and, eventually, as you can see, completely wrecked. So yesterday I carried her back to the shop one last time to save her from yet more abuse. Having taken off the hand painted Mr. Books sign which, by the way, was more than the original cost of the bike, the intention was to take her to her final resting place: my back garden. There she'd have become a feature and had plants growing around her and would have been able to live out the rest of her days in peace and tranquility with only the sounds of children playing, birds singing and squirrels squeaking. Later in the day I mentioned her plight to a regular customer in the shop but when we went out to have a look blow me down if the bike hadn't been nicked. I was flabbergasted that anyone would still want the wreckage of the poor old thing. You just can't keep anything if it's not nailed down can you. Still, look on the bright side, she weighed a ton and at least I didn't have to load her into the car to carry her home and, I suppose, in a way, someone will put her to good use again eventually. Here's the Tonbridge Blog tribute to her:
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| Outside Tonbridge School for the Book Fair |
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| On High Street duty in happier times! |
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| En Fete for the Tour de France coming through Tonbridge |
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| Even the thick snow just made her look prettier |
4 comments:
What a shame - was certainly a different way to advertise
What a sad end to such a lovely old girl.I can only imagine that she will go on to becoming a new bike,if the metal recyclers have taken her.
We could do with some sad, slushy music to go with the bike slide show!
That is such a shame, she was a real feature of this end of the high street and your creative problem solving actually made the area in which she was parked much more attractive. I'd certainly like to see a Mark II!
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