Box-fresh Bickerton

This Bickerton folding bicycle was bought in 1984 by someone who really intended to use it.

Really really really really REALLY intended to use it.

They intended to use it in the Eighties. And the Nineties. And the Oughties. And now in the teens they have given up all pretence.

For to this day it is magnificently unused - the chain is shiny new, as are the gears, the tyres even have those rubber tags on them which show they are fresh from the moulds and the lights are still in their boxes. Its practically a museum piece.

I suspect it was unfolded for the first time last week - by me. To whom it has been given by the guilty owner 'to get it out of her sight.'

A monument to the failure of good intentions.