I can't ride a bike

They (whosoever "they" might be) say that many actions are like riding a bike: once learned, never forgotten. But I never learned. That is, at root, down to the fact that I never had a bike. I don't know why that should have been. I don't think it was a lack of money as my parents always seemed to have sufficient for other things. I did have a tricycle.

It was only about two years after the end of the war that my father took me to Maidstone by bus one afternoon. (That sentence alone contains four pieces of information that would benefit from further illumination. This parenthetic note could stretch to several paragraphs. To start with, I should explain that to many people of my generation - and my parents' generation - "the" war was the Second World War. Why other conflicts such as the Korean War and the First World War are relegated to "other" wars is something I don't understand and am therefore unable to explain. You'll just have to accept that the war means World War II.

It must have been two years after the end of the war that this momentous bus ride took place because my father served in the Royal Navy and, in 1945, was in the Far East. It was not until 1947 that his ship returned to England.

Maidstone was - and still is - about eight or nine miles from where we were living in Gillingham. To get there involved a walk of about half a mile to catch a bus at the Jezreels. This took us to the bus station in Nelson Road where we would change for a bus to Maidstone.

Oh dear. Now I need to explain Jezreels. But I'm not going to give you chapter and verse as might be found any where on the web. Instead, I'll tell you what my mother told me. The Jezreelites where members of a religious sect who established their world headquarters in Gillingham. Here they bought a piece of land on which to build a great temple where many of the members could live. The aim was to build this temple high enough to reach Heaven so that they would have a stairway they and they alone could climb. Unfortunately, they were unable to finish their tower for reasons my mother either could not or would not explain (and I probably never asked) and the remains stood there. A nearby road junction became known as Jezreels, after the tower. And I think we can close these parentheses and get back to the original story now.)

So we caught the bus to Maidstone. It must have been in the afternoon because I distinctly remember it being dark when we came back home, so it was probably fairly late in the year as well - about this time of year, maybe. The reason for this expedition - and it was an expedition rather than a mere journey or trip - was to buy a tricycle. Presumably there was no tricycle to be bought in any of the shops in Gillingham, Chatham, Rochester or Strood - three adjoining towns and a city making up the conurbation known as the Medway Towns. This was, after all, only a couple of years after the war and there were still shortages of many things in England - even rationing of various foodstuffs was still in force. Anyway, that was presumably why the trek had to be made to Maidstone.

Bringing the tricycle - it was blue - back from Maidstone was something of a challenge. Like the outward journey, the return was made by bus and I have a feeling that the bus was pretty crowded. My father made the journey on the platform as the trike wouldn't fit in the luggage space under the stairs.

(More explanation. In those days buses in England were mounted at the rear. On double-decker buses there was no door, just an open platform from which there was a step up onto the lower deck and a winding staircase to the upper deck. Luggage could be stowed under the staircase. Standing was allowed on the lower deck if all seats were taken but passengers were not allowed to stand on the upper deck or ride on the platform or the stairs. Smoking was allowed upstairs only.)

And you can blame Skip for this trip down memory lane as he was recently waxing nostalgic about his bicycles.