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From Kevin Marsh...
It's one of those moments you never forget.
The moment you let go of the saddle and they don't realise at first and wobble off down the path just like they did when you were holding on and then they realise something is different and they look round and see you fifty yards away and they realise they've done it and they can now ride the bike on their own.
And so it was with the saintly Ed on Friday morning after he'd heard the item about the cycling practices of Oxford dons.
There is always something slightly dreamy about the saintly Ed when talk turns to the great Universities which I put down to his missing out somewhat on account of completing his education at a correspondence seminary run by a curiously aromatic hermit from a sedge bank somewhere in the Fens.
Anyway, what it came down to was this: buoyed by the revelation that he could master an oar - and you'll have seen on TV the results of his experience on the tideway and I can confirm that the bloody scene that will have turned your stomach was for real - and inspired by Friday's item, he decided that he wanted for himself the experience of freewheeling the wrong way down Turl Street with his feet off the pedals, gown flapping in the wind crying "Odi profanum vulgus et arceo" at the stale-breathed townies leaping from his way and into the path of oncoming bulldogs.
Except that he couldn't ride a bike - mostly because he'd never developed the need since as a follower of St Joseph of Copertino he is accustomed to levitating himself to wherever he wants. Which is fine, except when he has to be coaxed back down from the studio ceiling in order to read the Yesterday in Parliament introduction.
All of this made some things easier and some harder when it came to learning how to ride a bike: easier because falling off was a painless adventure since he inevitably stopped short of the asphalt and avoided the obscene disfigurement of what I believe is called a street-pizza aka scabby knees; but the bad thing was that as he tensed up and became anxious it was a bit difficult getting him to stay on the saddle.
But a success is a success and so there we were at the end of the High, the morning mist swirling around the Martyrs' Memorial with the saintly Ed's whoops echoing from the austerely classical walls of the Ashmolean as he tossed his stabilisers over the walls of St John's and pedalled off down Cornmarket bus lane, glanced off a pile of discarded boxes outside Woolworths and took out an entire line of Korean tourists waiting excitedly to ascend Carfax.
Otherwise, another grim week with lots of discussion about international terror and political assassination.
But there was relief of sorts on Wednesday with a programme that caught the mood and manners of modern Britain and if you want any more inspiration for your cartoons you can do little better than listen again to our exclusive coverage of:
- the demolition of Britain's ugliest building
- the heated debate about which city should be Britain's capital of books
- what a Thought for the Day presenter thought about "The Passion of the Christ"
- why you should be paid less if you're in the brass section of an orchestra and play fewer notes than the strings (cue all those jokes about viola players, like: what do when a viola player dies? move them one desk back. Ho Ho.)
- and what will happen to the rituals of polling day if we move to a system of postal ballots only
But here in the Today studio the week really was all about what we call "people management" which apart from the saintly Ed's mastery of earthbound mobility consisted mainly of coaxing Jim into drinking camel milk without making that "Yurk! Cacky!" look on his face and hyperventilating, and marching him off to Allkit's where we bought for him a pair of crisp khaki shorts and a portable mozzy net the importance of which will, I hope, become clear in the fullness of time.
Kevin
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