Emma Jane
‘You have to push, push, push – like this – and then pedal, pedal, pedal – as fast as you can.’ The instructions came from somewhere near my knee. Considering the challenges I myself face vertically, it’s quite a feat for someone to be that small.
I looked down. And found Emma Jane. Who was all of three. And now teaching me how to ride a bicycle. From the vantage point of her tricycle.
Bicycles and I share a rather unhappy history. When I was middle-teenaged, Appa decided it was time I learnt to ride a bike. While I would rather get on with whatever book I was currently reading. Dipping banana chips into avakkai pickle as an accompaniment.
Appa then proceeded to make the only judgemental error I’ve ever known him to make. He got me a bicycle that was just that little bit too big. In the confident hope that I would grow into it. Little realising that books and chips do not make a girl grow. Not vertically at least. A rather painful encounter with a thorn hedge and the bicycle disappeared into the depths of the store-room.
Forty years later and middle-aged, the chips and pickle had settled comfortably to a lifetime’s companionship with my midriff. I was tired of walking wherever I needed to go. Begging lifts from the husband when I needed to go where my legs would not take me.
‘Why don’t you learn to ride a bike?’ said the son when I was bundling my woes on his shoulder. He was not taking into account several facts. I have two left feet. I cannot even clap my hands in time to music. I cannot dance. I cannot swim despite six months of lessons. I was petrified of anything with just two wheels. The thorn hedge still flashes back to me in nightmares.
But the idea took root in my head and transplanted itself on my bucket list. A list that has been empty since I learnt how to crochet.
Two years later, Covid-19 struck. And the husband had a week off. And I found BikeAbility Wales. And Emma Jane. Serendipitous all round.
I did three horrible days of push-push-push, balance-turn-balance, push-push-push. Every muscle God put into me woke up screeching. A whole tube of diclofenac cream was consumed, as was a whole pack of ibuprofen.
I was on the verge of giving up all over again when it all clicked into place. Suddenly I found I was staying up on two wheels. Well, for two rounds of the practice track. And managing turns. The right-handed ones at least.
I had just finished the third of my two rounds and ground to an abrupt, panting halt when Emma Jane surfaced in my life.
Lolling back in her tricycle, she began conversationally, ‘When I was really little…’ I pulled down my eyebrow just in time. How much littler…? ‘I fell down,’ she continued, smoothing her little striped frock. ‘And there was a lot of blood. But I didn’t cry.’
‘Go on,’ she said, ‘practise a little more. You can do it.’ Much to the amusement of her Nan and my trainer.
I dutifully clambered back onto the bike and did another two rounds. Emma Jane clapped her hands in enthusiastic approval.
‘Well done!’ she cried. ‘You’re doing really well!’
Emma Jane, where were you when I was fifteen?
