I didn’t notice the man kicking my bike at first. I was extremely tired, heading home from work at 10pm and texting a friend whose party I was in the process of missing. But the second assault was much more violent and concerted, and the bike fell to the floor of the carriage.
I looked up. My bike’s assailant was in his twenties, dressed casually but smartly. He smiled.
“The fucking cheek and the self regard of it. You fucking people. Are you not going to give up those seats? Give up your seats for those people there.”
I looked around. Several other seats in our section were free, though three people were standing up by the doors. The narrow vestibules on this particular train were an awkward place to store bikes – particularly as the doors opened on both sides along this route. So I’d placed it along the bench seats that this Thameslink train denoted as its cycle space.
Bike provision on trains in the UK is varied and piecemeal. This particular train lacked prominent signage on the inside to remind passengers that bikes are allowed in that particular area, which could have explained the man’s irritation, if not excused his violence.
Back to the train, and the angry man. I started by saying my bike was in the only place on the train that it was allowed, and that “I’ll happily get up if anyone wants to sit down.
“Excuse me,” I said, turning to those standing. “Would you like to sit down?”
The three people standing in the vestibule, listening in silence like everyone else in the carriage, ignored me. He still kept on. “Have you bought three tickets?” He kept asking. “Have you bought three tickets? Stand the fuck up.”
As a nondescript white man who usually keeps his head down – or is on a bike – I am fortunate in that I don’t get challenged or hassled in public very often. I wasn’t really sure how to deal with the shouting man, and the watching silence of the rest of the carriage was affecting my confidence. Were our fellow passengers all on his side?
“My bike has every right to be here,” I said. “No-one else wants to sit down. You’re being aggressive and you’ve attacked my personal property. I don’t even understand why we’re having this conversation.”
“Your personal property,” he repeated, mockingly. But with this, he put his earphones back in, and continued to glare at me from his seat. Things settled down, and I fumbled for my book, to distract myself from how furious I was.
The person next to him, an older man, waited several minutes of carriage-wide silence before deciding to intervene. “You’re just having a bad day aren’t you mate? Come on, calm down. Some people just like standing up, they like their space. This guy’s alright, leave it. I know cyclists take the piss, but you’ve picked the wrong fight today. Apologise to the man.”
Eventually, he did, in between muttering and exaggerated eye-rolling. He then got up and sat in the luggage rack, for no particular reason, before getting off at the next stop.
After kicking man had gone, I thanked the older guy for his his attempt to help, though I wasn’t particularly fond of ‘cyclists are idiots usually’ line of his argument. “He was just having a shit day,” he explained. “We’ve all had them, haven’t we? Shit days?”
I didn’t like this line of thinking. The man was just ragingly angry, for whatever reason, and needed someone to rail against. A ‘cyclist’ – though I was just a man with a broken bike, really – is an easy target because we exist in a wider media culture in which cyclists are frequently lampooned and hated.
While I’m not entirely surprised that no-one spoke up to support me, I was upset the only belated defence I received came with the caveat, “cyclists take the piss.” Perhaps some people with bikes try to take them onto trains during rush-hour, causing annoyance and inconvenience. Some car drivers mount the pavement and kill pedestrians. Does that mean I should vent my frustration at every car I see passing?
The answer being, no, of course not. That would be stupid. But until the popular trend of treating individual cyclists as complicit in all bike-related crimes and misdemeanours (“you fucking people”) goes out of fashion, I’m going to be extremely careful where I put my bike in future.
