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For my part, most of today consisted of cutting grass. For Mirinda, it was all about taking The Bob all the way to a lovely beach on the island of Askö, with Nicoline for company and the Jolly Roger for teaching. Given I didn’t really do anything blog-worthy, today I will tell the sad tale of the Little Green Bicycle.
A little while ago, I spotted a small, pedal-free kid’s bike lying on the grass verge outside a house in our street. It looked like a child had just left it there to run inside for milk and cookies. Or had been taken up in the Rapture. I didn’t take a photo, however it looked a bit like this:
The house it was dropped outside does not contain any small children so it was an odd place to leave it, still it remained there for a few days.
Then, in a very noisy episode I’ll not quickly forget given how quiet it normally is around our house, a big machine started clearing away the grass in the ditches outside the houses. It went up and down both sides of the street for ages, cutting grass and crunching everything on the grass.
Including the little green bicycle.
The next time I saw it, it was looking sad and neglected, but generally salvageable. Though the seat appeared to have gone.
The bike remained in the ditch for a fair while, more or less, in the same condition and attitude. Untouched, unimportant, unloved.
The weather came and went, the Little Green Bicycle withstood it all, but then, for reasons unknown and difficult to understand, the back wheel disappeared, although the bike was still in the ditch.
I wondered why it was just the back wheel. Was it for a unicycle? Or perhaps to replace someone’s punctured or buckled one? If so, why was the bike still in the ditch? Surely, I thought, it would have been easier to take the whole thing and dismantle it at one’s leisure.
Anyway, it remained like this for a week or two but then, as if someone had taken great pity on the Little Green Bicycle, it once more appeared on the grass verge; where it started.
There are many secrets surrounding the Little Green Bicycle and, I fear, none of them shall ever be revealed. I can’t help but feel a bit sad for…well, whoever once owned and loved it, I suppose. Or, perhaps, the parents who bought it.
A few days after the above photo was taken, the bike was once more at the bottom of the ditch. Clearly it wasn’t universally loved. I think it might just remain there until it rusts away.
RIP Little Green Bicycle: remembered by few, loved by even fewer.
