From Fast Cars to Bicycles

From Fast Cars to Bicycles ©

By Michael Casey

I am not a car driver, I do not even hold a licence, I do have a bus pass, that’s my mode of transport, but to be honest walking is what I do all the time. Every day I walk to and from Aldi and a little bit more, it’s my daily exercise and I get to amuse/annoy the staff too. As kids we all have bicycles, only I have short stocky legs, so I never learnt to ride a bicycle.

Thought that is not totally true, I did learn to ride a bike after a fashion maybe 20 years ago, I cannot believe it’s that long ago. Jon the Hippy taught me, Jon the Hippy was a guy I used to work with. Jon was a character, and he taught me 2 things, to drink and to ride and bicycle, don’t do both at the same time or you will fall into Selly Brook. After riding on the grass I did try riding on the tarmac only I went too fast and got scare, and nearly went in the brook. Jon also taught me to appreciate a pint, or a girlie as Dom the barman called my pint of shandy. Dom was a very nice man indeed sadly he died as a result of a fire, so he will be forever young.

Jon the Hippy also got the Birmingham Office pay parity with the Oxford office, so I ended up with double glazing, and a huge nicam stereo tv, when they first came out. You see I saved up the extra money and it paid for my double glazing, you ring up the companies who do double glazing and ask can they double glaze a whole house for X pounds, and when they say no you hang up. Finally one company will take your X pounds and do the entire house, that’s the limit of my negotiating skills, they did throw in a new front door too. The fitters said they did the job at cost and made no profit, which was very pleasing to know.

Boys buy boys’ toys, back in the days I was in a computer room Kevin had a nice little sports car, it was small and nice I cannot what brand it was. I  just remembered he lost his licence too and it really was not his fault. I think he was giving Rich as lift and Rich may have been a bit tipsy and was hanging out the passenger window waving, if I remember rightly Rich was a Mick Jagger look alike. So Kevin grabs him back into his car, only the car wobbles a bit, and yes you guessed it a copper was standing right there. So Kev was charged with driving without due care and attention. He ended up losing his licence.

These were the lads I worked with in the 1980s, when I didn’t have any white hair. So what did  Kev do with his car? He sold it to a giant. Somebody even bigger that me, much much bigger than me. Chris was a computer programmer and we were producing graphs which was cutting edge 30+ years ago. He was being paid a lot of money to write all the programs, at the time it was a big deal, we even had a fancy camera to take photos too to produce colour graphs.

So picture the scene Kevin is 5feet 5 or less, and Chris is 6feet 5 with a 56 inch chest, I look out the office window and Kev is showing Chris his car. Chris has to practically sit in the back seat to control the pedals. It’s like a car a child would have and an adult is trying to get into the car. I can’t remember did Kevin finally sell his car to the giant, but he did sell his car because he did lose his licence.

So that’s another memory shared with you all, I think it may even be the most I have ever talked about my computer room days. They were very hard work the first 10 years there and the people were full of life and alcohol, for it was a market research company into alcohol sales, and we were so good ACNielsen bought us up, and not a lot of people know that.