By Andy Capp
Mercury Rising, Issue #6, Riot Issue, April 1992
It's dark. It's warm. I'm very uncomfortable, but something’s irritatingmy early morning blissfulness The longer it persists the more the noisebecomes two sounds. One is my pathetic droning alarm clock. The other,the not-so-pathetic sound of rain on my window. I try to ignore it alland go back to sleep. Who am I trying to kid?
I realize that today, as always on the circuit, when it rains I'm goingto make a lot of dosh.
Kiss FM says that Camden Road is like a car park this morning. Thisis something new? I thought they said that every morning -maybe it’s arecording. Camden Road is boring without traffic. I mean, you need sometraffic first thing to wake you up and today is fun 'cos my braking distanceis crap which makes for some creative last moment maneouvers. I ride atrack bike, I find they're good for those last moment man maneouvers andI wouldn't ride anything else. Most people disagree, but you just don'tneed 21 gears,+ 27 lbs. of MTB in London. You can count the hills on 1hand + our roads only have small dents in them compared to SF streets.
Wings is the firm work for now. Once a great company! 100 pound ($175)a day was not uncommon two years ago and the management-rider relationshipwas good, but now the recession has killed it all. We get to take 60 poundshome on a hard day and call the controller bastard on a regular basis.Many moons ago (86-87)remember working at OYB (On Yer Bike Dispatch) andit being probably the best company to be at. Working weeks varied from1 to 4 days (never 8!). There were five control desks (cycles only). Mostall the clients you use their phones without hassle and all the ridersgot to choose stupid names like: Major Tom, Buffalo Bill, Postman Pat,Ferrari, Bumble Bee, etc, it goes on and on...yawn!
On the street Joe Public would get well confused when they heard youshout "Andy Capp!" a few times into your handheld.
Anyway, back to the day in hand. And yes! It’s still raining, all theusual chaos that accompanies rain is out in force today. Whole office-loadsof blind and deaf peds are running across streets like headless chickens,stuff like that. I have a drop in the "Temple." This is one ofLondon’s intricate mazes of barristers’ chambers and obviously they arecenturies old, causing lots of the building directions to be out of date.Because each building is home to about 100 lawyers on each floor findingthe geezer’s name on your package involves scanning a totem-pole directoriesboard which can be quite frustrating. More often than not, they're moved’round the corner to No. 4, which means nothing in the Temple ’cos chronologicalorder wasn't around when they planned the Temple layout. Normal procedureis to put 10 minutes on every Temple docket (tag).
One of my other favorites is High Holborn, This is a street of about,a mile in length. It comes in 4 episodes. It starts proper as High Holborn,where the #s run down the street, stop, hop over to the other side andrun back down to the start again, causing No. 1 to be opposite say No.372.Part 2 is just called Holborn. There are very few no.’s here, just largebuildings with names. Then there’s Holborn Circus. This is a mammoth junctionwhere 6 roads cross (jumping lights here requires much practice.) The buildingno.’s here make no sense at all, but there’s only a large bank, Maxwellnewspapers, and British Telecom to worry about, anyway. The last sectionis Holborn Viaduct. Doubles as a bridge. This is the end of our journeyand as a consolation the no.’s actually make sense.
There are quite a few streets like this in town, but not quite as long- when confused ask a cabbie - they normally tell you where to go.
Sometimes I wonder why I do this job, the same answer always comes upand it’s not getting wet and dirty every day. It’s not mailroom geezerswith senile dementia and bad attitudes. It’s ’cos I like to ride my bike,’cos basically it makes me feel good. Sometimes I even get large endorphinrushes and if someone is gonna pay me to ride my bike, well, what can Isay to that? Maybe they could put the rates up.
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