onionbagblog

Honey – I’ve sold the bike …but I’ve gone and bought another one.

Bugger.

There was just something so utterly irresistible about the aesthetics of the bonkers customised multi-coloured Moutlon bicycle. I can’t say whom it was customised for exactly, but now the baton has been handed over to me, and the bicycle is in my hands. I’m half expecting to discover a big bag of weed statched away in the rear saddlebag.

That’s the beauty of putting some fancy artwork on your F-frame – it’s a genuine DIY ethos, and anything goes. If Damien Hirst can paint butterflies on @lancearmstrong’s Le Tour bike, then a Moulton with fancy paintwork and four horns is all right by me.

All the better that I managed to bag the bike for a cheeky £63.

“Would you accept a cash offer of £100 to close the sale early?”

I asked the eBay seller, with twenty-four hours of bidding remaining.

“No chance,”

came back the reply.

Donchta just love the Invisible Hand and the free market?

Riding bicycles should be about fun. You could never be accused of not having a sense of humour, cycling around on a multi-coloured coloured Moulton that looks like a cross between Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Quadrophenia. I don’t know whether I should ride it, or enter the bike in a comedy open mic slot.

The fragrant mrs onionbagblogger has given it the name of My Big Gay Bike, and with good reason as well. The social history of the machine is that it was previously owned by an incredibly camp old Queen about town.

You don’t say.

If the rainbow mudguards weren’t enough of a giveaway, then the phallic penis colour painted bike pump would have confirmed the campness. Plus I bet underneath all that rainbow symbolism, the original colour of the F frame was probably… pink.

There are some slight mechanicals to be sorted out before the multi-coloured Moulton is road worthy. My man at the Moulton Preservation Society will no doubt be up for the challenge, once he has managed to take the machine seriously.

I’m not sure if Mr MPS will view the bicycle as a blatant act of sabotage, or something to be celebrated. I know which camp I fall in.

But when to ride the multi-coloured Moulton? I’m looking forward to showing it off on the school run; I think some of the bike snobs over at le velo might not be so understanding as the kids from SE17.

Hopefully it will prove to be bike thief scum proof. I’ve had a decent run of late. I reckon the parts are actually worth more individually than the overall sum, in a strange, twisted fate of bicycling economics. The saddlebags alone are sold on eBay for around £40.

The once act of vandalism that I had to undertake was to rip off the floral covers adorning both back and front saddle backs. These were camper than a fortnight away with the Boy’s Brigade in a communal tent down in Brighton.

And so if you see an exhibitionist bicycling around town on the multi-coloured Moulton, please raise your hand with a welcoming Chapeau!

I think I’ve just blown my bicycling anonymity.