– CYCLOGEOGRAPHY –

I worked, carrying the day’s rushes – heavy blue tapes sheathed in their grey plastic wallets; volatile nitrate film adorned with ‘no smoking’ signs and warning skulls and crossbones; hard drives stuffed with data – which I did by bicycle. Soon I’d volunteer for any job taking me outside the office and across London, the further the better. Going to the archival warehouse to dig out old tapes or embarking on treks across the city for some specific prop became absurdly exhilarating. It was the solitude I valued, the freedom of the outside, the sounds and smells of the street. Soon I gave up my TV job and became a bicycle courier.

I’d grown up in London and had always loved to cycle. My Dutch mother and car-phobic father ensured I learned to ride a bike almost as soon as I could walk. They’d push me along the road by the scruff of my neck, riding beside me and steering me through gaps and around potholes with the delicate touch of puppeteers. The earliest bike I remember cycling under my own steam was a war-era, single speed machine with an iron frame and crumbling rubber grips. It was a faithful conspirator in my early explorations of the ­local territory. Together we built up our own map of the area – noting the location of a chipped kerbstone that allowed us effortlessly to ramp up onto the pavement; the green car, always parked in the same spot, which shielded our turn from oncoming traffic – charting features that felt as permanent as the roads we travelled over and the buildings we passed on our rounds.

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