Get a head injury from just 12p per day!

Finding myself with a few hours to spare and no need to rush back from London I got the number 91 bus from St Pancras to Trafalgar Square. It was a lovely day in the capital and there were hundreds of tourists enjoying the sun in the square taking pictures of each other climbing on the lions, sitting by the fountains and standing outside the National Gallery. A crowd was gathering near the steps to the National Gallery and so I went over to have a look. There I saw half a dozen Para Olympic hopefuls demonstrating bowling in an effort to promote the 2012 Olympics. They were all in wheelchairs and helpers placed the bowls in special cups at the top of chutes so that the players could use a stick attached to helmets to knock the chutes in the right direction before getting the helpers to release the bowl.

More interested in adrenalin sports, it took less than a minute for my interest in this to wane and then I headed off down Pall Mall in order to find a rack of Boris’s Bikes. And there it was; a whole row of brand new sparkly hire bikes ready for action. Through this scheme Boris has put 6000 bikes at 300 docking stations all across central London so that “no matter where you are, you shouldn’t be more than a few minutes’ walk from a hire bike”.

You have to pay for access to the bikes but this can be as little as 12p a day

if you pay for a year in advance. And if you use the bikes for less than an hour there’s no extra charge. If you use it for longer then there is a £1 charge. It seems all very simple and is bound to keep the environmentalists and the “keep fit” lobby happy. But you are never going to make everyone happy, there’s always going to be some miserable bugger who wants to ruin it and in this case it’s the “cycle helmets should be compulsory” brigade.

OK so it’s probably a good idea to use a cycle helmet but surely their use should be optional. If I want to put my mental health at risk, don’t I have the right to do so? I remember as kids hammering down the road no-handed on our racers with the wind and rain lashing us, hoping we would be able to stop when it became necessary and then the inevitable grazes and bruises when our optimism was not matched by our cycling skill or technical ability of our bikes. But hey, isn’t that part of being a kid, learning about risk and learning from our own mistakes.

So, with thoughts of the “Nanny State” still running through my head, I wandered back to Trafalgar Square to get the bus to St Pancras and once again passed the 6 wheelchair athletes with lifeless arms and legs still directing bowls by means of a stick attached to their head. And I wondered whether any of these people had fallen off a bicycle and smashed their head on the pavement. And then I wondered how long it would be before some hot shot London lawyer tries to sue the Mayor’s office for injures sustained on one of his bikes which was negligently supplied without a helmet. So my advice is, if you want to use a helmet, buy one but don’t expect someone always to be looking out for you, you have a responsibility to look our for yourself. At least then those of us who want to live life on the edge can do so without fear of prosecution.

Go Boris!