Mobike, Ono, Pony et al
If you aren’t familiar with the names in that title, then you might think this blog is about a Japanese animation or some new fad which involves ‘catching them all’.
[Although, strangely, I just remembered I watched My Neighbour Totoro the other day, which is totes adoraballs.]
Anyway, if you live in one of the UK’s major cities, you might have noticed some rather clunky-looking bicycles being left for dead on the pavement, like some velocipedal ‘28 Days Later’. Not unlike their four-wheeled cousin the supermarket trolley, which also turns up abandoned in seemingly random places, these bikes have become somewhat of an epidemic, and - yep you guessed it - an annoyance.
After all, is there anything that doesn’t annoy me?
I will immediately state that I LOVE cycling, and I would always encourage it. And I have seen plenty of people using these Pay-As-You-Go bicycles, and that is of course a good thing. A great thing. But …
BUT.
People do leave them in the dumbest of places. And I don’t just mean slightly inconvenient.
I mean plain dumb, irresponsible, thoughtless, “Why the fuck did you just dump that in the middle of the pavement?!” places.
Like the middle of the pavement.
Or, for, example, the area out the front of my block of flats. This is sectioned off by a wall and clearly Private, but being close to a bus stop and main road, it attracts an inordinate number of ‘dead’ bikes. Sometimes I’ll come home to find 3 of them propped up on the gravel outside, as welcome as fresh steaming turds. Maybe people think “Well I shouldn’t leave it on the pavement, so I’ll dispose of it on this rather spacious and convenient forecourt”.
Oops it’s in my lounge …
So I got thinking - Possession is nine tenths of the Law, right? And if someone deposited an item on my property (well not exactly mine, but part of the communal area that I rent), then I can lay claim to it? So then it would be mine.
Actually, I lie.
I didn’t just ‘get thinking’. I thought of this when I came home drunk one night, found a Mobike bang in the middle of the driveway, and escorted it into my living room where it stayed for 3 whole days. Until I got bored of it and dumped it outside by the bins. About a week later it finally disappeared.
As far as I’m concerned, the bike was left on my private property and therefore I’m in my right to lay claim to it.
It was put there. Someone donated it to me.
Therefore it’s mine. So, let’s say I did this for every rental bike kindly donated to me. Until I had about, say, 20 or so. I could save them all up, and then one eventually, in the middle of the night, take them all out into the park and weld them together in some kind of giant bicycular ornament. A Banksy-esque anonymous statement, a protest to those morons who think it’s acceptable to ditch their ride in the middle of a public thoroughfare.
This is my plan. A plan with no drawbacks… except for my lack of storage space and minimal knowledge of welding. But drop me a line if you’d like to help!
Dead Ponies.