Lets face it, Singlespeeding splits lugies in the face of common sense, it leaves a flaming parcel of dog shit on the doorstep of normality and vents falafel tinged colon gas in the general direction of logic. As a singlespeeder you may view it as your right to consider yourself the crazy paving , a pioneering idiot breaking a virgin trail, the singlemost foolhardy individual in time gone by. But you'd be wrong. History is littered with Singlespeeders if you look hard enough .
Take a glance down your street and hazard a guess as to who has a Betamax video recorder in their attic. Singlespeeder. The fact that there are fuck all tapes that will fit in it are immaterial. It's "better" and that's what counts. The Betamax owner will drone on like an air raid siren extolling the virtues of Betamax over VHS whilst glossing over the fact that the vast majority of the public have bought something else and think they are a knob for going on about Beta. Singlespeeders go back further than that though.
For instance Sir Walter Raleigh was sent off by Elizabeth the First to discover the world and claim it for England. The twat returned with a potato and then to make matters worse shagged one of the Queen's maids and got caught. Soon after, Elizabeth had his head. Definite singlespeed attitude.
Then there was Thomas Telford. The total moron built a network of canals throughout the UK without even considering that the car would be invented in the next century. I mean come on Tom, everybody knew that straight and simple was not the way forward. The great British public needed complexity, junctions, roundabouts and congestion. However, Telford's Singlespeed credentials are slightly slurred with the omission that he built a bridge with suspension over the Menai strait, and then it gets worse as he gives up his canals and starts making roads. Bloody traitor. Dabbles with singlespeeding ethics and then goes back to the mainstream.Telford's singlespeed legacy lives on though, kept alive by the sandal wearing, lentil snorting longboat dwellers busily going nowhere on their festering aqua bridleways.
Don't forget Benjamin Franklin, who fastened an iron spike to a silk kite and flew it in a thunderstorm just to prove that lightening was electricity. What a total and utter knobhead. Any normal cyclist would have handed the kite string to their wife, not Benjamin though, he's a singlespeeder, he hung on himself and survived long enough to write a shed load of waffle that keeps America free to this day, or something like that.
Other cases for consideration:-
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William Shakespeare - not singlespeeder, too complicated, text too small not enough pictures
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Winston Churchill - fat bastard, smoked cigars, half pissed most nights, shagged Germans. Definite singlespeeder.
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Henry the Eighth - nope, got far too much sex to be a singlespeeder
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Queen Bodacia - she's in, but only ‘cos she fitted gurt big knife blades to her chariot in an attempt to make it look less shonky
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Vincent Van Gogh - cut off body parts to save weight, a bit too jey for singlespeeding we think
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The Duke of York - pointlessly walked up and down hills. Appointed life member and presented with singlespeeder medal of honour.
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Napoleon - fuck off! he's French So, don't go thinking there's something unique or clever in your one speed dalliances, the fact is many others have been laughed at well before you. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde "Gears are the curse of the thinking classes"
(c)Dave Barter June 2004
Previously published in The Outcast Magazine
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