I try my best to be positive about this place. I really do. But the UK continues to surprise me in how it under-delivers. Right now I am furious.
When I first moved here I had my bike stolen. I placed it outside a coffee shop where I went to buy a coffee, for no less than 2,5 minutes. It took that long for someone to steal it. Somehow I can deal with that. Down in their luck, said erstwhile-bobcat driver saw the opportunity to make a few bob for the family, and took my bike to sell to some complicit Cambridge undergrad. Or at least that’s the story I comfort myself with.
But tonight’s events leave me gobsmacked. My (newish) bike was locked up safely in a well-lit area of Oxford this time. In the pouring rain. As I approached it to cycle home I noticed something was wrong. Perhaps it was the fact that it was upside down. And that the wheel was visibly buckled… I’m not entirely sure. But sure enough, some wretched English youth (or possibly a 20-something parent of 3 kids under the age of 7, who knows…) had deemed it fit to exact their global inadequacy complex on my dear mule. “They” had literally kicked the shit out of it. Read more…
