Michael Harding: I have no intention of getting up on a bicycle ever again

A man wearing orange Lycra shorts and a cycling helmet was sitting outside the Jakalope cafe at the Shed Distillery in Drumshanbo. I was waiting for the General, but he hadn’t arrived so I chatted with the cyclist.

He didn’t look like an athlete. He was so puce in the face that I thought he might be on the verge of a coronary event.

“You look very winded for a man that was just pedalling a bike,” I ventured.

He said, “I was cycling around Sheemore and I stopped for the view. And then I decided to climb up.”

I said, “No wonder you’re winded. You’d not see me on the top of Sheemore!”

He looked at my distended belly and said, “Perhaps you should try some cycling yourself.”

It was a fair point. But as I said to the General later, when he arrived, “I have no intention of getting up on a bicycle ever again.”

Then we brought our coffees outside, since there had been rumours all morning that the sun might make a brief appearance before noon.

‘So if you’re not going to get a bicycle,’ the General said, ‘perhaps you should try golf’

I explained to the General that the Jakalope Cafe is where “anybody who is anybody” comes nowadays for a coffee or lunch.

He said, “I didn’t know that there was a chattering class in Leitrim.”

“The chattering classes,” I declared, “come from far and wide nowadays. And the buns in the Jakalope Cafe are second to none.”

I’m delighted the General is back. I was afraid he might not make it through Covid. He had phoned me from Mullingar the previous day.

“I’m home,” he declared.

“My God,” I exclaimed, “I thought you were dead.”

He said, “I escaped.”

I said, “You can’t escape from a nursing home. You were discharged.”

“It wasn’t a nursing home,” he said. “It was a care centre. I had long Covid. But I’m over it.”

“I’m delighted to hear that.”

“I shall come visit you tomorrow,” he announced in a foghorn voice across the phone. He uses WhatsApp to save money. But he must have had a bad internet connection because I couldn’t hear a word he was saying. It was as if he were calling from Mongolia.

“I shall come up to see you.”

I said, “You have no transport.”

“Au contraire,” he declared, “I bought a jeep.”

I can understand the need for helmets; but why the garish padded Lycra?

And he duly arrived, and there we were, just outside the cafe, where he kept a beady eye on the other customers. The man in the Lycra was fingering a croissant.

“So if you’re not going to get a bicycle,” the General said, “perhaps you should try golf.”

“I don’t like golf,” I confessed. “When I was 10 I tried it, but I was useless so I gave it up.”

In fact I gave up football, tennis, chess, scrabble and even Monopoly because I was useless. And it takes an extremely low level of self-esteem to conclude that you’re no good at Monopoly.

I had visions of the General arriving in an €80,000 jeep with digital screens and quadraphonic sound. But I was wrong.

“I am investing in horses,” he explained.

So he actually arrived in a 1999 Toyota Land Cruiser.

“The farmer who sold it to me said he’d prefer to see this vehicle come up his laneway rather than anything made in the past 20 years; these old jeeps were assembled better.”

He opened the back door so I could admire it.

“But it’s a shambles” I exclaimed, looking at the empty whiskey bottles and taking in the stale smell of unwashed stable blankets.

“Admittedly she’s not a show pony,” he said, caressing the rusted towbar, “but she’s a mighty workhorse.”

A coat hanger was protruding from the aerial socket on the bonnet.

“I can even get BBC,” he said, “when I’m driving around Fermanagh.”

“And what were you doing in Fermanagh?” I asked.

“Looking at horses,” he declared. “I’m going to buy and sell on a quick turnaround. You see? I’m back to my old self.”

“Well at least you survived Covid.”

“I did,” he agreed, triumphantly. “And we must be positive. We are still young men.”

We climbed into the jeep and fastened our belts. The cyclist was licking his fingers.

“By the way,” the General remarked, “I can understand the need for helmets; but why the garish padded Lycra?”

It was rhetorical, and I offered no reply.

The General pushed the pedal to the floor, and sufficient fumes emerged from the back end of the vehicle as would make an entire club of cyclists weep with despair.