DAVID BOWIE’S NOT DEAD. WE ALL KNOW THAT, RIGHT?
David Bowie’s just waiting until things get even more uncool, then he’ll surprise us by returning to the world he left so suddenly bereft, and save us from ourselves through the power of slightly affected singing, flinty saxophone solos, and androgyny.
It was with this in mind that I decided, at a recent appearance at a theatre in Lincoln, to ride onto the stage on a Brompton, accompanied by the thumping opening beats of Young Americans. Once the riotous applause for this stunning opening to the evening had subsided, I engaged in a highly selfindulgent riff about the possible existence of some previously unheard Bowie recordings, in which he muses about the sexy love cosmos of the Britishbuilt commuting bike.
“Folding bike…” I sang, in warbling homage to the great Bard of Brixton, to an increasingly unsettled audience at the Lincoln Drill Hall who had come for an evening of discussion about the Tour de France.
“Folding bike…” I continued undeterred. “…I ride you from A to B…” And with that, I stared quixotically, and not without a hint of existential wonder, at the bicycle I had neatly collapsed and placed next to me on the stage. I could almost hear the scraping of chairs towards the back of the hall, as people made their way to the box office to demand a refund.
I think my Bowie fixation, which began when I was first introduced to Ziggy Stardust by some older, cooler kids, as we swigged bootleg Colt 45 lager and hung out in the bandstand in Bedford Park in 1985, had gone into overdrive on a recent visit to Berlin.
Berlin, to me, is synonymous with Bowie. He spent many drug-addled years here, and produced some of his best (and worst) work as he flounced around, making portentous remarks. As recently as 2013, when he suddenly released the beautiful, dark Where Are We Now? he nodded to the German capital with the mysterious lyric, “Had to get the train from the Potsdamer Platz. You never knew that I could do that”.
Recently, with that mournful song rumbling through my inner ear, I found myself unlocking a hire bike near the Potsdamer Platz. I never knew that I could do that. In fact, at certain points during the unlocking process, which necessitated an agonisingly complex 20-minute phone call to NextBike Berlin, I began to doubt that I would ever manage to do that. But, I was so glad that I persisted. Bowie was smiling down on me.
I was visiting Berlin with five old friends, two of whom now live there. We each took a bike, and soon we pushed off; a small, middleaged, British peloton. We hit the Tiergarten, Berlin’s wild equivalent of Hyde Park, and the racing started. Tom (NHS manager) was wiry and aggressive on a bike, Simon (film translator) was solid and dependable, Sean (English lecturer) had a notable engine, John (investment banker) wily and risk-taking. He developed at least seven different ways of riding the bike over the course of a long weekend, one of which involved him standing on the saddle and using the luggage straps at the front as makeshift reins, as if riding a circus horse. And you wonder why the financial crash of 2008 happened.
That left Dan (financial adviser), who had last done any form of physical activity in 1986. He needed coaxing around, which involved the purchase of a bottle of gin, from which he swigged often and liberally. He seemed to warm to the task.
We went everywhere; from the mansions of Charlottenburg, to Checkpoint Charlie, through the Museumsinsel and along Unter den Linden, across the Brandenburg Gate and out towards the Grünewald (Green Forest), where we swam (a bit naked, as you do). What a Berlin odyssey!
Sean had a Strava thing on his wrist. On the second day, we actually rode 60km, which in my books is quite a lot.
The bikes defined our weekend reunion, changing the experience utterly. There was no trudging along unfamiliar streets and unwelcoming tourist attractions. Something about our absolute and total mobility, and the fact that the city was open to us at the turn of a pedal, made the nature of the visit thrilling. There was only freewheeling, occasional speed, constant laughter and endless fun.
So, what did I learn? David Bowie is not dead. He has set up a bike hire scheme in Berlin.
There was only freewheeling, occasional speed and endless fun