Maybe it’s a traumatic stress disorder thing, maybe it’s the lack of drugs, or maybe I’ll never get over it. But after five (six is it?) years off the road and the most utterly complete u-turn in my life that surely it’s possible to make I still, without fail, dream vividly nearly every single night something around my life as a courier. Easiest to accept are the crashes, or the out of control can’t handle the sodding bike ones. I guess they’re like the dreams of falling that freud and his mob love to tell us they know all about. Less easy to put to bed are the ones where everything just flows like the best days I ever had on the road- you know, not money or jobs, but that marvellous sensation that we hopefully are all well aware of, feeling in complete mastery of the streets of central London. These are the dreams that tend to follow me around all day the next while I bump into things and it slightly weirds me out. I mean, six months later, sure- that's acceptable, but five buggering years?? There must be something wrong with me, well ok, wrongerer. I’m hugely proud of the times I had as a number, I’d never ever change my choices- and I’m largely happy in what I do nowadays- but I’ve never been able to quite extract myself from being part of Hornets, AY and then Creative- oh ya- and shittystint too for a bit (until that terrible thing happened). I find myself occasionally quite unaccountably introducing myself to people as ‘I used to be a bicycle courier’, at which point they know I must be completely mad, as the phrase means absolutely nothing to them whatsoever.
Here I am, several years and a bloody lifetime later, and never before has the phrase “the proud, the few, the otherwise unemployable” meant so much. For the moment I’m out of work yet again, and although I (hope to fuck that I) have the chance at a good job soon-come, the idea, the draw- of clambering back on board my old grey workhorse which still sits in the corner of the room is very, very strong indeed.
I do not post this out of a desire to be talked in or out or anything else of it, because although I’d clearly love to rewind the clock the chances are slim to nothing, and I’ve had my time a while ago, boy was it good too. And although I'm rarely in touch i'd like you all to know that being one of you made me a square peg in a round hole. The marvellous thing was that everyone else was too, this was massively important to me then and still is now.
No, I’m curious to know whether this is a common experience for other exengers too. Can you actually get having been a London Bicycle Messenger out of your system, ever? Please relate.
Or am I going to have to wake up on my deathbed in a hundred and fifty years time* still screaming about that time I folded myself neatly into the back of a number 8 bus on centrepoint in the snow while prettyboy got the gap instead? The basterd.

*Despite the fact that I still smoke like a factory, I’m an optimist, ok?

**Fuck me, I even miss squirrel chopppes- I must be ill.

Yes. I am. Can't fuckin wait.

That's the sound of my legs falling offfffffff.