MS-WU-MSS008-3-50-1

[0264] side, I propped the foot of my stiff leg (I forget which, now
they're both stiff) on the projecting front axle, and I pedalled
with the other. [0265] It was a chainless bicycle, with a free-wheel,
if such a bicycle exists. [0266] Dear bicycle, I shall not call you
bike, you were green, like so many of your generation, I don't
know why. [0267] It is a pleasure to meet it again. [0268] To describe it at
length would be a pleasure.

[0269] It had a little red horn instead of
the bell fashionable in your days. [0270] To blow this horn was for me
a real pleasure, almost a vice. [0271] I will go further and declare
that if I were obliged to record, in a roll of honour, those
activities which in the course of my interminable existence have
given me only a mild pain in the balls, the blowing of a rubber
horn - toot! - would figure ^among the first.

[0272] And when I had to
part from my bicycle I took off the horn and kept it about me.
[0273] I believe I have it still, somewhere, and if I blow it no more,
it is because it has gone dumb. [0274] Even motor-cars have no horns
nowadays, as I understand the thing, or rarely. [0275] When I see one,
through the lowered window of a stationary car, I often stop and
blow it. [0276] This should all be re-written in the pluperfect.

[0277] What
a rest to speak of bicycles and horns. [0278] Un^fort^unately it is not
of them I have to speak, but of her who brought me into the world,
through the hole in her arse if my memory is correct. [0279] First taste
of the shit. [0280] So I shall only add that every hundred yards or so
I stopped to rest my legs, the good one as well as the bad, and
not only my legs, not only my legs.

[0281] I didn't properly speaking
get down off the machine, I remained astride it, my feet on the
ground, my arms on the handle-bars, my head on my arms, and I