Walls Ice Cream

There are few competitions that I reliably win, but I have never yet been beaten in the traditional Dutch drinking game of "who's had the best bicycle accident". I was about 15 and cycling past the end of the local shopping precinct. A carrier bag of clothes that I had over my wrist lodged in the spokes behind the front forks, locked the wheel and tossed me off head first over the handlebars. So far, so routine.

It was going home from school time and the bus stop was packed with pupils from the rival school so I had a large and hostile audience. As I landed, as well as grazing my hands elbows and knees, my head struck the big metal flap of an A-board sign advertising Walls ice-cream. When I tried to get up it became clear that my head and neck were through the sign and I couldn't pull myself out. I must have looked something like a long injured cat who had put his head out of the catflap and then tried to pull it back in. I eventually had to untangle myself from the bike and crawl the rest of the way through the sign.



Richard "gold medal" B