Coventry Bicycle Shops

I got my first and only ever bike from Pollards on the Binley Road, a racer. I used it to get to and from work in Coleshill. I used to cycle from Eastern Green down the A45 to the Stonebridge roundabout, across three lanes of traffic then up to Coleshill School where I taught mathematics - it was a grammar school when I started there. After about 10 years I lost my nerve with the near misses, mostly from women using their rear view mirror to complete their facial make up for the day. I reverted to cycling through the country. Ironically, the only time I came off my bike was on a bend on a little country lane where Tom White had his scrap yard (Eaves Green?). I skidded on gravel going round a bend and ended up jammed under a milk float. which was travelling in the opposite direction. I felt very sorry for the poor driver who was ashen white when he came round the float to try to get me from under his vehicle. Because it was such a bad blind bend we were both going very slowly so the only damage done was to my pride!

That was the main bike shop when we were kids. An unpretentious shop where you could get anything for bikes. When I was 9, I had a couple of (glass in those days) pop bottles in a shopping bag slung over my handlebars. Stupid, as when I tried to turn into our drive, they jammed between my front wheel and the forks, pitching me off the bike. The fork was slightly bent, but my front wheel was rather mangled and out of true, with several wrecked spokes. (I and the pop bottles survived.) I took my wheel to Mr Talbot, who said "leave it here". A day or two later, I went to collect it and it was as good as new. He only charged me 2/-. About 4 years later, I went into the shop get a few steel balls, the sort you find in a ball race. Mr Talbot asked what size, and when I said about 5/16", he looked a bit puzzled and asked what make of bike they were for, as it was very unusual for steel balls to be that big. I told him it was for a very old bike. He said "it must be". He went over and got some tins, which he opened. One of them had the biggest balls he stocked, but they were only 1/4" in diameter, so I bought some of those They had surface rust, and had obviously been there for many years. I dare not tell him the true purpose of the balls. Nothing to do with cycles. No, my friend had turned up a model steel cannon in metalwork class at his school, and they were to be the cannonballs for it! We used banger powder at first, then later our homemade gunpowder. The balls should have been a bit bigger, but they worked. Eventually, we ran of of balls, so I took one of the last ones as a sample and went back to purchase some more. When I showed Mr Talbot the sample ball, spotting the surface rust, he said "that looks old", to which I replied "well, they came out of an old tin". He said nothing but gave me a very funny look.

And there's more. About Talbot's bike shop in Earlsdon Street, to wit. Some years later, having miraculously survived home-made explosives as a kid (maybe there was someone up there watching over us!), I was working at Massey Ferguson's R&D place in Maudslay Road (not the big tractor production factory in Banner Lane, you'll understand). At lunchtime, one or two chaps used to like to meet up for a game of darts at lunchtime, and I got sucked in. I'd never played darts before in my life, and did not have my own darts. All the other chaps had expensive-looking precision darts, you know, the sort you see on telly used by the likes of Gerwen and Littler, the ones with detachable fins. So off I toddled to Talbot's shop. They had darts in the window. Not precision devices. No, the set I bought had chunky brass bodies, and the fins (I think the proper name is flights) were made of a single piece of solid blue plastic which screwed into the brass body. The darts had the appearance of a WW2 bomb. The set cost me 75p, so each dart cost me 25p. They worked, and I usually averaged 26 (a 1, a 20 and a 5). One of the regular players worked in the design office, and he made a comment about my darts. He announced to one and all that my darts looked like "turds with flights"!