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For eleven strenuous weeks, Stephen, Toby, Mark and Alistar performed their miracles. The frame was fabricated within the first three and personally transported by Stephen to receive its exclusive livery.
I rued I would not glimpse its steely sublimity first hand, nor pass one calloused palm over a frictionless tube until spraying had been duly carried out.
Other parts were promptly couriered to the shop. I made several return visits to salivate over the expanding inventory, each time being welcomed with warm smiles and learned conversation.
A customised carbon fibre fork was produced by Wound Up and shipped over from America to accommodate the frame’s extra height.
Stephen drove to Bournemouth twice to inspect Alister’s efforts, fully intending to collect the frame on his initial visit but convinced, after scrupulous deliberation, that further Lacquer needed applying to the logo to ensure its edges were seamless with the surrounding paint and each letter was invisible to enchanted fingertips.
I was emailed photographs prior and subsequent to each coat’s application as a result of what I later deemed to be an ill-judged request, since every jpeg amounted to a sneering taunt that I could look, but not touch.
Once Stephen and Alistair were unanimous in proclaiming artistic excellence, it was time for the sorcery of Prestige’s Dr. Frankenstein to animate a monster far more obliging and attractive to behold than Mary Shelly’s Darwinian nightmare.
Stephen had joined forces with handful of accomplished mechanics before Toby but was adamant the skills, ingenuity and commitment of his latest recruit placed him in a different league. Within days I realised this acclamation had been modest. He arranged for replacement wheel rims upon identifying a solitary hairline scratch I’d have been far too impetuous to notice.
He attached and configured the Roloff Hub using an assortment of 20 nuts and bolts with two pairs of Allen screws residing in holes between the chain and seat stays to enable the rear drop out, disk brake, pads and hub to slide forwards and backwards as a single entity. An indispensable facility when adjusting chain tension.
Middleburn’s commander in chief paid a flyby visit, eulogizing over the hub’s marriage of one of his delightful cranks.
He worked tirelessly through all a hours, refusing coffee breaks, frequently clocking off after dark and on one occasion, having to waddle indignantly on cleats to catch his connecting train at Eastbourne.
On the 1st of May 2015, at six o clock on a clement Friday evening, a week before the general election, my onerous sentence in pedalling purgatory entered its final moments. A dream that had tormented me for over a year had been afforded divine physical presence. Destiny was about to begin. There it was, the showroom’s centrepiece.
A Cyclical catharsis. The Dawes’ heart, The Giant’s soul and the Pashley’s panache, preserved in ravishing Reynolds rigidity. Frosty silver on glossy Sabbath. Classical charm fused with contemporary luxury. All that remained was for Toby to replace the lurid lime green pedals he’d attached for an evaluative spin, and for the bank to willingly depart with a six and three zeros.
I had entered Prestige’s domain assuming my knowledge accounted for every asset of a bicycles ageless anatomy. I had departed, not for good, imbued with wisdom about appendages that might as well have formed part of an Alien’s exoskeleton.
However. There remained one profound concern. In light of my negligible contribution to its composition, the majestic creature I now ushered towards a coast bathed in soft gold, may not accept me as its rightful owner.
Within two turns of the malleable Middleburn crank, fear conceded to rapture. Such fulsome clichés as silky responsiveness, sublime control, enviable comfort, and stability to rival that of the Pope’s pension are hopelessly inept to describe what Prestige had created. If a bicycle were a Cadillac, this was a priceless prototype, a machine that subsumed its man.
Where a dérailleurs grinding grudges had emanated, there now ticked the Rholoff’s tranquillity. The Scwalble Marathon tyres purred with no hint of a pop. The front fork reflected the sun’s crimson cadenza, igniting echoes of a carbon fuelled past. I wondered how I had ever allowed one of life’s legendary pastimes to propel me to the edge of sanity.
For the first time into a westerly breeze, I was smiling. As a lonesome Rodie puffed past on his Genesis Volare, my smile broadened. Why with pride did there have to be struggle?
Strava was an abomination I was delighted to abandon to expert sufferers. Those whose lives hinged on numerical conquests. Whose eyes acknowledged nothing but the next tyre in the crocodile. Whose sense of fulfilment depended on bridging the gap between their ravaged muscles and the aching lungs of a sworn Rival.
Whose instincts compelled them to tear up a flagged portion of tarmac in a single minute, rather than take two to bid the sun goodnight. Those who would forsake the transcendent beauty of a star spangled sky to transcend another hero in Ditching Beacon’s league.
I didn’t resent these people, I respected them but I was happy to have learned how not to become one.
On Shoreham’s’ deserted harbour road the heady cocktail of hulking industry and maritime repose was surpassed only by the lithe synergy whose steel I commanded. How many more miles to Babylon. A hundred, a thousand, a million? It didn’t matter. Cycling was mine again.
