Two Wheels

Two Wheels: Matt Seaton. guardianbooks 2007. 250 pages paperback, £9.99. ISBN 978-0-85265-081-3

IF YOU'RE A GUARDIAN reader you already read Matt Seaton's weekly column, 'Two Wheels', and because it invariably contains some witty, perceptive look at cycling in contemporary Britain, you wish you'd cut them out before you put the papers in the recycle bag. Stop grieving. The Guardian has published most of them in this timely book, plus a variety of other essays, features, interviews and book reviews. Some were originally published in Rapha's quarterly house mag, Rouleur.
This isn't a book for sitting down and reading from cover to cover. The pieces are arranged roughly in sections: the campaigning thing, in which Seaton considers the precarious position of the cyclist on the road and what may be done about it; the bicycle as a means to good health ('Get a bicycle,' wrote Mark Twain, 'you will not regret it. If you live.') and whether cycling can cause erectile dysfunction; equipment, spares, and bike shops; the aesthetics of cycling - can you ever be seen in cycle clips, and are panniers the ultimate in naff gear?; Cycling Weekly, the magazine we love to hate; and of course cycle sport - Matt's a regular LVRC rider in the A cats.
The good thing about the column is that it isn't something you'd find in a so-called 'special interest' magazine. Because it's in a morning paper it has to be as many things as possible to as many readers as possible - which it is, by and large, mainly because the writer is not just a cyclist but a literate cyclist, who's read Henry Miller, seen films by de Sica, recognises pictures by Duchamp, Beuys, Caspar David Friedrich.
So whatever you think about The Guardian (and it does have Steve Bell and Doonesbury as well), it's worth begging, borrowing, stealing or even buying one day in the week. And 'Two Wheels' is never likely to dry up, because there's never a shortage of things to write about. In the meantime, do yourself a big favour: spend less than a tenner on this book.