The post this morning brought an unexpected gift – somewhere between a present and a card – in the form of a pamphlet from the Candlestick Press called Ten Poems about Bicycles. It includes Machines, by Michael Donaghy with this final couplet:
Who only by moving can balance,
Only by balancing move.
Lovely. But what a sad irony that it arrived on the same day as this news. Somebody, somewhere, just doesn’t get it.
Town Mouse 
that bit on the vans is depressing and kinda sad really. i hope this is fought as much as possible, i wish i had a mail man back home delivering by bike. apparently somebody missed the memo on the UK’s climate targets, which is going to be hard to meet as it is, but things like this are not helping. and electrics while nice should not be replacing cycles at all.
And especially not in Cambridge where people actually do cycle … joined up government, anyone?
As an ex postie (both on foot, cycle and in van) I’m saddened but not surprised by that news. Posties using private vehicles on delivery are not the ones using bicycles (obviously) so it won’t address that issue. Royal Mail always seemed behind the times. I would estimate that in 30 years they will exitedly discover ‘environmentalism’.
Sarah
PS I prefered my cycle to any other method while on delivery. The only thing it couldn’t deal with was high rise flats.
yes – and watch them trumpeting their one or two ‘zero emissions’ delivery vans while quietly sweeping under the carpet the thousands of truly zero emissions bicycles they have replaced.
Sadly they never do seem to get it do they! xx
too true, but then what would we blog about?
Why should the Post Office give a damn about choosing the more expensive option, any mote than the grossly overmanned Civil Service or the ridiculously overpaid politicians? They all know that in the end WE mugs will have to cough up, one way or another.
[…] while a novelist in Scotland discovers there is such a thing as bad weather; she also notes a new, slim volume of bike poetry. An Eastside cyclist wonders why he still gets harassed when he’s less of a problem than Critical […]
Wait, the Post Office uses bikes???!???
Apparently so. But for how long?