It was never a question of courage—the persistence I showed through injury and frustration demonstrated that. And yet it seemed plain to me that those around me were about to hand me white feathers at any time, as they did in The Four Feathers by A. E. W. Mason. The hero is on a secret mission and because he can’t tell anyone, his four friends each give him a white feather to indicate their view of his cowardice for not riding off to war with them. Undercover with the Dervishes, he saves the lives of each of them in turn, whereby the four feathers are all returned. I first encountered it as a movie on television, the 1956 one called Storm over the Nile, which probably wasn’t the best version but for me got right into the spirit of the occasion.
    
For these sorts of reasons, I planned my operation with great care, and was not at all deterred when as a result of  Rosely’s mishap there was a sudden reluctance on the part of those around me to offer any sort of assistance. I would ride, or try to ride, along the footpath at the very edge of the grassy verge so that in the event of a fall I would have a fifty-fifty chance of landing somewhere soft, depending on whether I toppled to grassy left or concrete right. I would trouble to remove all likely obstacles—rubbish bins, milk bottles and such—and never made any move until there was absolutely no sign of innocent bystanders in the street.  There was a book that I studied assiduously even though it was intended for a reader many years my junior.  But no matter how I went about it, there seemed to be no power on earth that would prevent my body from lurching too far to one side or the other, nor to stop the forward wheel from swishing wildly on its vertical axis, back and forth through roughly one hundred and eighty degrees.
        It was Horrie who suggested a possible solution.  If keeping at a safe distance—he would often be seen in the evenings standing on the front porch silently shaking his head in dismay—he nevertheless felt obliged to offer some form of assistance and this came in the form of advice.  
    “It’s getting’ started that’s got yer buggered. Once they’re on the move, bike’s stay up by ‘emslves.”
    “Sure, but how do I get on it while it’s moving?” I asked. Then I saw he was looking over my shoulder. I shuddered and looked that way as well.