Journeys Of A London Bicycle Courier

Jon Day's cycle geography chronicles his time connecting business and opportunity from his tired old saddle. With day's superb essay now in paperback, urban cyclist celebrates with this exclusive extract...

- Jon Day

The first courier company that would give me a job was a desperate outfit based in a railway arch in Hoxton, just about clinging on amongst the graphic designers and internet entrepreneurs that have come to dominate the area. Fleetway Flyers consisted of two men who sat in their squalid office issuing edicts to a ragged band of riders through an aging Bakelite microphone. Trevor owned the operation and Frank did the controlling. Frank was an Irishman with a lilting voice, Trevor a myopic old cockney.

The yellowed, curling map of London pinned to the wall of the office was rarely consulted. Fossilised routes were trailed in greasy fingermarks across the battered A–Z that lived in the office, and carved into the brains of the regular riders like paths across a muddy field. For most of the day Trevor and Frank sat doing the Sun crossword and drinking instant coffee from Styrofoam cups, which they’d slowly nibble to pieces, interrupted only by the occasional trilling of the phones. In the afternoon Trevor would go out and lose money on the horses.

My colleagues at Fleetway were a diverse bunch, but they all had their reasons for being there. Like running away to sea, or joining the circus, couriering can appeal, as it did for me, as a mild act of rebellion. Others worked the circuits because they had to. You don’t need to speak very good English to be a bicycle courier, and so the workforce is composed largely of economic migrants, attracted by the lax fiscal scrutiny and flexible working hours. As long as the packages got delivered then the controllers had little interest in who did the delivering. When one courier got deported another would silently inherit his bicycle and call sign – a number used to identify a rider out on the road – only a slightly modulated accent over the radio betraying the change.