One morning, while wandering around the Wandsworth area, I saw an old rusty bicycle with flat tyres beside a string of garages.
Two labourers were next door, and I asked them, “Can I have the bike?” They looked at me and said, “Polish.” I thought, That’s fine too because it will take time to polish this bike, which will earn me money, but how much would they pay? I asked, “How much money?” They said, “You Polish.” Yes, I will polish it, but how much are you paying? I wanted to ask. Then one of them said, “Are you from Poland?” That’s when I realized what was going on.
“No,” I replied, “I am from Austria.”
“Yeah, Arnold Schwarzenegger,” they laughed. I thought, Well, it won’t take Arnold to push this bike away from here, and I grabbed it and started pushing, taking huge strides. They didn’t say anything, so I figured it was fair game, just sitting there waiting for someone to take it. I never pushed a bicycle so quickly in my life.
I covered around 20 miles daily on foot, so having a bicycle felt like a blessing. It had a combination lock attached to the frame, and I spent two hours trying to open it but couldn’t. I had some knowledge of opening combination locks from my youth in Austria, where I practiced a lot—though I never stole a bike or anything else.
I had two problems, though: the flat tyres and the fact that I couldn’t lock the bike. I went to a local DIY shop on Putney High Street and purchased a bicycle pump for £3. It was an investment that hurt me financially, but I couldn’t think of another option. The bike was only useful with the tyres pumped up. I crossed my fingers, hoping there wasn’t a puncture because I didn’t have any tools, and fixing or buying a new tube would have set me back even further.
I know we’re talking about very little money here, but I arrived with only £205 and had to be careful with my spending. A room cost £100 a week at the time, and my remaining money wouldn’t have covered even two weeks in Nic’s place.
I pumped up the two tyres and waited for half an hour. Thankfully, they didn’t deflate. I jumped on the bike and rode back to the DIY shop to return the pump, but since I couldn’t open the combination lock, there was no way to leave the bike unlocked on the pavement. If I took the bike into the shop to return the pump, that might not go over well. I hung around outside, thinking hard about a solution.
An hour later, my luck turned. An older woman approached the nearby Waitrose. I sat there minding my business, and she tied her dog to the assigned hook in front of the supermarket. As she looked around, she saw me. Our eyes met.
I made a victory sign with my fingers and signaled toward the dog, assuring her that I would look after it. She said, “For £2?”
I said, “Yes, madam, no problem.” She thought my two-finger gesture meant £2, but so be it.
“Can I trust you?” she asked.
I replied, “Yes.” I didn’t fully understand what she was saying, but in life, if you say yes in most situations, things tend to work out. She unhooked the dog, handed me the leash, and off she went. This was the moment I had been waiting for.
“Use the difficulty,” as Sir Michael Caine once said in a line from Elephant and Castle. Whatever the situation is, you must make something good out of it. If you can take even a quarter of 1% positive from a bad situation, you’re winning.
I used common sense because it was all I had at the time. I attached the dog’s leash to the bicycle frame with a triple knot. The bike now had a guard dog.
Nobody would steal a bike with a dog tied to it, and nobody would want a dog that came with a rusty old bike. I knew it would only take me a few minutes to get the refund, but I couldn’t risk leaving the bike unlocked. I was desperate for the bike, and I figured others might be as well.
It seemed highly unlikely that someone would steal both the bike and the dog. It was a calculated risk I felt comfortable taking. I returned the pump and told the salesperson, “No good, no good.” He looked at me with a mix of disgust and impatience. Thankfully, I had the receipt, and he returned my cash. I rushed out of the shop to find the dog sitting exactly where I’d left it.
I untied the dog, sat back down on the bench, and waited for the woman. She returned about 10 minutes later, gave me £2, and we went our separate ways.