Riding Twice on a Bicycle
Every year dictionaries admit neologisms in their columns. Mansplain is a recent example. There is a most felicitous expression which has been used in Mauritius for half a century, and whose meaning is immediately obvious. Riding Twice On a Bicycle. There can’t be anyone from the island of my birth who is not familiar with it. It originated in an anecdote which may well have been fictional: There was a law preventing a cyclist carrying another
passenger on the frame. One policeman stopped someone contravening this and was writing a report. Sir, he told the hapless cyclist, I am filing a report about you. You have been riding twice on a bicycle. I strongly believe that this phrase should gain legitimacy.
Since I am a great believer in the two for the price of one practice, here’s another:
In the village, the priest and the policeman had an on-going feud. The priest would use ill-disguised references of adultery committed by men in uniform who were not postmen. The policeman had sworn revenge, and was keeping an eye on a possible infringement to the law by the man of the cloth. His turn came one evening, when he saw the reverend freewheeling down a one-way street on his bicycle with no lights on. He stopped him gleefully.
-Mon père, he told him as he opened his notebook, I am filing a report here on two counts: One, riding a bicycle along a no-entry road, two, using a wheeled vehicle without a proper light. As you can see you are a danger to the public and yourself.
-Mon fils, replied the clergyman, there was no danger at all. Wherever I go, God is with me.
-In that case, mon père, I am adding a third infringement. You just admitted God was with you on your bicycle. That’s a blatant case of riding twice on a bicycle.
In Mauritius, we say, Jamais deux sans trois. So, I include a photograph proving that you can grow bicycles.
