The Red Bicycle

This is a photo of a Red Bicycle. We shall call it “The Red Bicycle”. The Red Bicycle is chained up to a metal fence in a main road, near to the Station in Thalwil, where we live. I say “main road”, but traffic density here can probably be favourably compared with a country lane, I walked down recently in Liphook in Hampshire, as my son will testify.

Back to “The Red Bicycle”. We think that it has been chained there for about three months now. It is 300 yards from the station entrance, and there are other bike stands nearer. There are no other chained bikes nearby. It is not exactly a meeting point for chained up bikes, where chained up bikes can have a quiet chat over a coffee. No – this is a very lonely Red Bicycle, at least when it is chained up here.

This raises a number of important social and philosophical questions.

Firstly, why hasn’t it been stolen? It is a very nice Red Bicycle. It clearly doesn’t belong to anyone. It might be lonely and anyone stealing it, would be doing The Red Bicycle a favour, as well as adding back into the economy a valuable resource, which, at the moment, is lying idle.

Why has no one reported it to the police? There is no notice on it saying “Reported”. Perhaps someone has, but the police have better things to do, and anyway, it is not doing anyone any harm.

Perhaps, it is a work of Art. Some sculptor may have laid out 100 life sized bronze statues over the Austrian mountains; so perhaps, this is one in a series of Red Bicycles, chained to various fences, near to stations in Switzerland. It could be part of the modern art exhibition that is taking place in Basel.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/jul/30/antony-gormley-austrian-mountains-statues

It is always possible that it is a Swiss version of candid camera. Someone has chained it there and now lurks in the nearby undergrowth (not much of that here), and takes films and photos of passers-by, as they look and ponder. All that is missing is for the Red Bike to be able to say “So, wot u ….. looking at then?”

But I think that the real question is whether The Red Bicycle exists when no one is watching it. How do you know it is there? Perhaps it is our act of looking at it that brings it into existence.

At this point, I think that I have exhausted the limits of absurdity and will quit while I am ahead.