Back(y) In The Saddle

If you came to the Belles fund raising quiz night back into last year you might remember the question about a song sung by a computer in the 1968 film ‘A Space Odyssey’. So for those wondering what back(y) actually means, the clue is in the lyrics:

Daisy Daisy, give me your answer do,
I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marrige,
I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet
Upon the seat
OF A BICYCLE MADE FOR TWO!

And there you have it – I’m not sure who was who, perhaps I was Daisy and Sian was Harry Dacre (see how much you learn from these blogs?) or maybe the other way around. The bottom line is that Sian and I shared a bike up to the Gatehangers where I decided it would be safer to walk down to Westcott.



It wasn’t so much I didn’t trust Sian, or that I thought Amber might decide to caution us for ‘larking about on a Sunday morning’, it was the icy roads I’d had a warning about just before eight o’clock. Oh yes, and the paper mans endorsement of this warning. Riding a bike on ice is one thing, doing a back(y) is something completely different. The thought of whizzing down the hill from Ashendon to Westcott on the back of Sians bike seemed like a pretty bad idea.

So there you have it – back(y) – if it were to appear in the Oxford English then I’d expect to see ‘the practice of sharing ones single seat bicycle with a passenger balanced on the back’.


Alex x