Wheels of steal

The Last Straw: Sitting in a café on Thursday morning, trying to think of a column idea, I remembered a recent survey about the effects of sleep deprivation on parents of new babies. It wasn't great, I knew, but maybe it would do.

Then, as I sipped coffee and gazed pensively out the window, across the street, a more dramatic thought hit me. Namely: "My bike's been stolen!"

I ran outside, hoping it wasn't true. But sure enough, there was the pole it had been attached to as recently as two minutes ago, when I last gazed pensively out the window. And there was the bike, gone. I looked up the street and down. I went around the block, and searched alleys. But it had disappeared.

It was the second best bike I ever had, I thought, walking home disconsolately. I'd only just put a new inner tube in it. Sob!

The really annoying thing was, it was my own fault. The bike wasn't locked. I know, I know. It was tied to the pole with one of those elastic carrier bands. I know. Stupid isn't the word. But there are mitigating circumstances - the main one being the effects of sleep deprivation on parents of new babies. At any rate, I can say for a fact that the chain of events leading to the bike's theft began with the birth of my son Daniel.

His arrival had a destabilising effect on our family. Literally. Within 24 hours of it, his brother and sister both lost their stabilisers - the ones on their bikes. It was as if the experience of suddenly having a much younger sibling made them more independent, ready to take on new challenges and responsibilities. On the other hand, rust may have been a factor too. One of Róisín's training wheels just fell off, and she suddenly realised she didn't need either of them.

This was a thrilling moment in the life of a six-year-old, spoiled only by the fact that her five-year-old brother promptly decided that having training wheels was now an unendurable stigma, and his had to go too. I pretended to lose the bicycle wrench, so he wouldn't ruin his sister's hour of glory. But he nagged until I found it. After that, the pair of them took to whizzing around, burning rubber, delighted with their new freedom (except every time they fell off, which was frequently).

The next thing, of course, was that they wanted to cycle to school. Obviously, they were too young for the road. But most of the trip to school is through a park. So, amid great excitement, we set off one morning a few weeks back, their little legs pedalling furiously, while I watched over them from the lofty splendour of my Trek hybrid mountain bike (sob!). When we reached the road, I used my lock - I have a very good one, as it happens - to secure their bikes to a railing, and we walked the rest of the way.

Then I cycled to the café to read the papers. And only there I remembered - damn! No lock. Life is full of such surprises when you're the parent of a new baby. If I recall the recent survey correctly, 25 per cent of us are forgetful; 20 per cent are accident-prone; and the remaining 63 per cent have problems with basic arithmetic. Decision-making is affected too. Which is why I decided to tie my bike to a pole in front of the café window.

I got away with it the first time, so I did it again. And again. And this week, when street traders blocked the pole, I took a gamble and used one across the street. Even though it was close to traffic lights, so the view was regularly obscured by stationary buses and lorries, and Hiace vans with sliding doors on the side.

Later, the kids wondered why I was collecting them by car, and the news had a profound effect on them. Patrick used to be fascinated by "wobbers". But now that crime had come to our door, I heard his hushed voice in the back seat telling Róisín this was "the baddest thing that ever happened to Daddy".

She was more philosophical, arguing that while it was certainly bad, there were worse things that could have happened to me. When Patrick pressed for an example, she thought for a moment and whispered: "He could have fallen off a skyscraper."

I was proud of her maturity. But it struck me forcibly that all three of us had matured since Daniel arrived. We were a little bit older, a little bit wiser. And suddenly, we were all operating on two wheels fewer than we used to.