“Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come.”
Victor Hugo
So far this season has seen the launch of…
- …a range of German bicycle tyres carrying a graphic of the London Skyline.
- …German bicycle bags featuring maps
Now we have an investment-quality, made-in-England musette, with both. You could even use the map to get to Harwich, for Hoek van Holland, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Kรถln or Berlin.
The straps are attached at an angle so the bag rests stable on your back until you need an inner-tube or a banana.French vocabulary is so poetic. The peloton, more glamorous than the bunch, a musette more refined than a bonk- or butty-bag. For best effect these last two are delivered in a gritty (pronounced ‘gritteh’) Northern accent, ideally in a moorland hailstorm.
A musette is a small folkloric bag-pipe, that gave it’s name to a style of French accordion music, and also – because of a supposed resemblance – to a road-racer’s feed bag, passed up by a soigneur, at a zone de ravitaillement.
The real things are disposable promotional items. Once the contents have been transferred to jersey pockets and bottle cages the musette is slung away to be retrieved as a trophy-relic by some devout witness.
“This scrap of cotton? It once held Laurent Jalabert’s fourth breakfast.”
The DD bonk-bag is made to much more exacting standards – an item nobody would want to throw into a hedge. It’s screen-printed, with a timeless design, it will still work well and look great moon-bleached and faded, on DDXL in 2032.
Available on London Fields, on Saturday night, maybe on Dunwich Beach on Sunday morning, if somebody can be a bothered to haul stock over Essex and Suffolk.
Strictly limited edition.
You know you want one.
See you on London Fields, on the road or on the beach.