What I came up with put one of Oxford’s most abundant waste products to use: abandoned bicycles. They’re a predominant feature of Oxford life, the first things you notice when you look down from the spires that greet you from the train or the coach station. Thousands are stolen and retrieved by the police. Thousands are outgrown by children and put to pasture in the garden. Thousands end up abandoned by students. They lie in parks and alleys. Their vandalised remains stay locked to gates and racks. They rot at the bottom of the canal and in the recycling centre.
Oxford City Council was cautiously delighted by the idea of a Christmas Tree made of bicycles, and with only a vague sketch from me, the Area Committees bravely agreed to put up some funding. Modern Art Oxford (MAO) also worked up more funding and agreed to produce the tree. The City agreed to help gather some bicycles found in parks and canals. So did the Oxford Cycle Workshop and Thames Valley Police. Even my neighbour, Barrie Juniper, the Emeritus Professor of Botany, managed to spring a couple of abandoned bikes from St Catherine’s College.
But, like people, it’s very nearly exclusively adult bicycles that end up abandoned in the streets, or end up down the police station. The unwanted forlorn children’s bicycle is a more subtle and furtive creature. They’re to be found in gardens, hidden from the public. Thieves tend to pass over them in favour of more expensive takings in the adult world, so few end up with the police. And it’s not entirely clear when a child’s bicycle is abandoned by its owner in the first place. What tends to happen is that children either outgrow a bicycle, or some minor repair goes unfixed, and the bicycle is left outside to deteriorate. Too good to chuck out, too worn or small to ride, they moulder unseen. All this I discovered while I was frantically trying to gather the 20 children’s bicycles required by the design of the Cyclemas Tree.
