Nine people with hard-hats, most of whom made the Cyclemas Tree with me, were learning for the first time just how the 1.5 tonne 5 meter Cyclemas Tree handled on its eight scaffolding wheels: worse than a dodgy 1.5 tonne shopping trolley. Unpredictable, constantly needing its wheels kicked, we rounded a corner onto narrow Pembroke street only to find our first hurdle, the traditional enemy of bicycles. A car parked on the double-yellow lines
While the news cameras were rolling, we desperately tried paging the customers in nearby Marks and Spencer. We called the police (this was caught on the news cameras). We considered lifting the car onto the curb. Michael Holyoke sensibly ran back to the Museum to get a jack. With one wheel jacked up over the curb, the Tree slipped past the parked car and into busy St Aldgates.
In the week running up to the procession, we had tried and failed to cajole the otherwise supportive police department into providing a cycling police escort. This left us to fight the towering coaches and buses armed only with our hard hats and glo-brite jackets, and the unanswerable ridiculous authority of the 5-metre-high by 3-metre-wide scaffolding cone, bristling with bicycles and Christmas lights. Weary, nervous, excited, and pushing the Tree uphill on St Aldgates, I struggled to be coherent during a walking interview with a BBC camera crew, constantly whacking into the furry terrier boom mic that bopped in front of my face.
We stopped at the traffic lights at Carfax, the very centre of Oxford’s “preposterous crossroads”, where the bollard on Cornmarket, Oxford’s main pedestrianised commercial drag, descended just for us. It was 11:30 by the time we reached the middle of Cornmarket. The fatigue of the last 24 hours was getting to me, and when we passed Starbucks, I announced a coffee break. Most of the weary team approved, but Tom and Andrew, heads full of Health and Safety concerns and the vagaries of legal liability during the procession, were extremely uneasy with the idea of stopping the beast’s progress through Cornmarket. I dodged into into the Starbucks, grabbed the duty manager, and brought him outside. “There are twelve of us pushing this Christmas Tree made of bicycles and scaffolding and we need coffee. What can you do for us?” Starbucks did the decent thing, and brought out free coffee for everyone, including two lattes for the BBC camera crew.
The insouciance of workmen having a coffee break in the middle of roadworks came naturally to most of the Cyclemas Tree gang, apart from Tom and Andrew. I failed to convince them that “Coffee Break” was an unplanned and serendipitous part of the piece. I’d hoped by framing this unavoidably cheeky moment in the language of performance art that they could shake themselves out of their fear and loathing, but it seemed to make little difference. Andrew soon began frantically gathering the enormous half-finished cups of coffee (Starbucks had been generous) from the volunteers. Meanwhile, the absurd sight of the Cyclemas Tree in Cornmarket was gathering a crowd. Helen Cooper and Rachel Tomkins made the most of this by handing out flyers inviting the bewildered public to attend the next evening’s illumination ceremony. Coffee Break soon finished, hard hats went back on, and again the Tree lurched northwards down Cornmarket.
Luckily, the estimated measurements were accurate, and the Cyclemas Tree’s 5.5 meter height (without the lamppost fitting on top) just cleared under the city’s Christmas lights by a few centimetres. Of course, these Christmas lights weren’t installed when I originally determined the height of the Cyclemas Tree, a height limited to the lengths of scaffolding available for hire. There would have been no sensible route to Gloucester Green had the city’s lights drooped just a few centimetres lower.
The Cyclemas Tree slowly shuddered through Magdalen Street, around the corner under the flags of the famous Randolph Hotel, and past the classical columns of Ashmolean Museum onto Beaumont Street. A long queue of traffic was building up. Our traffic handling was amateur and unsure. Many volunteers shared the uneasy feeling that this was all pretty dodgy, and that in spite of the blessing we had from the police, we were “in the way” of Oxford’s busiest streets. Helen, Rachel, Luisa and Andrew were able to charm the drivers and hand them leaflets. Our greatest allies were cyclists, but unexpectedly, so were the lorry drivers, especially the ones driving the scaffolding lorries who hooted approvingly.
Once on-site, grubby and tired, I gave my thank-you speech to the helpers and volunteers. Olivia, Steve, and Nick stayed on to help set up the golden reindeer bicycle and hang some of the free-dangling wheels. Tom stayed on to help put the lamppost on top of the tree.
In spite of the gravity-locking harness, I found teetering on the top of a ladder while hoiking an awkward cast-iron lamppost from a scaffolding pole was just to vertiginous and alarming. I was too exhausted, emotionally shattered, and just plain paranoid to carry on. And we were desperately short of a second tall ladder to make the procedure safe. Then John Putnam appeared.
I spotted John while I was miserably trying to overcome vertigo on the top of the ladder. He was walking past us with, fortuitously, just the sort of extendable ladder we happened to need at that very instant. Assuming he was a contractor just on his way to his van, I cheekily asked if he wouldn’t mind loaning us his ladder for about 10 minutes. He did one better, much to the chagrin of Tom Legg, still very much in the grip of Health and Safety fear. Here we were allowing a total stranger to climb up his ladder, untethered, not wearing the obligatory high-hat. He was cavalier in the manner of the navvies straddling the I-beams hanging from cranes you see in the photographs of the building of the Empire State Building.
On Tom’s prompting, I climbed down the ladder, and left it to Tom and John to sort out the honours. Tom's courage was mighty impressive, and he managed to plunk he lamppost into the hole. It turns out John Putnam was an experienced lineman who had been brought out of retirement to help the city catch up with its light-hanging, which was slightly behind schedule at that moment.
Our Cyclemas Guardian Angel then disappeared into the Oxford gloom.
Rachel Tomkins and Andrew Nairne of Modern Art Oxford look on nervously as the crew push the 1.5 tonne 5 metre Cyclemas Tree through the streets of Oxford without so much as a policeman in sight. Buses and drivers were, for the most part, accommodating, and at best were very supportive and hooted their approval. The Cyclemas Tree was the largest and heaviest human-powered vehicle in Oxford's 2000-year-old history.
Starbucks Coffee serves up a batch of free coffee to exhausted Cyclemas push crew
