Isn’t it good to ask yourself questions. I often do it.
I don’t always put those questions to myself in writing though, so this particular issue must be something important. I must be trying to work out my kinks in public – is it transparency I want? Or the critical eye of those I trust?
Hmmmmmm.
OK, so we all want to leave a legacy. Nothing strange there. I’ve done some good stuff, and left behind a body of work. I have a family that loves me in spite of all my ‘Krazy’.
But there’s something about bicycles, isn’t there. They have a permanence; a perpetuality that hasn’t been made redundant by technology or design. They’re still fundamentally the same machine created 150 years ago. Two wheels, forks, pedals and chain.
Of all the things I’ve done with my brain and my hands in my half-century, I think the bicycles I’ve brought back from the grave are the best uses of the skills I have. So my legacy is going to be the Millfield Specials.
I’m going to take dead bicycles, and bring them back to life.
I’m going to find good things, and put the Millfield name on them.
I’m going to find bicycles that are unloved, unremarkable, undervalued or unwanted, and find them new lives and new homes.
They’ll all say ‘Millfield’, and they’ll go on to live new lives, and they’ll be my legacy.
#staytuned