Getafix
by Simon Yeend

Looking back I can, like any addict, see where it all started. You get a puncture and you 'fix' it. That wasn't so bad. I can handle it.

Then other soft options come along (changing the brake blocks, regripping your handlebars) which you devour greedily, while all the time promising yourself you'd never touch the hard stuff -- those class 'A' bottom brackets or highly narcotic headsets. I should never have bought that chainset breaker off that dodgy kid who lives in the tower block; it's a slippery slope once you've got one of those in your locker. Because like any addiction it creeps up on you and before you know it you're in completely over your head.

Which is how I came to find myself one sunny day in the back garden with my recently purchased Raleigh Appalachian mountain bike in 1,000 separate pieces on an old army blanket.

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time. Needing a fix and armed with a dumbell spanner, a set of Allen keys and an old toothbrush, I went out to score. I decided to clean the rear derailleur and the block, but even with a toothbrush you can never quite reach the parts that you want to. So I decided to take it apart, and then went on to strip down the rest of the bike... and on... and on.

Every part sparkled in the sun. The Appalachian was spotless... and useless. At least until I put it back together again. And this is when an amazing transformation occurred. Everything became quite surreal.

While I was dismantling my machine my fingers were as nimble and agile as those of a highly skilled grease monkey. No nut was too tight, no spring too springy. Every manoeuvre seemed choreographed. I worked as effortlessly as a gigolo making a fresh conquest.

But now with 1,000 bits of glistening metal in front of me waiting for reassembly, my fingers had the appearance of corpulent pork sausages and the consistency of putty. Worse, they behaved like they belonged to another person -- a two-year-old, by the look of it.

Putting the chain back together became a Herculean task. To tighten even the simplest nut necessitated a tortuous round-the-houses trip of every single possible hole on the dumbell spanner. Three times. And then having found the correct one and in the last throes of tightening, the spanner would slip, neatly rounding off the nut to ensure it wouldn't be coming off again in a hurry. Oh joy!

That's if I could find the damn nut in the first place. When I located them they became as elusive as flubber, spinning through my inept grasp to annoyingly land not on the blanket, but on the lawn. At one point I spent a good half an hour combing those blades for the small ring of the chainset without success. It's the size of a small pizza, for heaven's sake. Then three hours later I tripped over it on my way to the kitchen a good 15 feet from where I dropped it. It defies physics, I tell you.

The final straw came, mercifully, after two more arduous days in the garden. On the third day I woke up, bleary eyed, and surveyed the wreckage. OK let's get back to basics I decided. Brake blocks. Anyone can handle brake blocks. Except me.

After the 50th attempt to correctly realign the rear ones failed, I let out a low, low whine like a constipated man (excuse the image) straining on the throne which sent our dog, trembling, to seek refuge behind the sofa for an hour. When close family members start to shun you, it's time to quit your habit.

I was clearly coming down, and like all addicts I knew I needed help. Calmness returned almost immediately. I was feeling dirty and unclean so I swept all the evidence of my depravity into a black bin liner. I was going to get clean. Liner in one hand, frame and wheels in the other, I trudged off to the bike shop.

The man behind the counter was kindness itself. He'd seen junkies like me a thousand times before. "You can pick it up after four tomorrow," he said, handing me my prescription. The cost of my detox? £35. And I tell you what, thanks to my wash and brush up the bike performed like a dream.