I couldn’t afford to buy a car, so I bought a bicycle.

In fact, I couldn’t afford a travel card. I lived in London. It was the 90s. I had the usual debts associated with a humanities degree, travel, teaching English. I paid them off, slowly, but kept the bicycle. I realised that it made me happy and less fat.

For once I was ahead of the curve. I started to notice that there were other people on bicycles at junctions in central London. Loads of them.

I started photographing bicycles on work trips, from Azerbaijan to Zambia. Places where the second cycling revolution hadn’t happened, like Beirut and Hargeisa. Sensible bicycles. Bicycles that were a utilitarian, rather than a lifestyle choice

Then filming them. Maybe I could bring down the car industry? But the discovery of the envelope in a garage, was were the journey really began. The bicycle clips made me think of cycling slowly; it seemed like everyone was going the other way, going faster, on bikes which were lighter, wearing clothes that had got tighter.

I felt like most of the bicycle industry wants this; they want you comparing yourself with athletes in order to sell bicycles of leisure instead of transport. I compared this with bike ads from the olden days.

Apart from the fact that people used to smoke whilst cycling in those days, they also seemed to encourage dawdling. Bicycles were big and heavy. One Raleigh advert from1927 poster for a Raleigh roadster boasts that Mr. A.J. Cook, aged 17, rode from Cape Town to Johannesburg in 28 days. The twist is that the bike was already more than twenty years old, and still going strong.

It’s would get you fired from a modern advertising department today. But it’s old-fashioned in a possibly the way that we need to be in order to preserve the resources we have.

The Manifesto...

• Flapjack not energy gel
• Cycle curiously not furiously
• Clear hand signals, smile at people as you let them cross
• Stop at Zebra Crossings
• Have a poke about
• Cycle your Dad’s old bike around Africa