There used to be a jumble sale in the church at the end of the street in which I grew up. (Actually, as far as I know it still runs.) One year, I decided to buy myself a pram. As I was wheeling it back along the road, an old fellow noticed me and exclaimed “that’ll be a guider!” or words to that effect.
He was not wrong. The brown colour that it was painted inevitably found its way onto my clothing, which did not escape my mum’s notice. My pal Stuart and I used to push it up to the steepest hills in Braidburn Valley Park and launch ourselves directly downwards, before “enthusiastically” turning at the bottom to avoid the burn, but also because skidding is fun. Unfortunately, this caused the wheels to fold over on more than one occasion (to be fair, we were using them somewhat outside their design envelope). Ultimately I got my dad to weld the spokes to the rims and hubs, which stopped them falling to bits so easily.
Note the (pretty useless, to be honest) hand brake, and the steering handles, forming a parallelogram with the front axle.
