The Exterminator of the Year 3000

On the way home from work, near the station waiting to cross the road I witnessed a bizarre figure go by on a motorbike. It wore a vest made out of what looked like armour over a leather jacket, metal gloves and boots and a horned helmet. The latter made the head resemble a junior version of the 'Scafolk Beast'. A devil-biker. Psychomania. Music was emanating from  the motorbike which was decorated with horns and other pariphenalia.

A being sent through a gap in the fabric of space and time, from an age of early 80s Italian Mad Max rip-off films. An Exterminator of the Year 3000 from a place where water is so scare people kill for it, while fuel, guns and ammo are plentiful. Today the first hospipe ban in Britain was announced. We haven't had rain for about 2 months. Could the appearance of this post-apocalypic figure really be a coincidence?

I later discovered this was in fact the 'Viker Biker', a local 'character' who assumes a part Viking/part knight persona and is probably the nearest thing Peterborough has to a superhero. He says if he happens to be near someone in trouble he trys to help, and he seems to want to cheer people up. If I'd have been watching About Anglia closely enough in 2005 I would have already knew all this.

More certain that apocalypse by drought was unlikely having seen some clouds and the About Anglia clip, or that gangs dressed in spikey leather driving spikey cars were not about to start maurading in the remains of a desolate East Anglia, my mind was diverted to 'characters' that inhabit every town and city. Cambridge has had its fair share over the years, Disco Kenny, The Man-With-The-Loaf of bread on his head, IRA Shouty Man and many others. The nearest Cambridge has to the Viker Biker is Heavy Metal Biker Man, a bloke on a racing bike with a ghetto blaster in a plastic bag that blasts out tinny heavy rock. These people are essential parts of the city they inhabit. Like human pieces of 'folk art' they are creations of themselves alone, often by accident. They are the antithesis of the 'clone town'. Long may they continue.