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From Jim Harris, Art Historian:

My bike is important to me, despite the fact that I occasionally hobble in here in various states of dishevelment after falling off it. It’s never been to Selsey Bill but I have been up to Muswell Hill.

For more than a decade, the best bit of my bike has been my saddle.  My parents gave it to me and its scarred leather moulded itself to my….er… shape, comfortable like a second skin.

Now, the other day I left my bike locked up outside the Museum and all was well until I went to retrieve it, only to find it without the saddle. I was discombobulated. I stared at the saddle-less frame.  And then I stormed down the street, looking wildly for a culprit, muttering vengeful thoughts darkly under my breath.

After all, stealing is something we just don’t do. Thou shalt not steal.  Part of my indignation came from exactly that.  But part of it came from feeling as if something had been done not to my bike but to me. And that set me thinking about what stealing is.  Stealing isn’t just about taking someone’s possessions – it can be about taking a piece of them. I say this because that same day I’d been overheard making a less than generous comment about a colleague, and I was ashamed because the minute I said it I knew I’d stolen something of theirs.

And it occurred to me that one of the reasons the Ten Commandments in the Bible are so short is that they cover so much ground.  Thou shalt not steal isn’t just about respecting property – it’s also about respecting people, about treating people right. The happy ending for me here is that my friends Jeremy and Alixe had a spare saddle, also beautiful, and gave it to me.  And when they did, because I was hurt more than my bike, their kindness mended not just the bike but me.

So I’m revising my idea of the significance of the saddle heist, because things can be replaced - but I still have work to do to give back the piece of someone’s dignity that I took.  And I hope I can be kind enough to do it, because that, not the gift of a new saddle, is what it means not to steal.