When I was eight years old, my best friend was given a scooter as a birthday present. Wooden foot plate, spoked wheels, heel brake, rubber grips and an Incredible Hulk bursting forward from the handlebars to my pre-pubescent mind it was the most beautiful thing in the world - and it was his.
Almost 30 birthdays have come and gone since then, and my life has remained resolutely scooterless. But last week, a teeny-weeny, state-of-the-art scooter scooted into my life and swept away three decades of birthday disappointment at a stroke. The passing years have been kinder to scooters than they have to me. I've grown chunkier, hairier and altogether less attractive, while the scooter has downsized and become, if possible, even more desirable.
The Micro Skate Scooter, and any of the half-dozen imitators it's spawned (mine is a JD Bug - 'Step on, Bug out', as its leaflet says), is lighter than Angel Delight, made of aircraft-grade aluminium ('for strength and fat-free performance') and is the dinkiest thing to hit the streets since brushed-steel and Day-Glo wheels became a must for any serious road-user.
It's the brainchild of Swiss banker Wim Ouboter, who spent six years and more than £100,000 of his own money developing it. It only really took off last year, however, when it was finally bought by a retailer in Japan. Since then, everyone from skate shops to style shops has started stocking it, and more than 40,000 have already been sold in Britain (Slick Willies in west London, for instance, sold 28 JD Bugs last Saturday). These days, it's virtually impossible to stroll through a city park without some clever dick casually one-legging it past you.
And everyone seems to be getting in on the act. Jude Law and Sadie Frost, of course, have a pair; Richard Branson has one; Prince Harry is said to enjoy whizzing around the royal palaces on one, and ergonomic German MPs save time getting around their new Reichstag building on them.
My JD Bug weighs in at 6lb and just under £100. With its Wine Gum-like wheels and all-metal construction, it looks like a cross between a toddler's teething aid and something sinister a vet might use on large mammals. Flat-packed, it takes up so little room you feel you could almost hide it down your trouser leg - and if that doesn't appeal, it also comes with a handy shoulder strap. To unfold it, the scooter requires just three satisfying click-and-snap moves. It is, of course, important that you practise setting up and collapsing it until you can do it in a blur of familiarity. There's no point in attempting to impress someone by pulling one out of your pocket, only to then look like a sweating tourist wrestling with a deck chair in a strong wind. I watched in envy, for instance, as a broker-belt commuter hopped off his train and, with a magician's sleight of hand, conjured up a scooter before drifting off down the platform, leaving a trail of turning heads in his wake.
Once it is up, though, it all begins to make sense. And slicing through pedestrian-packed pavements with a smug grin plastered over your face makes you realise this is a designer gadget that could easily become a way of life. But there is one big caveat. This minuscule scooter was not built for the rigours of the busy road. It may make light work of polished corridors, never-ending shopping malls and traffic-free streets, but a trial run on the pocked and pitted Walworth Road in south London was a truly terrifying experience.
The traffic was bad enough, but every ripple on the road's surface caused the scooter to jerk violently; the smallest bump resulted in a vicious jack-knife and the most insignificant hole set my fillings rattling. The tininess of the scooter doesn't help. It takes up so little room on the road that you seem to fall into the vehicle category of 'too small to take any notice of' - along with litter, pigeons and pedestrians. Motorists presume that if they get too close to you, you'll just blow out of their way.
Pedestrians don't want you on the pavement, either. Whether you're allowed to use it on the pavement at all is another matter. Legally, the scooter falls into a grey area, and the powers that be are still making up their minds. Until they do, I'm sticking to the pavement. But taking it out on to the road is missing the point. It is dinky, fun and in the words of my five-year-old, 'cute'. It is not roadworthy. The scooters are being sold on the basis of their practicality (which is rather like selling chocolate on health merits), but where they win is in their sheer playfulness. It makes being grown-up less serious.
In the week I've had mine, I've discovered that it performs best when you're not expecting anything of it. A gentle scoot around the block one summery evening, for instance, had my neighbours and their kids queuing up to have a go. But when I stepped aboard to go and collect a take-away curry, a Southwark manhole cover ended up putting the scooter into orbit and the biryani all over my back.
Curry deliveries aside, the micro scooter has an oh-so-chic future ahead of it as a multi-purpose runaround. I can already see shoppers free wheelin' around Ikea, Disney World will probably snap them up in their thousands, and - fitted with tiny all-terrain wheels - it would certainly speed up a round of golf. Talking of sport, now that I've realised one childhood dream, I think it's time I started working on the next - does anyone know Kevin Keegan's phone number?
The JD Bug costs £99.95. For details, call 0151 523 0500
