I have said it before but am beginning to be even more appreciative of living in the countryside especially now the Olympics are to be foisted on an unsuspecting East London.

There are obviously business opportunities to be had for the small entrepreneur most of which will revolve around the fact that East London will be at a standstill for most of the day and I suspect some of the night too.

The first scheme that came to mind was to revive the old traffic light window cleaning scam whereby, (for those of you not old enough to have seen it before) was to rush up to cars stopped at traffic lights and squirt soapy water at the windscreen in the pretext that removing it with a rubber ‘Squeegee’ blade constituted a window washing service.

Personally I’m a little precious about any of my cars, even more so when I’ve just cleaned them so always had to resort to the not too friendly greeting of shouting, ‘don’t you dare touch my F’ing car’ whenever I was caught at the traffic lights.

Funny how the practice has stopped, or has it? Perhaps the aggressive Eastern Europeans who assaulted you at the traffic lights have merely gone up market and mellowed in their ways, or maybe the staff at the current hand car washes come from an altogether more friendly part of Europe.

Alternately we could revive the practice of selling small bunches of roses to the grid locked traffic, after all we all need small bunches of roses to take home on our way back from work, assuming we have managed to get there in the first place.

Selling newspapers, sandwiches, or ice cream, are all schemes that have crossed my mind but have all been written off as you need a vehicle to get the merchandise to the customer, not an easy task when the whole of East London is grid locked.

I have a creative mind and am not one to be beaten, so by a process of elimination came to the conclusion that whatever one wanted to sell it would have to be transported by bicycle but what was to be the product.

Then in one of those ‘Eureka’ moments it came to me, if all the drivers are stuck for hours in their cars the obvious service they will all need is a public convenience.

Luckily I’m good with my hands so have put the Bank Holiday weekend to good use by affixing wheels to a portaloo and coupling it to my trusty bicycle.

This scheme was appearing to be a possibility, barring the strain on my Sturmey Archer gears and my legs when I realised the fatal flaw was that I no longer lived in the East end and would require a vehicle to transport my ‘bicyloo’ to London every day.

I have to admit I have not patented the idea so if there are any budding entrepreneurs who wish to use my idea I am only too happy to relinquish the scheme, however it would be a nice gesture if you were to send me a small gratuity, I’m thinking 10% is not overly greedy.

Best wishes and good luck to you all.

Toodle pip.