On penny-farthings, bad decisions, and the strange things that happen when you let a piece of paper tell you who to be.

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I need to tell you about Marco, because if I don’t, he’ll tell you himself, and his version has gotten… generous.

So. Marco. My friend since university. Good guy. Terrible with money, incredible cook, the kind of person who will argue with you for forty-five minutes about the correct way to fold a napkin and somehow you end up agreeing with him. Not a cyclist. I want to be clear about that. The man had not been on a bicycle since he was twelve, when he rode into a hedge and told everyone the hedge “came out of nowhere.” He was serious.

Anyway. Last October, we’re getting coffee at this place on Via Tornabuoni — one of those spots where they charge you four euros for an espresso and you pay it because the light through the windows is beautiful and you’re a sucker for atmosphere. And Marco stops talking mid-sentence. Just stops. I follow his eyes to the wall behind the counter.

It’s a poster. A penny-farthing bicycle, drawn in these clean black lines on a cream background. Simple. Elegant. The kind of thing that makes you stand a little straighter just looking at it. Underneath it says: “Originality is the essence of true success.”

Now, I’ve seen people look at art before. I’ve been to galleries. I know what polite appreciation looks like. This was not that. Marco was looking at this poster the way people in films look at each other across train platforms. His espresso went cold. Marco’s espresso never goes cold. The man has a system.

He asked the barista where it came from. The kid — twenty-something, great moustache, clearly bored — said it was from MonoQuote. Some print shop. Vintage quotes, that kind of thing. Marco nodded like he’d just received classified information.

Two days later, it’s on his living room wall.

Fine. Normal. People buy posters. But then — and this is where it gets distinctly Marco — he rearranged his entire living room around it. Moved the armchair. Rotated the bookshelf. Bought a fern, which, if you know Marco, is significant, because he has killed every plant he’s ever owned, including a cactus, which I didn’t think was possible. Elena, his girlfriend, walked in and apparently said it looked like a design magazine had thrown up in there, but in a good way.

I thought that was the end of it. It was not the end of it.

He called me on a Tuesday. “I’m buying a penny-farthing,” he said, the way you’d say “I’m picking up bread.”

I didn’t say anything for a while. Then: “Like… the bicycle.”

“The bicycle.”

“The one with the huge wheel.”

“That’s the one.”

I want to say I tried to talk him out of it. But honestly? There was something in his voice. Not mania. Not quite excitement. More like… recognition. Like he’d found something he didn’t know he was looking for. And who am I to get in the way of that? I’ve made worse decisions for less poetic reasons.

He found a guy in Bristol — of course it was Bristol — who makes replicas by hand. It arrived in a crate so large the delivery driver just shook his head and left without saying goodbye.

The first ride. God, the first ride. I was there. I wish I hadn’t been, and I’m glad I was. It took him fifteen minutes to get on the thing. Fifteen. A small crowd formed. An old woman on a balcony was watching. A food delivery guy stopped and filmed it. Marco was sweating, swearing under his breath, one foot on a little peg, the other nowhere useful. He wobbled. He lurched. He made sounds I’ve never heard a grown man make.

And then he was up. And he was riding. Two metres above the pavement, moving at this absurdly dignified pace, and — look, I’m not going to pretend I understood it immediately. He looked ridiculous. He also looked like the happiest I’d seen him in years. Not grinning-for-a-photo happy. Quiet happy. The kind where your shoulders drop and your breathing changes.

A woman on a Vespa pulled up next to him at a light. “Is that real?” she asked. Marco, wobbling, barely in control, said: “Is anything?” I almost fell off the pavement.

What happened after that is the part I keep thinking about. Because it wasn’t just funny. It was something else. The neighbourhood barber started giving him free haircuts (“you bring character to the street,” he said, and he meant it). The coffee shop put a photo of Marco on his penny-farthing next to the poster that started it all. Kids would shout his name. An architecture blog wrote about him. Forty thousand views.

But the thing that got me — the thing I keep coming back to — was this one evening, maybe three weeks in. We were sitting outside, and Marco was quiet, which is unusual. He said: “You know what’s funny? I spent years trying to be interesting. Reading the right books, going to the right places, having the right opinions. And then I just… bought a stupid poster and followed it somewhere.”

He was right. And also, it’s not a stupid poster. It’s actually a pretty great poster.

I ordered one for my kitchen last week. I’m not buying a penny-farthing. Probably.

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The Originality Is the Essence of True Success penny-farthing poster is available at MonoQuote.

Giclée fine art print on premium paper. Three finishes. No hedge protection included.

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