Dream Geared bike (spend my money for me...)

did it tell the time better than any other watch?

Marginally worse.

i dont think there's such a thing as a bike for life. your taste and purpose/use may yet change.

This frame for life business is a total nonsense. Your tastes will change, you'll get bored of it, you'll crash it and it'll be beyond repair.

Old school frames might look cool and retro but you'll feel like a total tool when you take it on the continent and the old boys glide past you on carbon-encased Campag with humming carbon wheels.

I've been riding and building bikes long enough to know all of that, particularly about tastes changing - I used to ride around London on a geared MTB with a fluorescent, tiger-striped plastic disc on the back wheel (in 1989, aged 15...).

My idea of the 'bike for life' is one that covers a broader range of rides that any other. The kind of rides you'll use it for don't change that much with time, and neither, frankly, does the spec. I need a steel-framed geared bike with calipers, mudguards and a rack, the kind of bike that has been built for at least the last fifty years. Sure, I might get into urban freeriding aged sixty,in which case I'll buy the right bike in addition to this one, but I'll still want to go for day-long rides in the country. And I really don't give a monkey's about being overtaken!