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Dear Marge,
I’ve decided that I want to be Scandinavian. They have the most well behaved people, the finest cycle paths, and Abba. Not to mention the fjords, saunas and smorgesbords.
I’ve also realised that, after half a lifetime of using PCs, Macs are better.
Am I having a mid-life crisis?
Dave.
The Mayor of Wessex, and Bob
I caught a small amount of the golf this weekend, the British Masters at The Belfrey, including the exciting last few holes in which Lee Westwood narrowly lost to a Spanish bloke on the third playoff hole. Golfers usually behave well in victory and defeat, and it struck me that a neutral observer would have been hard pressed to know which player had actually won when the final putt decided it – not because it didn’t matter to them (if nothing else, there was £100,000 difference in first and second place prize money), but because they know how to behave.
I also enjoyed a vintage Peter Alliss moment on the commentary. His fellow commentator, during a lull in the golfing action, mentioned Carol Vorderman, the famously sexy hostess on the word game “Countdown”. “Ah, Carol Vorderman“, said Alliss, dreamily, “I was watching her the other day and I got aroused“. (Stunned silence for a beautifully judged few seconds…). “Yes, 7 letters – not bad for a lad who left school at 15…“.
Elsewhere in the sporting weekend, City slumped to a 2-0 defeat at Wolves. It wasn’t really unexpected, given that Wolves seem to be running away with the Championship, but disappointing nevertheless. (And a cautionary note to cocky Wolves fans – this time last year, it was Watford who were romping, and look what happened to them…)
I was glad not to have listened to the game on the radio, opting instead to wander down to the “Best of Bedminster Show” on North Street Green. It was a great little event, along the lines of the traditional village produce show, with people submitting jams, cakes and strangely shaped vegetables to be judged by ladies from the Women’s Institute. I was delighted to win 3rd prize in the “Best Photograph” category – I won a medal (made of baked sour dough) and a packet of seeds. The prizes were presented by 2 women dressed as men, one claiming to be the Mayor of Wessex, and the other her son, Bob. Once the ceremony was complete, the sun burned through the misty clouds, and the Ambling Band played some pleasant (and suitably whacky) music. It was the sort of thing that makes me really enjoy living here.
The Ambling Band
A compulsive weekend’s viewing culminated in a pretty resounding defeat for the fancied Europeans in the Ryder Cup. Much to my boys’ disgust, I rather monopolised the television for the duration, thereby denying them endless repeats of “Friends” (although they can probably struggle through to maturity without seeing the 19th repeat of “the one in which a bloke whines annoyingly while his flatmate gets the wrong end of the stick again and a couple of unhealthily thin women flick their hair“).
The quality of the golf was, at times, quite incredible, and America thoroughly deserved to win, even though we could have done without some of their rather ungentlemanly behaviour. Lee Westwood complained that somebody said something especially unpleasant about his mother (though we haven’t learned exactly what), I got very bored of the crowd booing loudly in support of the rather buffoonish Boo Weekley, and Anthony Kim really shouldn’t have done the fist pumping thing when the halved hole he’d just won was courtesy of a generously conceded putt. But we’ll forgive them.
Nick Faldo’s coming in for a fair bit of stick after the defeat, people saying that he shouldn’t have saved his star players for so late in the day – although since two of them lost anyway, one could argue that “we” were doomed from the start. My own main criticism of Faldo is that he should have removed his sunglasses from time to time – even at the end, when dispensing consoling hugs for his own team and congratulatory handshakes for the opposition, he remained inscrutable behind the shades, like some sort of international man of mystery, which I thought was rather rude.
And talking of rudeness, I was delighted to see Ronaldo the Arrogant get booked for wagging his finger at the referee in yesterday’s game against Chelsea. He really does deserve a slap sometimes.
This morning’s bike ride to work was especially unpleasant, thanks mainly to the weather. We’re expecting over an inch of rain today, and I think half of it fell on me during my 13 minute dash. When it comes to negotiating the puddles, the obvious preferred option is to cycle around the puddle – but sadly this option is usually unavailable due to passing traffic keeping one pinned to the kerbside. So one has to go through it. One can either keep pedalling, risking a thorough soaking of feet and lower legs, or free-wheel through it with feet inelegantly raised above the height of the tsunami. I usually go for the second, although I have a horrible feeling that it makes me look even more ridiculous than usual, and certainly not very chic. I wonder how these Copenhagers deal with puddles?
“Arse of the Day” award goes to the lorry driver who couldn’t wait to get past me to get to the traffic jam first. Anyone who’s ridden a bike in traffic will be familiar with the scenario – there’s a long queue waiting at the lights a couple of hundred yards ahead, and any driver, however lacking in imagination or intelligence, can see that their vehicle will be held up, whilst cyclists will be able to roll to the head of the queue. At this point, drivers seem to split into two camps. The rational, co-operative driver proceeds calmly behind the cyclist, whilst the other variety speeds dangerously past, forcing the cyclist into the gutter (and through any puddles that have collected there), and showering him with dirty spray from his oversized wheels, just in time to slam on the brakes and join the back of the queue. I think it’s a macho pride thing.
Never mind – when Bristol becomes the UK’s first “cycling city”, all this will be a thing of the past – lorry drivers will become sensible and patient, cyclists will have the UK’s finest network of cycle routes to keep them safe, and it won’t rain any more.
It was my birthday yesterday (51? Shome mishtake, surely?!), and for my treat we went to the zoo. I’ve always loved Bristol Zoo, one of the oldest and best in the UK – there’s something so reassuringly old-fashioned and well-mannered about it. When our boys were little, we had a season ticket, and we would often pop in for an hour or so, to see the new arrivals, catch up with old friends, or just play on the grass (which, ironically, was one of the few green spaces in Bristol guaranteed to be free of animal shit).
There’s inevitably a tension in zoos between the thrill of seeing beautiful, sometimes scary beasts in the flesh, and worrying about their imprisonment, but Bristol has always had a very progressive approach to the welfare of its animals, and they certainly seem well cared for and healthy. I especially enjoyed the seals yesterday, in their new enclosure complete with wave machine and underwater viewing area (I never realised before that seals seem to swim mainly on their back), and the Butterfly Forest, where they hatch all kinds of beautiful butterflies and release them into a big humid polytunnel which visitors stroll through, resisting the temptation to swat the butterflies when they get too close. I was glad to learn that it’s an urban myth that butterflies live only for a day – their life expectancy actually ranges from 2 to 12 weeks.
All of which reminded me of my birthdays when I was a boy, which also often featured a family trip to the zoo. In those days it was Chessington Zoo, only a couple of miles from where I grew up, which was part-zoo, part-funfair. Once we had seen the animals, the favourite ride for my sister and me was the “Boomps-a-Daisy”, which consisted basically of a tractor pulling a garishly painted open trailer. For a small fee, one could sit in the trailer and be towed along a track around the zoo. The fun part was that the cart had no suspension, and the track was very uneven, so the kids in the back would be thrown all over the place, squealing with delight as we incurred all kinds of bruises, gashes and fractures. The place is still there, but it’s now called “Chessington World of Adventures”. It’s become a theme park, complete with rollercoasters and people dressed up in cartoon character costumes, and although I quite like theme parks, I have such happy memories of the old zoo that I don’t really want to go back to see what it’s become. One thing’s for certain – health and safety rules will have ensured that the Boomps-A-Daisy is no longer there, long since replaced by something much more “scary”, but infinitely safer and much less fun.
I work next to an estate comprised mainly of 1960s tower blocks. In one of them, a man has a serious sound system. On sunny days, he turns the volume up to maximum, and opens the windows of his flat. He plays many types of music, but favours rap, much of it featuring offensive language. Yesterday, the music went on for the whole afternoon, and I’m told that his “broadcasts” often last well into the evening, sometimes starting up again in the middle of the night. Whilst I have the luxury of pedalling off to the relative peace of Southville at the end of my working day, his neighbours do not, and I feel extremely sorry for the poor sods who live 500 yards away, let alone in the flat below.
My bicycle journey to and from work, a regular feature on these pages, is generally a pleasant experience – sometimes I even regard it as one of the best bits of my working day. But at this time of year, when it’s dark in both directions, the journey can keep its charms well hidden – especially as I always feel vulnerable on the bike in the dark, despite being lit up from top to toe in an assortment of reflective, day-glo and battery-powered devices.
When I experience rudeness, it usually comes from motorists. I think Bristol must have an unusually high concentration of grumpy car drivers who resent sharing the road with cyclists. This is probably an inevitable consequence of the traffic being stationary on many of the city’s roads for large parts of the day, and I have to say that I particularly enjoy cycling when the cars are gridlocked – certainly there’s an element of smugness, knowing that my journey will still take 13 minutes, regardless of how many stationary cars I pass, but there’s also the feeling that, while the cars are not moving, they can’t be knocking me off my bike.
And the flip side of this wariness of cars, is the certain camaraderie that cyclists feel for one another. We stick together, we stop when we see a fellow cyclist with a puncture, we have a chat when we’re stuck at lights together, and we sometimes wave to one another. (I wave every morning to a man on an antique Raleigh Shopper. I think of him as Jack, although I have no idea what his name really is, and his commute is the reverse of mine – we always cross over at roughly the same point, Jack being so regular that our passing place is an accurate indicator of whether I’m early or late for work. We wave cheerily, and exchange a very brief pleasantry about the weather, or about a hazard that lies ahead.) So generally, we cyclists feel affinity and warmth with our two-wheeled brethren.
And the more established one pattern of behaviour becomes, the more upsetting it is when somebody deviates dramatically from the norm. I was waiting at a traffic light last night, in a place on the junction where I was supposed to be, but blocking the route of a rapidly oncoming cyclist, who wanted to take a short cut across the part of the road currently occupied by me. Anticipating his needs (camaraderie, warmth, etc.), I was actually just preparing to move out of his way (I’m getting on a bit, you know, so unusual manoeuvres don’t happen quite as quickly as they used to – think oil tankers), when he barked, yes almost literally barked, at me “SHIFT!“. Wrong-footed by his rudeness, I promptly did as ordered, moving aside as quickly as possible, allowing him to go on his lycra-clad way without even having to slow down.
Now I’m not the most assertive of people, and we unassertives often find ourselves wishing we could rewind our lives a couple of minutes, in order to have another attempt at handling a bad situation better. All I would have said to this guy in Take 2 of the scene is “Look, maybe you’ve had a bad day, but really, there’s no need to be quite so rude. And yes, I’ll gladly get out of your way.” But of course, there was no rewind or second take, and I was left feeling really offended. Even now, I wonder if he got half a mile up the Wells Road before realising how rude he had been, then wishing that he could rewind a few minutes, and say to me “Hello, fellow cyclist. I realise I’m not entitled to do this, but I’d really like to cut through this way. Would you mind moving a bit so that I can?“. Sadly, I think not.
- People who say “text” when they mean “texted”. If it was just teenagers, I might live with it. But all you grownups – p-lease!
- People who talk in the cinema. No talking, please, about anything. (Although some things are worse than others – discussing the ending twist of “The Sixth Sense” during the adverts before the film… well, that takes the biscuit.)
- People who drive their kids 400 yards to school on a sunny day, as featured in “Road Rage” on the television recently – and then they complained about the traffic jams around the school….
- People who leave football early. See Jon’s excellent post on this subject – it really is a baffling phenomenon.
- People who eat noisy things in the cinema. For goodness’ sake, are you really so dependent on corn chips that you can’t get through a 2 hour film without them?
- People who say “the thing is is that….” – what is that second “is” doing there?
- People who deposit chewing gum in urinals. Even the best aim and the strongest flow are not going to combine to break it down! Some poor sod is going to have to fish it out!!
Today it’s absolutely pouring with rain in Bristol, and I took even longer than usual to prepare myself for the bike ride to work – waterproof trousers, rain cover for the pannier, a tot of whiskey, 2 hours’ of Buddhist mantras, that kind of thing – and the actual cycling was as unpleasant as I had anticipated.
At one point, my route was blocked by a recycling lorry, which is not unusual, but was mildly irritating on such a foul day. Nevertheless, fortified by the mantras, I calmly slowed down, ready to wait for the operatives to do their worthwhile job and move on. The guy unloading people’s empties into the van looked even more oppressed by the weather than I felt, but when he looked up to see me drawing near, he stopped his thankless work, moved to one side, and waved me through the narrow gap with a broad smile. “Thanks a lot”, I said, loudly, as I free-wheeled past. “No problem”, said he, still smiling through the torrential rain.
It made my day.
The man in front of me at the cash machine today carefully took his card back when the beeps prompted him to do so. Then, announced by the next succession of loud beeps, the man’s money emerged. Nothing unusual so far… except that, by this time, the man had wandered away from the machine, and was already about 10 yards down the road, leaving his dosh (about £60, by the look of it) protruding from the slot. Was this some sort of candid camera stunt, a test of my honesty? If the whole thing seemed a little bizarre, what was also weird (and a bit depressing) was the man’s reaction when I called after him – mild surprise, slight irritation, but most notably a total lack of friendliness or gratitude. Almost made me wish I’d kept it…
