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Another wet ride home today – this one was a real stinker, torrential rain blown right at me by a squally wind. Nearly home, I was waiting at a red light when a young woman and her child, both also on bikes, and both, like me, ridiculously wet, pulled up alongside me. I was struck by how happy they looked, despite the circumstances, and we got into one of those truncated traffic light conversations. “I love cycling in the rain“, she said, with genuine enthusiasm. “It makes me feel so alive!“. I knew exactly what she meant, and our little chat certainly cheered me up, but tomorrow I’ll happily settle for feeling so alive in the sunshine…
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.
So, the season has started again, and the magnificent City boys picked themselves up in their first proper game since the Wembley “disappointment” to win their opening game in style. In truth, judging by the radio commentary and TV highlights, we were rather lucky to win, but a win’s a win. And after all the shenaninigans around getting a decent striker on board, new boy Nicky Maynard wasted a couple of excellent chances, and it fell to substitute Steve Brooker, the old workhorse, to score the winner, from a very difficult angle, in the 90th minute. The City fans, including Brendan and me huddled over the radio in the kitchen, went wild, and the neighbours, unaware that the season had started, probably thought ”Oh no, not this again already…”.
Nicky Maynard provided the best quote of the day, saying afterwards that although he was sorry not to have scored, he was made up for Brooks, it was all about the team, etc., and he was just glad that “we are another step closer to promotion“. Well, Nicky, we are all delighted to be off the starting blocks, but let’s not get too carried away!
This was also the weekend of the Balloon Fiesta, which, of course, meant rain, wind, and an almost total lack of hot air balloons, all very disappointing for my sister and family who came over especially. It amazes me that the organisers persist in scheduling the event for August, which is such a famously shite month in Bristol – they’d stand a better chance of a successful event in the middle of January. But we did see the Red Arrows, a lot of mud, and a woman called Amanda in a pony and trap performing “stunts”, which consisted basically of her steering her unfortunate ponies over a series of speed bumps. Barking mad, but very funny.
Any day now, my new bicycle will arrive. I had hoped to keep my old trusty going for a bit longer, but it really has become a bit of a liability. I think it must be metal fatigue, brought on by 10 years of lugging my 15 stone frame around the potholed streets of Bristol – bits keep snapping, grinding and bending, so I took the decision a couple of weeks ago to replace it.
The new machine is being imported, just for me, from Germany, where teams of specialist engineers and steelworkers have been working through the night to construct a bike big enough for me. (Actually, it’s not that much bigger than my current bike (a Specialized Hardrock, with a 23″ frame), but just a couple of inches bigger in all directions, i.e. top tube, seat tube, and wheelbase, and I’m quietly confident that it will feel the “right” size for me, where the Specialized has always felt a tad small, complete with its stupidly long seat post, handlebar raiser, etc.) Last I heard, it was held up in customs – maybe they wanted to put an extra bit of tax on it or something.
But, talking of cycling, I found this excellent site the other day, all about looking good on a bike on the streets of Copenhagen, and it’s made me notice people on bikes around Bristol. I have to report that, in all honesty, we really are not a very stylish crowd. The reasons are, I think, varied but straightforward:
- The starting point – obviously, the inhabitants of Bristol are not, generally, as attractive in the first place as the impossibly good looking Danes.
- Judging by the pictures on the blog, Copenhagen weather is also rather more beautiful than our own. Bristol at the moment is in the middle of its unofficial monsoon season – it happened last July, and the year before, so I think we can reckon to be stuck with it. So one has to be prepared, with dangerously nerdy waterproofs, which even David Beckham would struggle to wear stylishly. (Unless you’re Jon, who turned up to work yesterday looking like a drowned rat, his excuse for not wearing waterproofs being that they were “under things”. Hmmm….)
- Copenhagers seem not to feel the need to wear helmets, which inevitably gives them a head start (geddit?) in the style stakes.
- Copenhagen seems incredibly well endowed with cycle lanes, with very few cars in evidence, so people look much more relaxed in their cycling than we do on the mean streets of Bristol. (This may well also account for the lack of helmets, although you shouldn’t be fooled, Danish fashionistas – your brain is far more likely to be damaged by your head hitting the pavement than by being hit by a car).
We recently heard that Bristol is going to become Britain’s “cycling city“, so maybe we can expect infrastructure like they have in Copenhagen. Wouldn’t that be great? And who knows, maybe the funding will also make us more beautiful, make the weather better, and get Jon’s waterproofs out from “under things”. Meanwhile, maybe we should start to make an effort to put Bristol on the cycling style map.
on a wet ride home
a rainbow in a truck’s spray
can make things better
We had one of our regular bridge meetings at the weekend, which was almost spoiled by the glorious summer weather. The Leeds boys decided to let the train take the strain (to quote an old, and totally inappropriate, slogan from British Rail). They got as far as Birmingham before being told that services south of Brum were subject to disruption because of heavy rain and flooding. Sure enough, they were turfed off the train and into a mile-long queue for coaches. After a happy couple of hours, they got onto a coach, which inevitably joined an almost static queue. Long story short, they ended up spending the night at the motorway services somewhere on the M5, finally reaching Bristol at 10:00 on Saturday morning, having left Leeds some 21 hours earlier. Fortunately, the Dunkirk spirit had prevailed, and they had made lots of new friends in the face of adversity, including one woman who spent the night telling anybody who would listen about the various ways in which she had exacted revenge on her ex-husband. Most satifyingly, she had let herself into his house when he went on holiday, spread a sackful of cress seed throughout the (fully carpeted) house, watered it in, and turned the heating on. Ex-hubby returned from his fortnight in Torremolinos to find a well established cress farm where his lounge had once been.
Anyway, back to the bridge. Pete and I obviously thought we stood an unusually good chance to regain the trophy, playing against the sleep-deprived zombies from Leeds… but, sadly, it was not to be. They drew on all their reserves of guile and ingenuity to beat us narrowly at the death.
The silver lining to a tarnished, but enjoyable, weekend was the extraordinarily exciting end to the Open, with Padraig Harrington winning in a play-off against Sergio Garcia, who had led throughout. I had a small amount of money on Harrington, at 25-1, so what with him winning and Els (another of my picks) coming 4th, I ended up £92 better off. Nice.
I really am heartily sick of rain. Every morning lately, I’ve woken up to the sound of rain on the roof windows, and know that I’m going to have yet another wet cycle to work in sweaty waterproof trousers. What about the hot summers that global warming promised us? Were all those short-haul flights with Easyjet a complete waste of time?
Well, it was never going to be the weekend of summer weather that we might feel entitled to expect in the middle of July, but I can’t help feeling slightly aggrieved that it was so much worse than even a pessimistic forecast predicted. The rain started on the way down on Friday morning, and Stephen and I, the advance party with special responsibility for tent erection and golf, bravely battled gales and driving rain to set up camp on the already-waterlogged field.
Then off to Saunton Golf Club for our annual round on the fine links course. People say that Saunton would undoubtedly have hosted the Open by now, if it had better infrastructure around it, and I must say that every time I play there I’m more impressed by the course, the setting, and the challenge. That last bit (“the challenge”) means that I was crap, but by calling it a “challenge”, I can make out that it was the course, the weather, etc. that made me crap, but that I’m otherwise an excellent golfer. And, although neither of us played as well as we could, at least we had a good, close game which left us level on the 18th tee, from which point Stephen cruised to an elegant par to lift the trophy. Except there isn’t one.
And so back to the campsite, where Stephen’s caravan awning had reverted to kit form in the wind. We were eventually joined by the rest of the party, who had got lost on Exmoor while attempting to circumnavigate a traffic jam.
Saturday morning offered some respite from the weather after a wild, stormy night. In fact the afternoon was glorious, with a breezy sunny afternoon on the beach. We had great fun with the bodyboards, trying to catch the perfect wave, which made me realise that I don’t see the sea often enough. It really does have restorative powers for me, and I felt more alive than I had for months, what with bat and ball, cricket, and all the other childish, beachy stuff.
And then it was Saturday evening, which started with the customary hunt for a decent takeaway meal (fruitless, as usual), and culminated in Daniel, after too many sneaky beers at a neighbouring campsite, staggering into his tent at midnight and causing it to collapse. It seems that, having unzipped the outer flysheet, he forgot that he also had to unzip the inner tent before diving headlong onto his sleeping bag. Which didn’t stop him settling down for the night, in the rain, on top of the flattened tent… which was probably just as well, given that he awoke not long afterwards to throw up… which would have been most undignified if he’s been snuggled up behind 2 fiddly zips… which would probably have been impossible to undo in a hurry.
We decided to make an early getaway on Sunday morning, and after a happy hour spent filling the car with wet tents and hungover teenagers, you can imagine how thrilled I was to find one of the car tyres flat as a pancake. And of course the spare was in the boot, beneath said wet tents and everything else. But still, after an even happier hour spent emptying the boot, changing the wheel, and refilling the car, we were able to slip and slide our way out of the campsite to start a very quiet drive home.
A bit of an “up and down” kind of weekend, really…
Well, I’m getting fed up with the rain. Everything just seems so wet. I suppose it’s what makes England such a green and pleasant land and all that, but enough’s enough. I’ve always thought that it would be nice to live in parts of North America, like New York state, where they have proper summers and proper winters. We seem to get a random jumble of seasons at any time of the year, and the past few weeks have certainly felt more like autumn than summer. Playing golf the other day (in the rain, of course), my opponent commented that his ball hadn’t bounded along the fairway as much as he had expected, due to the wet, muddy conditions. “Hmmm”, I said, “in the summer you’d have got at least another 50 yards”, before realising that it was June 30th. Hard to get more summery in terms of dates, but certainly a long way adrift in terms of golfing conditions. Still, mustn’t grumble, at least I needn’t have worried about the water butt not filling up…
Seeing as how it’s now July, Brendan must have finished his GCSEs… although it wasn’t always obvious that he was going through the ordeal. Very laid back, and quietly confident that he’s done ample to get himself to the next stage of life, namely 6th form and A-levels. He’s been encouraged in his quest for beer knowledge by his cousin Dan, who recently got a 2.2 in Politics at Liverpool, which is a great achievement. Dan’s always been a fine role model for the under-achieving boys in the family, and I’m really pleased for him. And talking of fine models, Bren scrubbed up beautifully for the end of year “prom” (aka “school disco, with expensive accessories like a suit and a ride in a stretch limo”). He’s now realised that he needs a job to keep him going for the summer – but sadly jobs for 16 year olds are rather hard to come by these days, so he’s decided to spend the “summer” (sic) unconscious during the a.m. hours, and migrating between Playstation, television and fridge during the p.m. bit.
Finally saw “Walk the Line”, the Johny Cash biopic. What a good film, with superb performances from Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon, incredibly singing all the songs themselves. I’d imagine there was a fair bit of post-production enhancement going on, but nevertheless a brilliant effort.
Other recent highlights – The Killers at Glastonbury (I didn’t go, but loved their set on telly), the Open Back Garden day in Southville (almost ruined by the rain, but a nice event nevertheless), and making a new garden gate for Pete’s birthday. How I’d love to make a living from working with wood – trouble is, I’m so slow that I’d probably have to charge about £1500 for a gate. Then again, I suppose I’m not much quicker at making databases, which I’d better get back to now that Cup-a-Soup time is over…
Spent a happy few hours at the weekend rigging up a system of gutters and pipes to feed the new water butt. I love fiddling about with water, and thought I’d timed it perfectly for the steady rain that they predicted for yesterday. But, unfortunately for water collectors in BS3, the rain never came. And we now seem to have entered a spell of warm dry weather, which is great for golf, but not so good for harvesting rainwater.
And talking of golf, the treasurer at my club has been caught cheating. His playing partner (not his opponent) spotted him kicking his ball out of the rough. They won the match, but after 2 days of agonising about it, the partner phoned their opponents to concede the match, then reported the misdemeanour to the club. The perpetrator has now been relieved of his responsibilities as club treasurer, and has been asked to resign his membership. All of which makes me glad to be associated with a sport that places such high value on the integrity and honesty of its participants. Trouble is, I’m also associated with football…
Excitement is building in south Bristol, as the annual South Bank Art Trail kicks off tomorrow. It should be great fun, although this threatens to put a damper on proceedings…
Never mind, there will be the usual buzz of creative energy as people shuffle round viewing the area’s artistic endeavours – or is it just a good chance to nose around other people’s houses?… More about the Art Trail here.
