Monthly Archives: Oct 2011

Art, Cycling, My Art

Bike ride to Scotland: Part 1 Wallington to Hitchin

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Day 1 – 04/05/2003 (Sunday) London to Hitchin

Today didn’t work out that well. For various reasons, some good, some bad, I didn’t actually manage to leave until one-thirty in the afternoon, rather than seven or eight in the morning as I had planned. Never mind, I thought at least I had lunch before I left

Everything was going well, apart from a bit of hassle with the traffic in Brixton, until just after crossing London Bridge. I realised that I might have left the train ticket for the return journey lying on the kitchen table. A search through my bags confirmed that my thought was correct.

“Oh dear” I said to my self, well that wasn’t exactly what I said, but this blog tries to be suitable for all ages. I turned round and went back to London Bridge Station and caught a train to East Croydon, from where I cycled home and retrieved the ticket. I thought that while I was back home that I might as well unload the dishwasher and put the washing, which was now dry, away.

I cycled back to East Croydon and put the bike back on the train, this time to St Albans. My theory was that St Albans was roughly where I would have been if I hadn’t had to go back home to retrieve the ticket.

I decided to push on further. Eventually I decided that I would call it a day when I got to Hitchin, about 20 miles nearer to Duns. Then to cap, what was not the best day of the journey, the hotel I stayed at was not only the most expensive place I stayed at all trip it also, in retrospect, was the worst.

I plan my routes on BikeHike.co.uk which is a great little route planning website for cycling or walking. Your routes can be uploaded to or downloaded from a G.P.S. device if you own such a thing, or printed off if you don’t.

Part 2 Hitchin to Lincoln >

Art, Cycling, My Art

Old sketch books.

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I was sorting through my art equipment this afternoon. Basically looking to see what was worth keeping and what needed to be thrown when I came across a couple of old sketch-books that I also used as diaries to record a couple of trips. For my younger readers, “Keeping a diary”, was a bit like blogging ,except you wrote your thoughts down on paper. Usually no one else read them, not that much different to blogging then.
I thought that I would re-write them as blog posts and include the (better) sketches.
The first series of posts will be about a bike trip I made to Scotland in 2003. Mrs johnm55 had gone off to Canada for the week without me, so I decided that it would be a good idea to go and visit my mum – on my bike.
Day one can be found here

Uncategorized

A few thoughts on the Rugby World Cup

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I don’t usually post anything about rugby, but as the World Cup has just finished I will make an exception. As someone brought up in the Scottish Borders, rugby is part of my DNA. Obviously any direct interest I had in its outcome ended at the group stage when Scotland lost to England.
The final was a compelling game of rugby. From the moment that the French lined up in a ‘V’ to advance on the All Black Haka to the last, very relieved, kick to touch, the game had me gripped. At no point was either team on top. I think that The All Blacks just about deserved to win. They were the best team in the tournament. The best player both in the final and in the tournament overall was Thierry Dusautoir. He was named Man of the Match in the final and today was justly named the IRB Player of the Year.
Some would argue that low scoring and only two tries makes for an uninteresting game, I would argue that a seventy point try feast may be entertaining but has more to do with basketball than rugby. Some of the best games of rugby that I have seen were low scoring forward dominated games, usually played out in the mud at Mansfield Park between Hawick and Gala.

What Else did I learn from the World Cup?

  • ITV are keener to cut to an advert than to stay with the event.
  • Nick Mullins is not the new Bill McLaren (I already knew that)
  • The minor teams got a raw deal from the organisers.
  • The tournament goes on a bit too long , I can’t see an easy way of shortening it.
  • It would be good to have a “Bowl” competition in 2015 (similar to what happens in Seven-a-side tournaments..)
  • No game is ever lost if you are playing Scotland.
  • By the next World Cup Russia and Georgia could well be up with Scotland and Italy.
  • A Pacific Island team might not win the World Cup, but one of them will always produce an upset.
  • Hayley Westenra is very pretty and can also sing a bit.
  • Israel Dagg reminds me of Andy Irvine, without the worry about what is going to happen under a high ball.
  • Before he was crocked Dan Carter did enough to convince me, and possibly other Borderers of my generation, that he could be a better No 10 even than ‘Rud’.
Cycling

L’Eroica

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L’Eroica is a sort of Sportive/Grand Fondo type of event that takes place in the Chianti region of Italy each October. It is one of the events on my list of ‘Rides I would like to do but probably won’t’. Others on the list include Paris-Brest-Paris, The Fred Whitton and the Dunwich Dynamo. Actually I might get round to doing the Dynamo one day.
The event, you can’t really call it a race, started in 1997 as an attempt to draw attention to, and help preserve Tuscany’s ‘strada bianche’. It has been remarkably successful in that respect and has even spawned a race for the professionals, the Montepaschi Strade Bianche. The other purpose of the event is to connect to a (partly imagined) time in the past when cyclists were real men (and women) of steel. The type of people who would and could repair their broken forks using a borrowed blacksmith’s forge, like Eugene Christophe but without the aid of the boy to pump the bellows.
In keeping with this ethos you are not allowed to take part in the event on a bike made later than the mid nineteen-eighties. Many people take part on bikes that were originally built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Most participants dress in retro cycling gear appropriate to the bike they are riding. Woollen jerseys and shorts, with a spare tubular wrapped round their shoulders in the style of the pre-war heroes like Alfredo Binda, is the look to aim for.
Alfredo Binda
Additionally, while I’m sure that there is no ban on energy drinks and bars, they are not exactly encouraged. The correct food and drink for cycling is water, or better still red wine (this is Chianti country) and some good bread, cheese and a bit of prosciutto or salami. If you need a caffeine boost an espresso will do the trick.

The video gives a fuller flavour of the event.

Domestic (UK), Politics

Shami Chakrabarti defends the Human Rights Act

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Today’s Guardian featured a discussion between Liberty director Shami Chakrabarti and a Tory MP (Dominic Raab) on the subject if the Human Rights Act. Chakrabarti won.

For those of you not aware of the background to this, the Tories would like to repeal the Human Rights Act and replace it with their ‘British Bill of Rights’. The ‘British Bill of Rights’ will include nothing that The Daily Mail might disagree with. It is possible that The Daily Mail may in fact be asked to produce the first draft. The Liberal Democrats, possibly for the first time are digging their heels in and saying NO! as is Ken Clarke (I think).

Anyway back to Shami Chakrabarti taking an ignorant Tory apart.

Dominic Raab: The tabloids blame everything on the Human Rights Act (HRA) and, in my view, the NGOs think it’s perfect. I think there’s a middle ground. The HRA didn’t do a great deal to protect some of our freedoms – against ID cards, the DNA database, against some of the surveillance where children were followed home from school to check their catchment area.

Shami Chakrabarti: That was our case, and we brought it under article 8 of the HRA, so I disagree with you.

That was just the start of it.

The bottom line of all of this is that for me as a middle class, middle aged, British born, white male, with all the privilege and entitlement that brings, a change from the Human Rights Act to what ever legislation the Tories might introduce probably wouldn’t make any difference. As long as we remain a democracy my human rights will probably be protected. The mark of what we are as a society is how we protect the human rights of people less lovable than me.

Music

Bert Jansch has died

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I have just heard the sad news that Bert Jansch has died. He had cancer and passed away early this morning.

He is probably best known for his involvement with the acoustic group Pentangle. His solo career, before and after Pentangle was also brilliant.

Folkies of my generation knew that nobody, but nobody could play the acoustic guitar like Bert Jansch. He was a brilliant interpreter of traditional material as his version of the Irish classic Blackwaterside shows.

He was also a fine songwriter, probably his best known song was ‘Needle of Death’ partly a gentle, non-judgemental elegy to a friend who died of a heroin overdose and partly a stark anti-drugs song..

Other people will write far more eloquent obituaries than I can. All I know is that the world feels diminished by his passing. As someone said with Davy Graham gone, and now Bert, “who is left to play ‘Anji’?”