10 – Cyclists who overtake at traffic lights, and then don’t accelerate.
So you’ve stopped at the lights. That is, at the lights. And are waiting like a good citizen. And then somebody on either a fixed-wheel monstrosity or the world’s cheapest bike has decided that, in fact, the line on the road isn’t where they stop. Where they stop is halfway across the pedestrian area, annoying the pedestrians. But that’s not what this is about – this is about the fact that they’ve barged past you. And then, as you pull away from the lights, you realise they cycle like your grandma (or they have no gears, the morons). And so as you accelerate you have to overtake them, sticking your arse in the way of the cars, or – alternatively – you end up held up behind them, waiting, waiting. Delaying you. If you’re a non-accelerating cyclist, please don’t barge to the front at the lights, eh?
9 – The phasing of traffic lights
There are parts of London which are already, pretty much, designated as bike routes. Ebury Street is a by-pass of some 3 lane nonsense around Victoria. A bike by-pass. So why, you wonder, are the traffic lights not phased to help cyclists in the morning phased for those going in to town; in the evening for those going out. Instead, they change apparently at random. Do the people in power not realise that it takes a huge amount of effort to accelerate as a cyclist, so to be stopped repeatedly is going to not encourage the cyclists. It’s not the same as in a car.
8 – Bike lanes that throw you out into massive traffic
All around Victoria and Hyde Park there are nice secluded, safe bike-lanes and bike-routes. And almost inevitably, there’s actually no way of getting from these to another safe bike-route. They will churn you out into Buckingham Palace Road or Park Lane or Bayswater. Unjoined-up thinking of the highest order. (I would also add also those tiny fractions of bike lanes, or the ones which go through trees and bus stops...)
7 – Drivers parked in the bike lane
Or, more to the point, bike-lanes that are single-yellow line, so cars are meant to park in them, which makes them completely redundant and very dangerous
6 - And those drivers who deliberately put themselves right by the kerb to block cyclists
Cabbies, you know who you are.
5 – Motorised vehicles in green advance cycle-bays at junctions
Moped-riders, in particular, you know who you are. I’m sure there’s a special place in hell reserved for you. Although, actually, worst of all are bus drivers parked in these spots
4 – Addison Lee vehicles
Historically, the worst driven vehicles in London were Evening Standard vans. These have been superceded by Minicab supremos, Addison Lee. They are driven shockingly.
3 – The Expensive 4 wheel drive vehicles on the school run
VW Touareg? Volvo XC90? Porsche Cayenne? Mercedes M? Range Rover Vogue? BMW X5?
All horribly driven by incompetents taking screaming brats to school, clogging up the streets, making life more dangerous for every other child. Bad. Bad bad bad. Bad!
2 – Bendy Buses
Enough has been written about these Leviathon-esque monstrous beasts of the road. All I will add, for now, is BURN THEM
1 – The driver who indicates as he is turning
Dear London Morons. Your indicators are useless when you are already turning. By then I am already aware of what you are doing; indeed, this is possibly because I am getting crushed under your rear axle. Your indicators are, actually, meant as a warning to other road users so they can prepare. If, for example, you are in a queue at some traffic lights and are waiting to turn left, and there’s a bike-lane inside, perhaps it would be wise to indicate as you are stopped and waiting, so Mr Cyclist can pull into the lane outside you. The funny thing is that it helps you, too, so that you don’t have to slam on your brakes as you notice a lycra-clad twat on your left.
Monday 28 September 2009
Saturday 26 September 2009
On The Perils of Buying Flowers As A Bloke
First up, cards on the table. I don’t know flowers. I’m never excited by them. Not my thing. It’s not a dislike, just an apathy.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, today we’re off to a wine-tasting, and I was out buying flowers as a gift for the people hosting us. And herein lies a big problem.
Because I have no idea what to buy. And I think most blokes fall into this trap. We are, of course, generally the ones who are meant to buy flowers. It’s the great romantic gift. Women of all ages love getting flowers, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who buys them far less than he should.
There is a big problem. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the feeling that I’ve been told that certain flowers are for certain things. You don’t buy black roses, or something, or maybe even red roses, except for some special occasion. So should I not be buying a yellow orchid for someone because it’s meant to be a sympathy thing when their great aunt dies? Should I not buy a live pot of ivy, because it actually indicates that I want to poison their best friend? How am I meant to know?
And that’s not coming to the second key problem. As someone who is basically apathetic about the things, how on earth can I tell what looks good, what looks gaudy and tasteless, what looks hideously dull, or what looks tatty and barren. I just have no idea.
As blokes, what are we meant to do? I think the only thing you can do is trust the florist. But, really, there’s always that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that they’re just having some fun with you because you’re an ignorant idiot.
Anyway, as mentioned yesterday, today we’re off to a wine-tasting, and I was out buying flowers as a gift for the people hosting us. And herein lies a big problem.
Because I have no idea what to buy. And I think most blokes fall into this trap. We are, of course, generally the ones who are meant to buy flowers. It’s the great romantic gift. Women of all ages love getting flowers, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who buys them far less than he should.
There is a big problem. Somewhere in the back of my mind is the feeling that I’ve been told that certain flowers are for certain things. You don’t buy black roses, or something, or maybe even red roses, except for some special occasion. So should I not be buying a yellow orchid for someone because it’s meant to be a sympathy thing when their great aunt dies? Should I not buy a live pot of ivy, because it actually indicates that I want to poison their best friend? How am I meant to know?
And that’s not coming to the second key problem. As someone who is basically apathetic about the things, how on earth can I tell what looks good, what looks gaudy and tasteless, what looks hideously dull, or what looks tatty and barren. I just have no idea.
As blokes, what are we meant to do? I think the only thing you can do is trust the florist. But, really, there’s always that nagging feeling at the back of your mind that they’re just having some fun with you because you’re an ignorant idiot.
Friday 25 September 2009
Some thoughts on English Wine
Tomorrow we are at a wine tasting, and everyone gets to bring wine from their country or adopted country. As I don’t have an adopted country, I am bringing English wine. It has a pretty ropey reputation, and a lot of that is well deserved. A lot of English wine is terrible.
It’s not as terrible as British wine, and there is a difference: English wine is made with English grown grapes; British wine is made with the concentrate of the worst grapes grown in other countries. It’s a legal definition which I don’t much understand. But it means anything designated as “British Wine” is best saved for communion services or drain cleaning.
There is a reason why English wine is bad, and it’s not that it’s because it’s made by the English. It’s because of the weather; or more precisely because we’re so far north we really hardly get enough sun.
But, there are other places in fairly northern Europe that make great wine. Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhine valley. And looking at them is the best way of seeing what will make decent English wine. In particular, Southern England has a very similar soil-structure and climate and hill-shaping to Champagne, and because you’re not really looking for sweetness in champagne, and because perhaps the fizziness can mask a lot of other sins, it’s in faux-champagne that England succeeds best. England’s best wines by far are the fizzy ones. But there are other grapes, things along the lines of Sylvaner and Muller-Thurgau from the German side, and perhaps pinot blanc from the French side, which do OK.
And British vintners are working to produce new hybrids which work better still. It’s not a completely lost cause, and the wines are getting better. Because of the novelty value, I think you still pay substantially over the odds, but it’s not all nasty these days.
It’s not as terrible as British wine, and there is a difference: English wine is made with English grown grapes; British wine is made with the concentrate of the worst grapes grown in other countries. It’s a legal definition which I don’t much understand. But it means anything designated as “British Wine” is best saved for communion services or drain cleaning.
There is a reason why English wine is bad, and it’s not that it’s because it’s made by the English. It’s because of the weather; or more precisely because we’re so far north we really hardly get enough sun.
But, there are other places in fairly northern Europe that make great wine. Burgundy, Champagne and the Rhine valley. And looking at them is the best way of seeing what will make decent English wine. In particular, Southern England has a very similar soil-structure and climate and hill-shaping to Champagne, and because you’re not really looking for sweetness in champagne, and because perhaps the fizziness can mask a lot of other sins, it’s in faux-champagne that England succeeds best. England’s best wines by far are the fizzy ones. But there are other grapes, things along the lines of Sylvaner and Muller-Thurgau from the German side, and perhaps pinot blanc from the French side, which do OK.
And British vintners are working to produce new hybrids which work better still. It’s not a completely lost cause, and the wines are getting better. Because of the novelty value, I think you still pay substantially over the odds, but it’s not all nasty these days.
Thursday 24 September 2009
A weird day at work
I didn’t much want this blog to be a personal introspective place where I write about myself. A subject less interesting would be hard to find.
But today I discovered I could be becoming an even more indolent cyclist. Or, even, an indolent non-cyclist. My company may be moving offices in the next few months, and it's even possible I'll end up working from home.
Nothing much more to add.
It’s just very weird. And the idea of not cycling through London every day is very, very peculiar indeed.
More on this, I’m sure, in the weeks and months ahead.
But today I discovered I could be becoming an even more indolent cyclist. Or, even, an indolent non-cyclist. My company may be moving offices in the next few months, and it's even possible I'll end up working from home.
Nothing much more to add.
It’s just very weird. And the idea of not cycling through London every day is very, very peculiar indeed.
More on this, I’m sure, in the weeks and months ahead.
Wednesday 23 September 2009
One Way Streets, Traffic Lights and The Law
It was reported a couple of days ago that the government are planning on bringing in a system allowing cyclists to legally go the wrong way down one-way streets, even when there aren’t contraflow lanes. This is going to be trialled in Kensington and Chelsea – ironically the home-borough of David Cameron. Of course, I thoroughly approve of this – lots of one-way streets will have no entry “except for cycles” signs on them.
I do think, though, they will have to be careful where they allow this. On some roads it could lead to chaos – particularly given how London’s streets are often insanely narrow to start with.
But reading the article on this, it seems to have come from realising that contraflow bike lanes were massively increasing the uptake of cycling, and they were trying to work out how to improve it further without – this is, after all, the UK government – actually spending any money or taking road space away from cars or anything. So, why not actually not build segregated bike lanes, and just put a little notice on the no-entry sign instead. Anyway – I was going to say that there are some bike lanes round here which not only make no sense, but actually make things more dangerous.
There’s one two-way bike lane, in particular, which goes along the side of a two-way street. As you might imagine, drivers don’t instinctively look across the road and behind them to see if bikes are coming and frequently pull straight across the lane putting everyone in peril. It is a bit of specially British genius to be able to build a segregated bike lane and still make it more menacing than cycling on London’s streets unprotected.
There’s also, whilst I’m on the tirade, a fairly new, and very stupid, bike-only traffic light around here, too. Clearly, some bikes were a bit threatened by cars turning right on a one-way street, across the bike-lane. That’s fair enough. But the solution, surely, isn’t to put in a traffic-light that holds cyclists up for ages when the cars are turning, and then manages to piss off the car drivers, too, by holding them up. Even worse, this light sometimes just doesn’t change for the cyclists at all, so you could sit there for hours waiting if you were polite.
Now, most London cyclists aren’t that polite, and will eventually jump a light when it makes sense. So, in the end, that problem is overcome.
At other times, though, like yesterday morning cycling into work, cyclists jump lights when it makes no sense at all – I was up near Oxford Street, at rush hour, in heavy traffic, which was moving slowly along but completely solid. What on earth possessed the moron to my left to just decide to pull out into the middle of that stream of traffic (slowly, too, no acceleration, probably on a fixie) on a red light, causing everyone to slam on their brakes so as not to kill him. At other times I’ve nearly been killed trying to avoid the muppets pulling into my line, so I have a choice of ploughing through them or pulling out, and hoping cars behind me have seen what’s going on and can take appropriate action. I’ve survived so far.
This is all to say that, whilst it may make sense to allow cyclists to not adhere to road-law, and allow them to go the wrong way down the street, you really have to be very careful because you can’t expect them to use common sense.
Meanwhile, I come to thinking about David Cameron. This policy is, apparently being pushed by Labour, although tested in Conservative Kensington and Chelsea. We probably all remember Cameron being photographed cycling the wrong way down a one-way street. Anyway, this is what bugs me here. I don’t mind politicians breaking laws that they consider to be asinine, stupid, pointless, or whatever, provided that they’re campaigning to change those laws. It’s not hypocritical to break a law that you dislike – no matter how much of a frothy hissy-fit the media will have.
But Cameron never did campaign to change that law. And that makes him an arse. This is him saying “That law’s fine for everyone else, but I’m OK ignoring it, because I am superior.”
The other recent case of this, of course, is the far worse, although also far funnier, Baroness Scotland situation. England’s chief law officer, the person who pushed a law through, a stupid law that just increases bureaucracy and makes life harder for business, then goes and ignores that law. This is a law that requires employers to check the employment status of foreign employees, and make sure they’re legally here, and to keep all the documents. Funnily, Baroness Scotland found the task a bit too onerous and claims to have lost the photocopies of the now-shown-to-be-false work permit.
Anyone with an ounce of cynicism might find “I lost the homework down the back of the piano, miss” to be a bit of a bollocks excuse. But even if we take it at face value, then it actually means all the original criticism of the policy was right, and it obviously is actually quite tricky to keep all the paperwork that’s required.
As it is, of course, this is a classic case of a “one law for me, the politician; another law for everyone else”, made worse by the fact that she actually wrote the bloody law. You often see this kind of crap from the “moral majority” idiots, who are actually sneaking around having gay affairs with Satanist Arab drug dealers, or whatever. But it’s interesting to see it in with the anti-immigration mob falling over themselves for once.
I do think, though, they will have to be careful where they allow this. On some roads it could lead to chaos – particularly given how London’s streets are often insanely narrow to start with.
But reading the article on this, it seems to have come from realising that contraflow bike lanes were massively increasing the uptake of cycling, and they were trying to work out how to improve it further without – this is, after all, the UK government – actually spending any money or taking road space away from cars or anything. So, why not actually not build segregated bike lanes, and just put a little notice on the no-entry sign instead. Anyway – I was going to say that there are some bike lanes round here which not only make no sense, but actually make things more dangerous.
There’s one two-way bike lane, in particular, which goes along the side of a two-way street. As you might imagine, drivers don’t instinctively look across the road and behind them to see if bikes are coming and frequently pull straight across the lane putting everyone in peril. It is a bit of specially British genius to be able to build a segregated bike lane and still make it more menacing than cycling on London’s streets unprotected.
There’s also, whilst I’m on the tirade, a fairly new, and very stupid, bike-only traffic light around here, too. Clearly, some bikes were a bit threatened by cars turning right on a one-way street, across the bike-lane. That’s fair enough. But the solution, surely, isn’t to put in a traffic-light that holds cyclists up for ages when the cars are turning, and then manages to piss off the car drivers, too, by holding them up. Even worse, this light sometimes just doesn’t change for the cyclists at all, so you could sit there for hours waiting if you were polite.
Now, most London cyclists aren’t that polite, and will eventually jump a light when it makes sense. So, in the end, that problem is overcome.
At other times, though, like yesterday morning cycling into work, cyclists jump lights when it makes no sense at all – I was up near Oxford Street, at rush hour, in heavy traffic, which was moving slowly along but completely solid. What on earth possessed the moron to my left to just decide to pull out into the middle of that stream of traffic (slowly, too, no acceleration, probably on a fixie) on a red light, causing everyone to slam on their brakes so as not to kill him. At other times I’ve nearly been killed trying to avoid the muppets pulling into my line, so I have a choice of ploughing through them or pulling out, and hoping cars behind me have seen what’s going on and can take appropriate action. I’ve survived so far.
This is all to say that, whilst it may make sense to allow cyclists to not adhere to road-law, and allow them to go the wrong way down the street, you really have to be very careful because you can’t expect them to use common sense.
Meanwhile, I come to thinking about David Cameron. This policy is, apparently being pushed by Labour, although tested in Conservative Kensington and Chelsea. We probably all remember Cameron being photographed cycling the wrong way down a one-way street. Anyway, this is what bugs me here. I don’t mind politicians breaking laws that they consider to be asinine, stupid, pointless, or whatever, provided that they’re campaigning to change those laws. It’s not hypocritical to break a law that you dislike – no matter how much of a frothy hissy-fit the media will have.
But Cameron never did campaign to change that law. And that makes him an arse. This is him saying “That law’s fine for everyone else, but I’m OK ignoring it, because I am superior.”
The other recent case of this, of course, is the far worse, although also far funnier, Baroness Scotland situation. England’s chief law officer, the person who pushed a law through, a stupid law that just increases bureaucracy and makes life harder for business, then goes and ignores that law. This is a law that requires employers to check the employment status of foreign employees, and make sure they’re legally here, and to keep all the documents. Funnily, Baroness Scotland found the task a bit too onerous and claims to have lost the photocopies of the now-shown-to-be-false work permit.
Anyone with an ounce of cynicism might find “I lost the homework down the back of the piano, miss” to be a bit of a bollocks excuse. But even if we take it at face value, then it actually means all the original criticism of the policy was right, and it obviously is actually quite tricky to keep all the paperwork that’s required.
As it is, of course, this is a classic case of a “one law for me, the politician; another law for everyone else”, made worse by the fact that she actually wrote the bloody law. You often see this kind of crap from the “moral majority” idiots, who are actually sneaking around having gay affairs with Satanist Arab drug dealers, or whatever. But it’s interesting to see it in with the anti-immigration mob falling over themselves for once.
Tuesday 22 September 2009
Pneumatic Tyres Are Wonderful Things
So, after yesterday’s opening whine about potholes, something on the whole more positive. The Pneumatic Tyre. It was, actually, pneumatic tyres that were the problem yesterday. I’d pumped them up to a probably-too-inflated 5 bar, so I was flying along the road. But I didn’t have all that much suspension as a result.
Anyway, that said, isn’t it wonderful, something that can change efficiency and comfort on the road with just a puff of air. That makes the bike (or, I suppose, car) grip the road so well. That cushions and protects.
The pneumatic tyre is an astonishingly wonderful thing. One of the world’s greatest inventions. And too rarely credited.
This is a real non-post for my second entry, but I just wanted to comment on how much it improves my life.
Anyway, that said, isn’t it wonderful, something that can change efficiency and comfort on the road with just a puff of air. That makes the bike (or, I suppose, car) grip the road so well. That cushions and protects.
The pneumatic tyre is an astonishingly wonderful thing. One of the world’s greatest inventions. And too rarely credited.
This is a real non-post for my second entry, but I just wanted to comment on how much it improves my life.
Monday 21 September 2009
Broken Lights and Boris's Potholes
How to start a blog, I was wondering? How to start? Well, perhaps, given the title, it should be cycling related. And cycling home today, for the second time in less than 6 months, I hit a pothole so hard that my front light came flying out of its bracket and it shattered on the road. It didn’t much help that it was also run over by a taxicab after coming flying off. I have shattered shards of bike-light sitting in my pannier, rather uselessly, now.
This winds me up for two reasons. The first is to do with bike-light manufacturers. Do they build in redundancy by making useless brackets that don’t grip tight enough? How hard is it? As Bob Dylan once sang, how many bike-lights must one man break, before he buys one that’s half decent?
What really gets me, though, is the potholes. I’m sure this isn’t a new thing. I don’t ever remember the streets of London being smooth and fluid. But this year it feels like they’ve reached a new high. Or is that low? Anyway. There seem to be more and more and more of them, deeper and deeper. And it feels like the councils (or whoever’s job it is to fix these things) are doing increasingly poor fire-fighting jobs of fixing them. They’re often fixed, but with just another little patch of tarmac. And within a few months the problem returns. London is awash with these things.
And for a cyclist, there are more problems than just the destruction of lights and the increased profits for Cat-Eye. There’s the perpetual damage to the reproductive organs of us cyclists. Now, some of us don’t want children, but even so having a bike saddle repeatedly shoved into the groin is not much fun for most people (I’m sure there are some who pay for this particular delight in some dubious Soho clubs, but I’m pretty confident it’s a minority pursuit). And it actually ruins the bikes too. All those buckled wheels of London – it’s not just that us cyclists are a little on the portly side. It’s the ruined road surface that destroys them.
I would like to blame Boris Johnson, of course. This does feel like it has become substantially worse in the last couple of years. Under Boris’s watch. I’d like to blame it on the lunatic Johnsonite/Cameronite devolution of power to local communities so the can make local decisions for local people, taking power away from the centre (which, as anyone who’s ever heard a word from Newt Gingrich and 90s US Republicans knows, translates as “We want to remove responsibility from ourselves, and cut taxes massively, and then if anyone suffers we can blame local people for being rotten”).
Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case here. But don’t worry, there’ll be lots of other opportunities to attack this hateful nonsense.
Instead, the roads have just been dug up huge numbers of times in recent years. Partly for the spectacularly poorly organised replacement of the water main. But also because of the really unjoinedup thinking that’s come from the privatisation and balkanisation of gas, electric, phone, tv, and so on; so each company which has a problem digs a new little hole every time they have some work to do. And that just mashes up the roads. Too many small holes. I don’t know what the solution is. But it surely isn’t pushing more power away from the centre and reducing red-tape on utilities companies.
Well done Andy. Good start. A "Something Must Be Done But I Don't Know What" whine. Let's hope we can improve, eh?
This winds me up for two reasons. The first is to do with bike-light manufacturers. Do they build in redundancy by making useless brackets that don’t grip tight enough? How hard is it? As Bob Dylan once sang, how many bike-lights must one man break, before he buys one that’s half decent?
What really gets me, though, is the potholes. I’m sure this isn’t a new thing. I don’t ever remember the streets of London being smooth and fluid. But this year it feels like they’ve reached a new high. Or is that low? Anyway. There seem to be more and more and more of them, deeper and deeper. And it feels like the councils (or whoever’s job it is to fix these things) are doing increasingly poor fire-fighting jobs of fixing them. They’re often fixed, but with just another little patch of tarmac. And within a few months the problem returns. London is awash with these things.
And for a cyclist, there are more problems than just the destruction of lights and the increased profits for Cat-Eye. There’s the perpetual damage to the reproductive organs of us cyclists. Now, some of us don’t want children, but even so having a bike saddle repeatedly shoved into the groin is not much fun for most people (I’m sure there are some who pay for this particular delight in some dubious Soho clubs, but I’m pretty confident it’s a minority pursuit). And it actually ruins the bikes too. All those buckled wheels of London – it’s not just that us cyclists are a little on the portly side. It’s the ruined road surface that destroys them.
I would like to blame Boris Johnson, of course. This does feel like it has become substantially worse in the last couple of years. Under Boris’s watch. I’d like to blame it on the lunatic Johnsonite/Cameronite devolution of power to local communities so the can make local decisions for local people, taking power away from the centre (which, as anyone who’s ever heard a word from Newt Gingrich and 90s US Republicans knows, translates as “We want to remove responsibility from ourselves, and cut taxes massively, and then if anyone suffers we can blame local people for being rotten”).
Unfortunately, this probably isn’t the case here. But don’t worry, there’ll be lots of other opportunities to attack this hateful nonsense.
Instead, the roads have just been dug up huge numbers of times in recent years. Partly for the spectacularly poorly organised replacement of the water main. But also because of the really unjoinedup thinking that’s come from the privatisation and balkanisation of gas, electric, phone, tv, and so on; so each company which has a problem digs a new little hole every time they have some work to do. And that just mashes up the roads. Too many small holes. I don’t know what the solution is. But it surely isn’t pushing more power away from the centre and reducing red-tape on utilities companies.
Well done Andy. Good start. A "Something Must Be Done But I Don't Know What" whine. Let's hope we can improve, eh?
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