My Bicycle Ride

I bought a pump, stamped 'government property', whatever that means, yesterday, for the sum of £1/0/0, and pumped up the tyres on my 1992 Marin Eldridge Grade, and today I've been out on it. I haven't ridden a bicycle since 1970 or 71 at the latest but was delighted to find that one really does not forget how to do it. This afternoon I rode round the block a few times but this evening I rode to the White Church at Fairhaven, along the prom at Lytham, and back, perhaps four miles all told. Going out I had to stop two or three times to catch my breath and rest my legs but I made the return ride in one leg, and I must have been going at a lick because I was catching and overtaking people who'd cycled past me while I was stopped.

I felt the difference the various gears made and decided that the front tyre needed more air and generally got the feel of the thing, and I've torn the bottom of one leg of my trousers, and acquired some subtle oily highlights on the same, which confirms that I should have bought the bicycle clips I saw for sale in Brooks of Fleetwood, and my leg buckled when I stepped off the bike at the back gate, but I'm strangely energised. The funny thing is that before the ride I had intended buying more alcohol but now I don't fancy it. I'd never thought of cycling as a recreational drug.

Chances Are

Rough and difficult to think of as a hit yet it was.

Walking Is So Twentieth Century

How long will it be before the tax payer is buying these for PCSOs, CEOs, traffic wardens et al? It's a nice idea though, and likely to prove a runaway success.

Not to be outdone, Toyota are also in the field:



Replacing human activity seems to be more appropriate than 'supporting', although this could be useful in helping the disabled to move more independently:



How long will it be before some twenty five stone, lard-arsed 'couch potato' sues the manufacturer because the device failed to support his weight?

Adding An Engine to A Bicycle

Unless something has been missed, it appears that all the torque of the engine will be transmitted to the hub through the spokes, which is not a satisfactory method. That wheel is not going to last very long, although probably longer than the tyres and brakes.



In England this adaptation creates a moped, for all intents and purposes, and is therefore subject to the myriad rules and regulations governing its construction and use. I doubt that such a device could be legal as things stand.

As an aside, why is it that almost all YouTube videos dealing with anything touching on self-reliance, from building a home to home brewing, are made by Americans? Is the English genius for innovation and invention moribund or is it that we just don't proclaim our achievements as readily as our trans Atlantic cousins (not to mention our northern neighbours)?

Relics II

While I'm 'at it':

The original is quite small, about two and a half inches by one and a quarter at most, and was done in York, sometime between 1st April 1996 and 1st August 1998. We lived in a small flat that had been cheaply converted from the first floor of a Victorian 'town house' and to while away some time one afternoon I sketched a more interesting idea for the fireplace in the sitting room, then half the original room (the other half forming our compact bedroom), and a simpler effort for what was then our kitchen / dining room behind it.

Relics

I took out an old but almost unused layout pad today, so that I could rough out some ideas for garden screening that I have, and found this, and since I rather like it I'm posting it here:

I can't remember when I drew it but the absolute terminus ante quem is Monday, 5th February, 2007, when I removed myself from Berwick-upon-Tweed. By some odd coincidence the same sheet of paper bears notes I made on the functions of a domestic dwelling place, thoughts I've been mulling over for the past few months, and particularly over the past few days.

An Exemplary Instructional Video

Clear and concise information, clear and fluent diction and plenty of clear close up shots.

Theo Jansen

Our New Bicycles

They're not actually new as in brand new but they are new to us. We've been without transport since the early part of the year and I've been looking for a couple of bicycles for the past two months or so. On Friday I was alerted to these:

Mine (actually fluorescent red, not orange)

Mrs Gruff's

Not at all what I would have chosen had I any money at all but at £25.00 each, and not 'knock off', not an opportunity to let pass, especially since, having paid for them on Monday, I discovered on Tuesday that in all probability I have lost my JSA and, with a single figure sum in the bank, am well and truly in deep shit, though worse things happen at sea, as they say at sea, and I've survived worse circumstances.

I've removed the ridiculous MTB mudguards which I will replace with something conventional, as also the handlebars, and my saddle, which is not at all comfortable.  Unfortunately both machines were delivered to me with flat or under inflated tyres so cannot be ridden until I can afford a pump.  Some metal polish and elbow grease should see the dull and rusting parts shiny and bright again and with a set of appropriate tools - some allen keys and the relevant special spanners - I can start putting both contraptions back into first class condition.

The Marin Web Site offers the Eldridge Grade for £1,099.00 and the Palisades Trail for £899.00, although they appear to be of an 'improved' specification. Unless ours are some embarrassing Far East copies that only an ignorant novice would be seen dead on I seem to have picked up a bargain, which has put a grin on my face.

Addendum: By chance I've discovered a link, with a photograph, claiming that both bikes date from 1992, which makes them almost vintage (according to the rules of the VMCC). Another web site claims the same date. I shall contact the manufacturer for confirmation and consider carefully whether to restore the machines or upgrade them as I had intended, as and when my finances allow. I'm not a devotee of the preservationist faith but I do think that if something beautiful and practical can be used in its original form there's no compelling reason to change it. Our bikes are not beautiful however; the colour schemes and applied decorations are appalling and the various fittings may be in need of replacement, in which case they are not worth preserving.

Some official living extravagantly at the tax payers' expense is bound to disapprove of this, purely on the grounds of safety of course, but I rather like it:



Pointless and impractical for most of us, it is ideal for those planning to live in isolation in wetland and wilderness areas peppered with lakes and waterways, like the Yukon or Northern Siberia, and considerably cheaper than a seaplane.

I've no idea why the film goes on for 9m 28s.

Memories

I'm still looking for a job, too often sober, where once I seldom was, and still miserable. This could be my song:



Mrs Gruff once came home at two in the morning, after being away for three months, and cooked me a roast dinner, as I snored by brains out on the bed, fully clothed and arms and legs akimbo and every which way. On another occasion she brought silence to the bar at Kings Cross station, at about nine in the morning, by shouting 'you drunken bastard' into her mobile phone. I vaguely remember the occasion, more because she reminded me of it than from personal recollection. Then there was the time I collapsed against the door of my 'study' and Mrs Gruff heard my neck crack as she forced her way in (it still clicks and makes grinding sounds when I turn my head), and the occasion I lay down to sleep on the cobbles of the shared courtyard, wearing only my underpants, and the Christmas Dinner I cooked after drinking two bottles of Plymouth Navy Strength gin; while sharpening the carving knife I hacked into the joint of my left thumb and sent a spout of blood into the open cutlery draw, three feet away. I wrapped a tea towel round the mess and declined the offer of a lift to hospital because dinner was ready and I did not want to spoil it. I still have the thumb.

Happy days. I do hope I can afford them again, some day.

Anthem for Lost Youth

Not, perhaps, as eloquent as Owen or Sassoon, or any of the numberless poets slaughtered where poppies grow, or shot out of the air over Berlin, or Hamburg, or the factory towns of the Ruhr, or those manuring French and Dutch beaches, but not the less effective in saying 'fuck you' to those who believe we are just the raw material of manure.

Fuck you, and fuck you we will. The time is coming.

Henrietta

I don't have a photograph, and I don't really know what she looks like, I certainly wouldn't recognise her if I passed her on the street, but I was delighted to return her to the 'wild' as the sun sank about an hour and a half ago. Mrs Gruff brought her home last Friday, after nursing her back to health. She had been brought in very cold, covered in slimy pond weed and breathing noisily, having been discovered, almost completely submerged, trapped between the surface of a pond and the net covering it. Only her paws, gripping the net, had saved her. Mrs Gruff treated her at home and fed her, and the discovery that she had escaped on Monday from the cat carrier she had been recovering in confirmed that she was well and truly on the mend. We thought she'd crawled out through the gap below the 'garage' doors but I was delighted to find, today, that she had made a home in one of the plastic bags holding bits and pieces in what we call the shed. She'd had to climb into a collapsible crate to do so, dragging nesting material with her. At about half past ten I went into the shed, taking care to make sure that I didn't step on anything living and breathing and I was delighted to see her, dimly, on the floor, having obviously just dined on the cat food Mrs Gruff had bought for her. I swept her up in two handfuls of the soiled shredded paper she had spread about the floor and took her outside where I deposited her gently on the 'lawn' and left her. The last I saw of her was the dark shape of a hedgehog taking advantage of the 'wild'. I left her within two feet of the worm rich spoil heaps my trenching efforts have created. I hope never to see her again, except at night and by accident (should you see a hedgehog in daylight you can be sure it is ill).

Good luck Henrietta.

Pudding

Dinner was a broad bean and red onion risotto followed by this:

Home grown, and chemically untreated, strawberries with homemade cheese. The flecks of green are chopped chives. We lost all but one strawberry to molluscs last year; this year only the largest fruit (viz: one strawberry.) showed any sign of damage. Table salt for slugs and crushed shells for snails, immediately upon discovery. I was assiduous and industrious last year and this year I've seen few signs of slime and even fewer signs of the slimers. I don't agree with those who claim that everything has a right to life. However, even were I to be persuaded by their arguments I would still object that nothing can have the right to live at my expense, since such a right compels me to put the life or lifestyle of another before mine and that is not what I was brought into being to do, and eating my strawberries is at my expense, and unacceptably so.

The strawberries were small and sweet, and I and The Mrs Gruff, and not the molluscs, enjoyed them.

The Velvet Underground

I've written before about the house I rented, while a mature undergraduate, from a post graduate student and her half skeleton in a box, the North African threshing sledge propped against a wall in the sitting room and mint condition copy of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable Tour. I don't remember this song as one of the tracks on it but I have it on a CD recovered not long ago from Berwick-upon-Tweed:



This is on the album (and not on the bloody CD):



It 'remembers me', as my daughter used to say, a long time ago, of a time long ago.