Lanterne Rouge

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Is a brake really necessary on a bicycle?

This blog entry features Hot Velodrome Action, in Hampshire, including pics kindly loaned by Bree*.

It had been planned for several weeks, so I’d been getting more and more excited about my first turn on a real live velodrome, part of Calshot Activities Centre near Southampton. Staying with the wonderful and gracious Lindsey, who battled through the crappiest of colds to look after her three guests, we trooped over to the ‘drome first thing Sunday morning for an Introductory Session.

In the pic above, we’re being given our initial instruction by lovely Rose. Perspective’s a bit tricky here (for comparison, the white lines in the middle are badminton courts), but this is in fact the world’s smallest velodrome still in use, only 142 metres around and, therefore, with the tightest turns so it’s the hardest to ride on. Go us!

As most of you know, I ride a fixed-wheel bike in London, hipster twat that I am, so at least I found it second nature. No-one else seemed to struggle too badly, though - and in truth it’s fine when you have a clear, smooth circuit ahead of you instead of traffic jams and idiot peds and potholes and central London to deal with. The bikes, for anyone who’s interesed, were mostly aluminium Dolans, decent and straightforward.

As the session was merely to introduce us to track riding, we didn’t actually get that long on the track. A quick pootle on the inside (the non-banked green and grey strips in the pic above), before individually having a go at the banking, first on the black line, then the red, then the blue (worth having a look at that pic if I haven’t showed it to you already - dunno how Bree captured the shadow but it looks ace). At the end, we each got to complete 7 laps (one kilometre total) streaming round the banks almost parallel to the floor.

It was fantastic - the tightness of the curves makes the technique involved quite specific, and experiencing a 45-degree surface angle and G-forces you’d never feel on the road was briefly unsettling, but then hugely invigorating. It felt amazing to reach the end of the straight and almost throw yourself into the turn, left shoulder down, head low, and let the banking carry you, almost with a will of its own, until it flattens out once again.

It was over too soon, of course, and we’d done less than 2 miles actual riding each. We all left gagging for more - and the velodrome is hireable, for a surprisingly reasonable sum, so perhaps we’ll have to get together with a select group of chums and hire it out just for us sometime in the nearish future…

*if you search Twitter for ‘breekom’ it asks “did you mean ‘freedom’?”

Spoiler?

I have a pet hate that’s quite hard to explain, and covers quite a wide range of situations. Basically, I love anticipation. I love NOT knowing something, but knowing that I’ll discover it. This isn’t an unusual thing - very few people buy a book, skip to the final pages, read them, and then happily start the book already knowing how it ends. Admittedly one of those few is my better half, but she knows by now NEVER to give the secret away, whether it’s a football match, The Usual Suspects, or The X Factor results.

What inspired this post was this Yahoo article about the greatest sportsmen of the 00s. The bit where it says “user feedback update”. Thanks, Yahoo. You’ve ruined it for me now.

These days this sense of anticipation is attacked from all sides. Film trailers give away such a massive about of info about a movie that unless it’s fiendishly and expertly twisted, you may as well not bother watching it (yes, I know that with a bit of thought and extrapolation you could work out pretty much the exact storyline to most Hollywood movies, but I make a big deal if intentionally avoiding doing so - ignoring reviews, interviews, articles etc.).

And have you ever watched those Channel 4 list-type programmes - 50 Most Frequently Monogrammed Gift Ideas and the like - or, even worse, Sky, whose trailers are often longer than the actual programme? The meat of the show is invariably bookended by clips of whatever movies/songs/type of pies that make up the rest of the list. No! Stop! I want to wait, I want the joy of discovery of what’s the 37th most popular emo ballad of the 1990s! They don’t so much give you a clue, they tell you in shouty virtual capital letters exactly who you’re going to be seeing and when.

I have seen The Mousetrap twice. I successfully managed to forget whodunnit and enjoyed the second viewing as much as the first. But if Sky were producing the play, the interval would be all “see you in 15 minutes when you discover the [edit] ****** was the murderer all along!”

Postscript: it occurs to me that there’s an irony in my enjoyment of history and historical novels. It’s precisely the fact that I DO have some knowledge of the background, of the context in which I’m reading/viewing, that helps me to get so much out of it. I just read a novelised version of Elizabeth I’s early life. I know what happens in the end!! But it’s a different kind of satisfaction, a warmer, cosier place that forms a nice counterpoint to the tension and excitement of, uh, I’m a Celebrity or Wigan vs Aston Villa.

An Even Break?

What did the “break” key used to do on ’80s computers? Why don’t we have it any more?

Xmas food is appearing at a terrifying rate in the office kitchen. after yesterday’s biscuit-fest, we have a wonderfully traditional and delicious stollen in there:

It’s not the fluffiest of cakes, but it’s truly delicious, and a spot of extra chewing brings magnificent fruity rewards. On the whole, though, Christmas cakes in general come pretty low on my list of Xmas foodstuffs to cherish* - there’s so much else to gorge on, much of it filling and heavy, so why have a whole plethora of desserts that clog you up and shut you down?

Only a short entry today as work’s been mental and I’m off to see Have I Got News for You being filmed this evening. So I’m eating the Massively Swollen Grain Melange mentioned yesterday (in fact they’re called “wheatberries”. Is that a genuine plant, or some ridiculous marketing invention like “craisins”?) in the hope that I’ll make it to the Green Room without passing out.

*Delia Smith’s Xmas cookery show was on telly a couple of nights ago. About three quarters of what she made was very disappointing. Bread sauce and Cumberland sauce are a combination of “ew” and “why?”; gammon is anathema to anyone who enjoys either pork or bacon; turkey is Bernard Matthews triumph to the detriment of food lovers everywhere; and cutting scallops in half and baking for half an hour? What the hell? Delia, you’re out of touch with the British public and need to think about your future.

Call that lunch?

An M&S “Fireburst Rice Salad” isn’t the first thing to come to mind when I think of December foodstuffs, but it’s what I had for lunch. Disclaimer: the main reason I chose it was because this morning there were chocolate biscuits and cookies in the office kitchen and I ate 6 (six) of them. And number 7 is waiting for me for afternoon tea (edit: also nos. 8 and 9).

I also bought, thanks to a “2 for £3” offer, a similar dish called something like “hyperlentil bulgar surprise”, which has outsize pulses in it. That’s sort of cheating, though, as I’ve had it before, and it’s quite tasty. My main issue with these ultra-healthy, yet still processed and packaged, yuppie diet meals is that they all taste of vinegar. All of them. Why? I use vinegar once every 6 months or so in cooking at home (and that’s usually a reaction to my dishes being way too cloying because I’ve added too much wrongness), and it certainly has its place on chips (balsamic vinegar and soggy, greasy chip shop chips deserves a Michelin star on its own), but I have a feeling that whoever makes these recipes sees the word “salad” and just HAS to add “with vinaigrette” otherwise there OCD goes off or something.

Anyway, the word “salad” is not one I enjoy, as I have the world’s most pathetic allergy. To lettuce. It’s a pain in the arse when you’re trying to eat healthily, especially as I’ve realised I really do quite like the flavour. As a rule, the spicier/tastier the leaf, the more allergic I am. It seems, annoyingly, this allergy extends to parsley (boo), coriander (argh!) and basil (nooooo!!!), as well as lettuce-variants such as watercress, spinach, rocket etc. etc. I get a massively itchy mouth and a long-lasting, cramped-up stomach. It’s no fun. And I inwardly sigh every time I have to tell my gracious host that actually, I can’t eat their lovingly prepared and no doubt delicious accompaniment.

What a soft lad.

Oops?

Sorry guys - so much for an entry every day (the weekend was never supposed to count, though). Nagging by Allan (the new fragrance for Xmas 2009) has encouraged me to put fist to keyboard and type any old crap to fill space and shut him up. I didn’t say that out loud, did I? Anyway.

How about those new-style parking meters, the ones where you stick your cash in and get a sticky ticket to put on your windscreen? They don’t half look like people. I mean, they don’t, not really, but there’s something about the way your senses have to always be on alert on a bike that translates a 6 foot night, 2 foot wide, dark coloured object standing on the kerb into the kind of lunatic pedestrian who could, at any moment, run out in front of me.

I could bang on for ages about lunatic pedestrians, but it’s a typical cycle bore topic, so I won’t. It’s kind of amusing watching people leap in terror when you point out that actually you’re cycling there and had they seen you (NB at this point I am invariably sure that an accident has been averted, but since they haven’t even seen me they are very much not). In short - look out for bikes, dudes. It hurts getting hit by a 200 lb combo of flesh and metal traveling at 20mph. Hurts me, too, and no-one wants that.

It was 0 degrees when I left the house this morning to cycle to work. Hi, winter, hope you’re not as much of a bitch as you were last year. Though so far, no plans to circumnavigate the Isle of Wight in sub-zero conditions. On balance, 3rd January might not have been the best date to pick for the trip. If only cos it gets so dark, so quickly. I am, however, going to a velodrome next weekend for the first time ever! I ride a fixed-wheel bike in London, so I hope it’ll feel fairly natural. Can’t wait - watch this space for details…

The first day of the week - alphabetically?

…was the easiest question in tonight’s pub quiz, attended by me and (forgive the twitterism, but since this is being published on Twitter and is probably where most of my readers come from) @breekom, @golfpunkgirl, @benbenbenbenben and @leewinter.

It took place at the Stinging Nettle in Shepherds Bush - Bree and I had been having a quiet drink there a month or so ago and had overheard a decent pub quiz in the background, and thought we’d give it a go. So, us five brave interrogatees took up the challenge, and, calling ourselves “eight million, eight thousand, one hundred and thirty-five” (work it out), stepped up to the plate.

It’s a pretty trad affair, with 40 questions, 10 of which are a picture round featuring, among others, Rob Lowe, Cheryl Cole,  Whitney Houston and the word “blowjob”. Charmingly amateurish, we did have cause to complain on a couple of questions: we answered “Congo” instead of “Zaire” (since the latter no longer exists, our gamesmanship actually provided the more accurate answer), and when a question asked us to name a decade, apparently “60s” is not sufficient when the required answer is “1860s”. But we’re magnanimous; as it turned out, we could afford to be.

Among the usual suspects were a couple of genuinely interesting posers. The one that had us thinking for longest was the following: which three London Underground stations do the following clues apply to?

a) Mountain of farms

b) Coal-miner’s coppice

c) Layers of our envious prince

Please answer in the comments section, below. Show working :)

Everyone conributed meaningfully, from Ben’s Derek and Clive nous, to Bree’s pointless pop culture perfection, to Lee’s slightly worrying Barbra Streisand secret. I filled in a few blanks here and there, and somehow we managed to win the bloody thing - I’m a perpetual pub quiz podium chap, but I almost never reach the top step. And a prize of £64! Last time I won a pub quiz, it was at Warwick University and the prize was a crate of truly nasty beer (which, I’m sure, was way more valuable then than £64 is now). Liana kept pointing out what a smug fucker I looked. I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations.

Size does matter?

My friend Liv suggested this addendum to yesterday’s post. Some see the popularity of exhibitions such as Anish Kapoor as a renaissance in the public appreciation of art; but as Liv pointed out, how many of the punters who queue to see Kapoor’s Big Art are actually interested in the more standard formats?

I blame the Tate Modern’s Turbine Gallery. It DEMANDS Big Art. It also provides a space that hundreds of visitors can experience at once, and indeed their presence and experience of the work becomes part of the work in itself.

Of course, size per se makes the unremarkable extraordinary in almost any context. Most things can be made big; if they are made massive, absurdly so, they also become exponentially more viewable. I think on balance I’m more awed by enormous things with a purpose; massive mining machinery, aircraft carriers, the Pentagon, the Goliath beetle, all much more impressive than, say, a 50-metre-high white horse (yours for £2m, great views, must like Kent).

But having said that, the double whammy of something that is both great art and oversized is one that squares its own attractiveness factor; the art lovers won’t (usually) be put off, but the casual observers will get off their fat-arsed Sunday sofas and make the effort to better themselves when they wouldn’t even consider popping down to the poor, old-fashioned Tate Britain for a bit of oil on canvas.

Conversely, Tiny Art has an equal magnetic attraction to the non-conventional art consumer. The classic example is Willard Wigan, whose learning difficulties made expressing himself an issue which he overcame by making ever-smaller sculptures, often framed by the eye of an ordinary needle. The quality of the sculpture, the subject and content of it is irrelevant; it’s the mere fact that someone has done something which appears impossible that makes it so fascinating.

In this instance, it’s almost the pure weirdness of the subject that makes the audience take note - I can’t imagine many real connoisseurs appreciating the beauty and depth of a teeny tiny Homer Simpson or Marilyn Monroe, minute skirt a-flutter - but in public interest terms, it’s gold. Quite literally for Wigan, who has sold his life’s work for a not-miniscule $20 million.

Kapoor or Caravaggio?

This isn’t a discussion on the merits of two very different forms of art. This is a “wot I done on my weekend” post, less interesting but undoubtedly less long-winded and pretentious than the former would have been.

Yesterday afternoon, B and I (having allowed ourselves the luxury of waiting for the torrential rain to subside) trundled into town to see the Anish Kapoor exhibition at the Royal Academy. Having watched the documentary on the artist last week (and what a lovely chap he seems!), we were both very much up for it, and only the sanctity of Sunday evenings flopped on the sofa prevented us from choosing the Rather Good Idea of attending the limited-numbers, complimentary-booze evening viewing.

Which turned out to be a shame. We arrived at about 1.30 to see the queue virtually snaking into the road, and after 5 minutes of desultory queuing, we hightailed it over the road to lust after Fortnums’ fancies before lunching at the nearby FishWorks, which was exactly what we needed. I don’t tend to go to fish restaurants very much, and almost never order it when there’s meat on the menu, but the mixed grill, oysters and breadboard were all flawless. The spontaneity of the meal was the icing on the cake - it was a wonderful lunch.

Fortified, we re-entered the cultural metasphere and walked over to the National Gallery to look at a Caravaggio or two. And that was, indeed, the number of Caravaggios we found. Very nice - and luckily there are one or two other decent sketches in the National to keep us occupied as it got steadily colder outside.

So, hardly a groundbreaking day, but it’s worth noting in the context that I almost never go into town on the weekend, and never never for culturally proactive fun. I know it’s not quite new year, but I Must Do This Again very soon.

Unnecessary question mark?

Tumblr’s bizarre thinking means if I want people to respond to my blog posts, I need to put a question mark in the title. I’m an attention whore, so of course I do, which is why I’ll likely be moving to Wordpress just as soon as I can work out the baffling complex set of things I can do to customise my blogging experience. As long as I get dozens of witty response, and thousands of unique visitors, I’ll be happy to churn out any old crap.

Last night I went to see excellent band Royal Treatment Plant play a charity do at the Cobden Club. They were great, of course - it’s such a rush when you hear a band you like play new songs and they’re brilliant. Some of the newies were quite understated, softer and more mournful than usual, but there were also a couple of anthemic tunes, which would be equally at home on Match of the Day and over the climactic scene of a mid-budget Hollywood movie (starring, let’s say, Hugh Jackman). Very exciting.

On the downside… the charity event was woefully, embarrassingly underattended - there probably weren’t two dozen paying punters, and most of them (including me) left after RTP came off stage. They still had a charity auction to go, which included some genuinely top lots, but I couldn’t face it. I get so sad for people in that situation. I’m cringing just thinking about it.

There were also two tolerable singer-songwriter chaps, and one dreadful comedienne. I won’t name her but while she seemed likeable enough, she just wasn’t funny. Deathly silence from the audience for most of her set, and a good 15 minutes without as much as a snicker. I was sitting there just wanting it to end, and was pathetically grateful whenever there was anything to even chuckle about. At least she had a group of friends to look after her when she came off stage. I think I now understand why clowns are so sad.

So, if you’ve got some spare cash you’d like to give to a good cause, but don’t know which one, can I recommend actionaid - they’ll be feeling pretty low today, I reckon, and they seem to do genuinely excellent things.