Dancing about architecture

I'm reading a book about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore at pres.  It's a bit verbose, but I'm sufficiently interested in the subject matter to plough on and get through the 500 pages.  What the length of this pot-boiler does illustrate is the shoddy state of the book editor's craft.

Editing is one of those skills that bean-counters mistakenly think is largely superfluous - a nice-to-have, but non-essential.  This is the same kind of flabby thinking that leads newspapers to laying off hacks and employing brand consultants.  A quick perusal of the some of the shite that gets passed off as on-line journalism these days should disabuse anyone of that misconception.  Good editing, like good journalism, is transparent, unostentatious.  You only notice its absence.  Consequently I find myself reading far too many rambling ill-disciplined books these days.  It's doubly annoying as they don't appear to be getting any cheaper to reflect the wretched economies apparently being made.  No.

Hard work never killed...etc

Only time for a couple of lines this evening.  The reason for the brevity is that I've simply been too busy at work.  Yeah, I know.  The work/life balance has gone to shite today.  I promised myself I'd never fall into this trap - not because I disparage modern office (although I do) but because I never want to be mistaken for one of those prize twats who lives for his work.  You know the type - you see them on trains on Friday evenings, battering away at the laptop or pretending to read some brutal PowerPoint printout while the rest of us are flicking through copies of Grazia, shooting the breeze and necking cold white wine like it's about to be outlawed.

Hurrah for us!  And down with the twats.  Message ends.

The race question

I took part in my second 10 of the cycling time trial season last night.  It was no quicker than the first one sadly.  But I did manage to pace myself better this time, so I was able to get to the finish in something approaching a decorous state.  Not like last time, when I looked like I'd be through a mangle.  I also competed on my fixed-wheel bike, which was woefully undergeared.  I'm hoping for better next week.

I've been pondering of late the bullshit that issues from people's mouths.  And in particular, the dissonance between what people say and how they behave.  Parents are especially guilty when it comes to this.  They constantly shite on about how important it is for the progeny to be well-balanced and happy, but then will quite happily set fire to poor wretch's Power Rangers because he or she hasn't mastered the oboe to their satisfaction.

Friends of mine who have kids, and who, like me, were masters of their own ships during childhood, also bleat about lack of freedom kids get these days.  I too find this aspect of modern childhood really dispiriting.  Children are never without adult scrutiny these days.  It's always dressed-up as providing security, but it's oversight and control, make no mistake.  So when one of my friends bemoans this, I ask if their kids are allowed out unchaperoned.  They never are of course, but that is due to their being especially attractive to perverts or something, so it's not the same.  People need to have blander children it seems.

Right, off training after work.  What larks, Pip.

Persistant veg-e-table state

The area I live in, as well as being as expensive as a Kremlin knocking shop, has a very active gardening community.  They're not the wretched coterie of casual-racist UKIP voters that one usually associates with organisations of this kind, but a loose coalition of middle-aged liberals.  In keeping with the vaguely left-leaning sensibilities that people like this (and me) hold dear, they like to use any available common land for rearing plants that add some value to the locale.  They'll put flowers in ugly areas, and fruit and veg in...err...hungry areas.

The missus joined them yesterday to help plants veggies and herbs in a couple of raised beds outside a community centre up the road.  Previously, these beds were a sort of impromptu weed-infested wheelie bin-cum-urinal for confused drunks on their ways home.

Let's hope the pissing stops when they clap eyes on the rainbow chard.  I'm sure it will.  Drunks have standards after all.  Ahem.

Harry Pottering

It's a bank holiday weekend here in Blighty.  A welcome one for yours truly too.  I'm still feeling the effects of having a restful break in Cornwall.  My system is struggling to get back on terms with paid work.  It's like being jet-lagged.

I've been careful not to schedule much this weekend as a result.  I've got a couple of practical bike things to attend to, which should keep me occupied and not wild-eyed with frustration.  Then on Sunday, we're off to our favourite restaurant for a slap-up vegan supper.  Luckily, vegans enjoy a port and lemon as much as the next maniac, so a few sharpeners will join in the good work.

Other than that, it's lie-ins, curries and telly.  The de facto triumvirate of British excellence.

Never go back

Well, well, I'm back in London and back at work after five glorious days in west Cornwall.  It was an especially relaxing sojourn this time.  It was my mother-in-law's birthday, so we entertained at theirs one day and spent the rest of the time gadding about, eating asparagus and drinking gin.  The sun never stopped shining, not neither.  So, all-in-all, it was a real wrench to come home yesterday.

I've mentioned before how well-disposed I am by inclination for retirement.  This trip confirmed the hypothesis.  I could quite happily retire.  All I need is the mortgage paid and modest pension, just enough to keep me in bikes and beer.  The only other possibility would be to become a minor royal, but that's a long-shot, let's face it.  I'm a bit too "below-stairs".  And a Catholic.  Also, there is an undeniably tedious element to royal life.  Opening hospices is not for me.  I'm too shy.  That said, I do have quite a regal bearing - always have had.  And were I ennobled, I'd insist on wearing a fez, just to mix it up a bit.

 - I declare this hospice open.  Just like that.

Westward Ho!

Off to Cornwall later.  Ah, the simple pleasures of rail travel.  We've stumped-up the not inconsiderable extra for first class tickets for this jaunt.  It's worth it though, particularly on a Friday.  The mass exodus from the capital at the weekend makes the D-Day landings look like a walk in the facking park.

As usual too, I've been deputised to provide the nibbles.  It's a tough balancing act, this.  You don't want to be left bereft of snackage 10 minutes west of Reading, not on a 6-hour journey.  But it's important also not to look like a pair of gauche, suburnanite bloaters when you pitch up at Padders.  I think I've got the measure of it this time.  I was slightly nervous that I hadn't purchased enough when it came to the checkout, but that's usually a good sign.

The other concern is losing concentration.  Do this, and you'll find yourself knee-deep in monkey nut shells and self-loathing before you've cleared zone 6.  Not a good start.  No, the way to approach it is as one would a marathon.  Start off slowly, at a comfortable pace you know you can maintain.  As with distance running, you should be breathing hard, but be able to sustain a conversation.  As the journey progresses, you can up the intensity.  And inside the last mile, it's elbows out and full gas.   You can happily go into the red at this point as cracking won't stop you finishing.

That's all there is to it.

Throw another logarithum on the fire

Goodness me, what a difference a day makes.  Yesterday was glorious in London - balmy and cloudless.  Mrs Me and I sat in the beer garden of one of our local hostelries last evening to enjoy the air.  This morning, not twelve hours later, it's 10 degrees cooler and a damn sight wetter.  As I write, it's absolutely facking pouring.  You can't see the ground.  And, remember, I work in a Range Rover.

Off home shortly, which entails my getting absolutely soaked.  Still, that's it for the week then.  I'm getting the tube in tomorrow as we're off to Cornwall.   So get in, strip off and start complaining.  Which really could by my epitaph.

Pain is just weakness leaving the body...via the legs

Good grief - last night's first time trial of the season was hard.  It was always going to be a test of will and sinew; I haven't raced for a year after all.  But the elements decided to chuck their oar in too.  It was blowing a hooley down the home straight - the longest stretch of the course.  It was such a stiff breeze that you felt like you were crawling, and consequently slightly overdid matters.  The cumulative effort required for this meant that the final two and a half laps were physically tortuous and conducted at brisk stroll velocities.  Disheartening.

I had the highest of hopes going into it too.  I'd prepared myself and my bike carefully.  I'd warmed up properly.  In spite of this, I finished a full minute slower than my lacklustre time from last year.  I thought I'd take a minute out of it, to be honest.  Still, I don't think I was the only disconsolate grown man in Lycra there last night.  I heard one of the other riders disputing his time.  He was, like me, incredulous that a ride that hurt so much could have been conducted so slowly.  Despite this, I did enjoy it.  It's good to be back among the faithful.

Yes, they're weirdos, but their my weirdos.

When the going gets tough, the jittery get nervous

I'm riding my first 10 mile time trial of the year tonight.  It's at the Olympic Park in London.  That makes it sound rather grand.  It isn't.  A local cycling team, of which I used to be a member in a previous life, organises it.  It's really low key stuff, and no-one, but no-one will be paying a blind bit of attention to what I'm doing, and yet I'm as nervous as a kitten in dog-filled caravan.

And this is route of my problems with tt-ing.  One must be in control of oneself to execute the event correctly.  You must mete out the effort over the entire length of the course, slowing increasing the pace until you hit your threshold with a mile to go.  A mile can be sustained at this intensity without cracking.  Any earlier than this and you get into oxygen debt and the game's up.

You can see the dilemma.  Your energy levels are at their highest at the start of the event, so you have to go slower than you know you can.  That's tough when there are other people on the track who are faster than you.  The temptation to follow them is huge.  But it's a temptation that must be resisted.

I've never managed to resist in all the time trials I've done, and that's troubling.  I'm always left with the knowledge that I've not shown myself in the best light to the other riders.  Tonight, it must be different; I must be calm and controlled.  

Chris Froome likens time trialling to rolling out a huge, heavy, furled carpet.  At the start it unfurls slowly, speeding up as it goes until it hits its maximum just as the finish line approaches.  And Chris Boardman describes it as more of an art than a science.  I'm quite good at art.  I'm artistic.  I just need to show it.  On a bike.  At twenty-four miles an hour.

Groundhog week

Oh, god, here we go again.  I can't really fathom why but I'm spectacularly bored at the moment.  I facking dread Mondays, not because my work is too stressful or the people are unpleasant.  It isn't; they aren't.  It's just that it's become so very dull.

The department I work in has become denuded to just two staff, and there's not much stimulating group banter to help the hours shuffle by.  It's also been taken over by a manager who's been promoted above his abilities.  This happens all the time of course.  These professional shortcomings can be circumvented, however, as long as the person in question is (a) organised and (b) happy to give his or her more able underlings their head.  Unfortunately, my current boss has the time management skills of an indulged 5-year-old with a major Ritalin problem.  He's also the only person in the firm who doesn't realise he's floundering.

This means I have no direction in my professional life.  He just meandering about the place, flapping.  He also drops me in it from time-to-time by not getting his fcuking ducks in a row and leaving me with unrealistic deadlines for the poorly defined and cock-headed projects he does actual see to their lacklustre fruition.

I can't deal with boredom anymore.  I'm going to crack, and end-up wandering about the place like swinging a cricket bat Vyvyan from The Youngs Ones.  I don't want to see that, and nor does anyone else.  So.  He needs to go.

Au bout de souffle

Well, it's been a breathless 16 hours.  As reported, we had a general election here in the, hitherto, UK.  It had been slated as too close to call.  All the smart money said we were heading toward another coalition.

The poles closed at 10pm last night.  Literally seconds later, the BBC revealed the results of an exit pole, which suggested a huge swing to the Conservatives in England and a clean slate of victories in Scotland for the SNP.  This flew in the face of seven separate opinion polls that suggested otherwise.  The first results were in the north east, traditional Labour heartland.  The exit poll suggested they'd win and by how much.  We held our breath.  Both Labour candidates won and by slightly less than the predicted margin.

Labour were in for a long night.  I turned in after these results, and awoke this morning to the news that Labour had been destroyed outside London and Wales.  The SNP won Scotland almost absolutely.  And the LibDems - ah, yes, the LibDems - they were basically wiped from the British political map.  They no longer have any say in matters, and it's difficult to envisage their recovering from this in the mid-term.  They might never completely get of over, such was the scale of the damage.

I've been predicting the LibDem decimation for the last five years.  Clegg didn't understand his own constituency, and that's fatal to a politician.  The people who voted for him are left of centre.  They could not forgive being taken in like this.  "I voted for a social democratic centre-left party, and thanks to them I now have a Tory PM."  Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Nick Clegg is 48 years old.  He's been deputy prime minister of the United Kingdom and not he's out in the cold.  His party hates him.  Chances are he'll be forgotten, save for his calamitous stewardship of the LibDems or course.

Au revoir, Nick.  Or is it goodbye?

A simle game, complicated by idiots

In preparation for the upcoming time trial season (bikes, that it), I have fallen into the same trap that all men of a certain age do when faced with a perceived challenge to one's sense of self worth, and started throwing money and technology at the problem.  The problem in this case, of course, being my feeble engine and unwillingness to train properly.

In classic avoidance style, I've taken to getting the tube to a nearby cycle superstore to buy shoes, handlebars, heart-rate monitors - anything really to offset my feelings of worthlessness.  All these fine consumer durables are part of a transparent attempt by my personality to dig out the essential "me" - the me that fears nothing and no-one; the me that works hard and treats the twin impostors of success and failure with haughty disregard.  Just like the unfortunate scarecrow in The Wizard Of Oz, I need a symbol to fool myself into believing in me a bit more.  Had I had access to a faux potentate and a clockwork heart, I could have saved myself an awful lot of time and money.

What's more, my back is hurting, which means I can't train today even if I wanted to.  Back down Halfords tomorrow then.  Perhaps I'll buy a bell.  A titanium one.

Words don't come easy to me...

I have to be brief today.  I've got a book review to do for work, so I'm going to talk about that immediately prior to doing it.  Very postmodern.

It's a book about Muhammad Ali.  They must have been done to death, eh?  I suppose.  But this one's different as far as I know in that it is a list of Ali pro fights, all 61 of them.  The author is a grizzled old boxing journalist, and knew Ali when he was fighting, so the prose is crisp and to the point, but he also puts Ali pronouncements in some kind of personal context.  The spiel and the slating was a performance.  They were two reasons for this according to Ali: 1. to sell tickets and 2. to give him a psychological edge.  Ali admits in the afterword to being physical scared when he entered the ring.  He needed his opponents to fear him, particularly ferocious young fighters like George Foreman.  This would give him the space he needed to pick them off.

The book is a great overview of Ali the boxer.  You need to be in your sixties to remember Ali the fighter; his legacy is rather lost to the rest of us, his celebrity overshadowing it somewhat.  The book changes that.  You are left in no doubt what a remarkable pugilist he was: fast, brave, audacious.  Like all real geniuses, Ali first mastered the textbook and then ripped it to shreds.  He was the greatest, and not because he say so, because the record says so.

Days of wine and roses

We had a bank holiday weekend here, in this united kingdom, the weekend just gone.  It was super.  The weather, which was predicted to be terrible, was nothing of the sort.  It was largely sunny, warm and spring-like.  Just watch the doctor ordered.

Friday night we launched festivities with a couple of jolly old ales at one of our locals.  Every pub in the vicinity was packed, but everyone was in gerr-ate spirits.  There was real feeling of optimism and comradeship broad; it was lovely, like being at war, but with rationing and carpet bombing.

On Saturday morning I continued my preparations for the up-coming time trial season by going on a 2-hour training ride out in the sticks.  Post this, I had that euphoric feeling one gets, a mix of endorphins and hubris at having done some exercise.

This feeling was bolstered by a 2-hour walk in the Essex countryside with the missus, followed by a slap-up binge dinner for two with fine wines and ice cream.  Marvellous.  I slept like cadaver on Saturday night as a result.

On Sunday we trundled up to Cambridge, which is pleasant enough for a couple of hours.  A vegetarian scone and a browse around England's sole surviving independent bookshop then home.  We met friends for noisy, drunk bourgeois drinks that evening to see the sabbath out.

Yesterday (Monday) was spent at a dog obedience show and then in the West End browsing around expensive shops, which is the quintessential British bank holiday Monday in a nutshell.  It's liberating to be cliched from time to time.

Huzzah!

When the go and get stuffed.

It's time trial season again!  That's cycling time trialling, I should make clear.  I knew it was looming, but had managed to wipe it from a my mind.  I was in cycling denial.

As soon as I found out my first one is two weeks away, I leapt into action.  I cut out food for the most part, well the foodstuffs that afford pleasure.  Food for an endurance athlete, even one as modest in his abilities as this one, is fuel.  It's not to be enjoyed; it's to be endured.  The only upside to food when one is training is that it stops you shaking when you've overdone it on the bike.

As well as not eating fun stuff, I've cut the portion size of the rest of it by at least a third.  I do feel lighter, which is good.  It's all about power to weight ratios, this game.  Which brings us to the second part of the preparations: training.

I went out after work last evening and did my first interval session.  Intervals involve going hell-for-leather for a short period and then having a rest.  You do this eight times.  It's quick.  Unfortunately it also makes you look like a loon.  You ride along as if all is well with the world, and suddenly, apparently for no reason, go crackers.  You ride with the intensity of a man fleeing a hippo.  Ten seconds later you stop and calm descends once more.  Other cyclists can and do take offence at this type of training.  Understandably so.  You fly past someone like he's going backwards, only to sit up and let him catch you shortly thereafter.  It looks like you're taking the piss, frankly.

I'm feeling it today.  I can scarcely keep me eyes open.  Luckily today is the portal to a bank holiday weekend, so I couldn't give a shite.  A couple of real ales this evening, a homemade curry will restore the tissues.

Right, home time.