Cycling - You might as well join us

In the last 15 miles of the Wiggle Long One chap drew up next to me and started chatting. He was obviously in far better shape than me, as I was at a level where primitive grunting was as good as it got. This worked for both of us as he was happy to talk about himself, and I grunted occasionally.
He shared his own cycling creation myth. All of us who discover the sport in middle age kind of have one. However its not often that they start 'I got banned from driving, best thing that ever happened to me.' At the time I was quickly fatigued by his tale of jumped red lights and mobile phone abuse behind the wheel. As the road rose I took the opportunity to let him drop me.
Though part of his story did resonate. I remember it being a fiercely hot day about 8 years ago. I was driving between Bromley and Woolwich for work. It is one of those stretches with lots if lights and even more cars. I noticed a cyclist a a junction, I over took then at the next set he was back again. This kept repeating itself. At some point my thoughts moved from 'begone you impudent cur' to 'he's going as fast as me, he's not burning petrol, he's in the fresh air with the sun in his back, he's not stressed and flustered, I used to ride a bike, I quite liked riding a bike, I could get a bike.'

Time Trialing, Ladies and Lipstick

Having made the bold stride of allowing online entry to some events, if the organisers feel like it, I was looking forward to further progress now that a modernising wind of change is blowing through the CTT. Then a friend told me yesterday of her experience at a 25 last season. There was a small but strong group of women riders including one Jo Rowsell. The organisers had put them together on the start sheet to create a race within the race. All very encouraging.
One shouldn't get to carried away. The riders were talking amongst themselves before being called forward. When my friend clipped in for her start one of the organisers asked 'what were you ladies chatting about? Lipstick?'
It's hard to poke somebody in the eye when you are being held up on a TT bike. We speculated whether he would have said the same to Jo Rowsell. We agreed, probably.


 

Kenny Rogers - Darkness in the Lite

Seeing that Kenny Rogers is playing Glastonbury tickled me. This is because of his song Coward of The County. When it was doing the rounds in the early 80's it was the kind of thing I would walk out of the room to get away from. Dreadful country schmaltz sung by Father Christmas in his civvies. Much later, during one of the periodic outcrys about Rap lyrics, I think it was Ice T's Cop Killer, this song came back to me.

 I don't recall any demands that CotC be banned for its content, and this was a era when you could get banned for just about anything. So it proved that if  the singer is an old bloke with  a beard and  the tune is Nashville syrup you can get away with writing an approving reflection on a man's violent revenge  against the brothers who gang raped his girlfriend. 

This song was a huge international hit, but in the country cannon it is not alone in its dark subject matter. Violence, often sexually motivated is a presence in many old country songs. In the early 50's Molly O'Day sung of Ellen Smith being found murdered 'clothes scattered all around.' Nic Cave has enjoyed excavating this murky side of country. It can be heard in the Louvin Brothers and even in the clean cut Everley's. Listen past the staid performance and the plaintive harmony and one can hear the voice of an older darker world. 

When poverty is about more than money

370000 people over 75 spend no time with anyone on a typical day. Nobody, not family, friends or a warden.  That is the startling statistic in a new paper by the  Centre for Social Justice as part of the hanover@50 debate. The key message is that to rely purely on financial indicators masks the true poverty of many older people. This level of isolation has huge impacts on health and mortality. But as the paper highlights, material and relational poverty often goes together.
Relationship breakdown, a more fragmented society and working patterns are cited as the cause. The solutions comes less readily to hand. Stronger couple relationships and more flexible employment are easier to say than do. But we cannot afford to ignore the challenge.

Siouxsie at Meltdown

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Otis Redding and the Water Cooler Moments

Did you see it? Brilliant wasn't it.
I watched the BBC4 night on Otis Redding and the Stax tour of Europe a week or so ago, and was blown away by just how good that music was. But also being thrilled that rather than simply being a contractual obligation, the trip to Europe actually meant something to musicians involved. That the passion, the vitality, that huge wave of energy they set free was in part a response to the love they were feeling from their audience. The nice little footnote that when he went on stage at Monterey Otis told his band to 'play it like we did in Europe.'
But there was something more about it. Ever since then I have been running into people saying 'did you see it? Great wasn't it.' It is as if BBC4 has managed to wake something, remind us of something that we had half forgotten. They freed that music from  the smothering blanket of lacklustre covers and cloying tribute, by bringing us back face to face with the source material.

When the Spirit is Mean

Read a lengthy article based on research by the Taxpayers Alliance (what a fun gang this lot must be) that left me thorough pissed off with the jaded, mean spirited carping side of our political culture. The article was highlighting some mammoth sums allegedly wasted by the public sector. Now I am all for efficiency and accountability. But much of what made up this number was of dubious provenance. This applied to their figures big and small. The biggest item was a notional difference between what public sector pensions are and what they would be in the private sector. Without a genuine and detailed review of the total reward packages for equivalent roles between the public and private world it is completely bogus to focus on one single part of the equation and say it's waste. For example if these services were being delivered in the private sector we would have to pay for shareholder dividends.
But even more churlish were some of the smaller items. It sneered at the £9000.00 spent on ipads by Bury Council to be used in the enforcement of recycling. Why is that a waste? I would suggest that ipads are a very effective tool for capturing and communicating evidence. £30000 spent on a newt sanctuary. Well the council in question is required to do this as some newts are a protected species. I may not be munch interested in newts, but if we care about protecting our natural environment then sometimes it will cost a few quid.
Stories about the public servants who routinely go above and beyond are not news.  I work with people who are passionate about the communities they serve, and rather than skimming the public purse give way beyond their contracted hours. But more than this, if we fall into accepting a narrative that all public servants are either incompetent or grasping it reinforces a mean spirited culture that makes us all poorer.