inigopete

I am all agrin. On a murky November afternoon, having failed to get out of bed early, failed to prepare any clothing, failed to get the bikes out and sort them out the night before, failed to plan any kind of destination or route to ride and generally failed, I pootled off down the road on the Solitude and found some fun singletrack less than a mile from my doorstep.

Less than a mile! (just, as the crow flies) - I've been living here for over two years, almost all that time I've had a perfectly functioning mountain bike (or two) somewhere about the house. For some of that time I've spent bored office hours surfing mountain biking forums ("fora"?), much of the rest of it I've worked with and around mountain bikes and talked and dreamed of the next available opportunity to just get out and ride bikes off road through some countryside.

And now I've found some within very easy cycling distance. Not a huge amount, more of an hour-or-two play area, but nevertheless a chance to Ride A Mountain Bike Properly.

I'm back, front tyre punctured by a thorn, merino soggy, bike smelling slightly of leaf mulch and possibly also of something else I've rolled through, and grinning like an idiot.

About flippin' time.

Teg and I had an idea for a way to invite people to our party. The idea stagnated slightly over a weekend's mountain biking in and around Norfolk. We returned late and hastily recorded a video to put on YouTube so we could tell our friends to watch it. It contained details of the party, where it was, what time and so on. It also contained a few in-jokes, me saying "yes dear" to Teg rather a lot, that sort of thing. I deliberately included no tags and disallowed comments or ratings: this was a video for our friends.

Some random interweb punter, no doubt either slacking at work or slacking at finding work, searched YouTube for either the word "party" or "invitation" and came up with our video. Thinking it was somehow comedy genius, he submitted it to a popbitch-wannabe "celeb gossip" apology for a website. I'd never heard of the site before; it appears to have slightly evolved from somewhere in primary school where people haven't yet learnt to use lower case or paragraphs, think celebrity is the ultimate pursuit and that monosyllabic swearing is the highest form of communication.

We've taken the video down. It had nearly 3000 views and my Junk Mail filter had around 40 requests for comments on the video, each one of them requiring little less than knee-jerk moronic "I don't understand" thinking.

Yes, we're from the South. Yes, one of us is an actor. Yes, we're probably middle class. Yes, we made the mistake of including Teg's email address and a phone number on a public interwebs, and I stupidly used words in the title and description rather than a random string of text that was unlikely to show up on search results.

But if you don't know who we are, you're not invited.

Just read an interesting article by the Guardian's Nick Angel about a four-week isolation on "Daily Mail island".

I like the joke from one of his commentors:
"How do you confuse a Daily Mail reader?"
- "tell them asylum seekers kill paedophiles"

Microsoft Surface - it's what we all need, apparently. It's going to enable us all to have an entirely integrated MyHomeLife(tm) experience, as every flat surface will be interconnected and full of life-enriching content.

Except it's not what most of us need.

"a new way that isn't new at all" - thanks, Microsoft.

30 years ago, ethernet was going to link together all the appliances in our houses, we'd be able to turn the oven on, close the curtains and turn the lights on before we got home.

20 years ago, the Internet was going to link all the appliances in our houses, we'd be able to set our heating systems to call themselves a plumber when they broke down and scan items into our fridges so that we could automatically order more shopping online.

10 years ago, Bluetooth and wireless networking were going to link all the appliances in our houses, we'd be able to stream data from one room to another, surf the web on our toasters, set the mood lighting to match the music.

It'll no doubt be very popular among those with a lot of money for showy gadgets. For the rest of us, our un-connected lives will continue as normal: a fridge that just works like a fridge means there's less to go wrong; a standard Polish plumber will be able to fix our central heating systems; a house alarm system will just work like a house alarm system, the toaster can be safely relied upon to make its contents hot and then turn off. We won't have to entrust the running of our homes to expensive, bug-filled and difficult Microsoft Experiences (tm). Our houses will not need constant software updates and third party programs to stay secure and we won't need to call out a Systems Engineer to change a fuse.

I like my toaster the way it is.

If you need to punctuate your sentences with "I mean" and "y'know" then chances are that you don't mean it well enough to understand, so your listener doesn't know...

Radio 4 are currently broadcasting the Sunday morning service from the Catholic Parish of Most Holy Redeemer, San Francisco. It's brilliant.

I'm sure it's unintentional, but they couldn't have found a straighter gay church, lots of solemn hymns and typical platitudes, yet with so many gay stereotypes. They've had the Bible reading: Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and telling him to "come out" of the tomb; a brief explanation of how "coming out" is what we all need to do; a very vague sermon about Jesus hanging out with tax collectors and sinners and "buying time" for them (-?) and probably the most sibilant congregation singing along to the camply-presented hymns. As Teg said, "what is this? 'Church! The Musical'?"

Turns out I've managed to damage some of the fascia supporting that fleshy bit inbetween my nostrils and my top lip, which explains why I can't quite pronounce my fricatives as normal. I've got to go back to Guy's tomorrow for an operation to put a couple of stitches in to hold it all together, although the long-term damage won't be discernible for another three to six months, apparently. Which is nice.

On the way back from this morning's pre-op assessment I decided to get off the bus at Burgess Park and return to the scene of the crime. It was a sunny hazy day and there were plenty of people around as usual during daylight hours. I'm typing this in now just for my own recollection really, but if you want a geeky level of detail, read on...

I was first surprised by the amount of blood but, following its trail, I remembered a little more about my actions immediately after the attack: from the point of impact I managed to ride about 55 yards onwards, a few drips in a straight line at first and then a couple of neat cornering-induced curves of drips as I must have wobbled and swayed from left side to right then back again; a cluster of drops at the left side of the path as I remember initially stopping and realising I was bleeding. I then remembered I'd tried to get back on the bike and ride away; the drops were wide-spaced at first and then closer together as I slowed down to stop about 15 yards on and this is when I remember looking behind me and trying to see whether anyone was coming after me out of the darkness. There's a fair old cluster or small puddle of drops there, then a steady trail of about 20 per yard for the next 155 yards or so as I was walk/running with the bike to the gate at the end. Finally there's a patch spattered on the ground there as I was standing still leaning on a post (partly as support, partly to keep my bleeding nose from dribbling down my clothes!) while the blood flow eased.

I then walked back down the path, looking at the verges either side to see if I could find what I was hit with, out of interest more than any forensic reason. The park's very popular with dog-walkers so there were plenty of sticks around but, carefully laid in some long grass parallel to a wire fence just near where I was hit, I think I found the weapon: a two-foot length of scaffold pole. As well as the usual cement and paint splotches, there was a faint ominous dark spray around a section about four inches from one end. I carried the bar over to a fenced area of builders' stuff and blue tubes to the north (it weighed a solid-feeling 6 or 7kg) and threw it under a fence, thinking it was at least out of the way if anyone planned on coming back to where they'd hidden it to use it again.

On my way out of the park, I saw a couple of policemen on mountain bikes and had a chat with them about it all. They weren't at all surprised about the incident, it's "far too common" along that path, apparently. They said there wasn't much point in doing anything about the scaffold pole except what I'd already done: it wouldn't be a good surface for fingerprints, five days exposed to the weather in long grass would have removed pretty much all DNA and if I couldn't identify the attackers at the time there's unlikely to be any way of finding them - even if they're caught in the act doing it again in the same spot, that doesn't conclusively link them to my attack.

So, as predicted, I'm a statistic. I didn't expect any other outcome, but there's an interesting sense of completeness now at least I know what was used to hit my face and I've stopped that particular thing being used again.

Ouch...

Quite a lot of people have been looking at my face and wincing over the last couple of days. I've repeated the story a lot of times so, for the record, here's what happened:

I was cycling through Burgess Park on my way home on Thursday night at around 8pm, along the big wide path through the middle. I do it every day on the way to work and back and often see other cyclists, dog walkers, runners etc. but had heard about a couple of other cyclists being attacked in the area so am always a bit wary.

I saw two shadows in a dark patch up ahead on the path; nothing unusual there, there are often people walking the same path at night, they usually go to one side of the path and I cycle past on the other. The path used to be a railway, I think, so there's plenty of room. But these two guys split to either side of the path when they saw me coming. I was a bit cautious so pointed the bike between them, sped up a bit and ducked my helmeted head down. I was more than arm's reach away from either of them.

Then I felt a terrific BANG as something hit me right in the middle of my face and suddenly everything went very white and a bit sparkly. Because I was on a fixie, and clipped in, I didn't come off the bike and had no option really but to carry on pedalling as momentum carried me. I must have gone about 20 or 30 yards before I slowed down and wobbled off the bike to one side. My first thought was to grab the bike; actually my first thought was, "you f*ckers, you're not getting my bike!" - I looked back and couldn't see them coming after me so decided to run with the bike to the end of the path, to the light, noticing along the way how much the front of my face appeared to be leaking.

I called the police, who turned up surprisingly quickly and called me an ambulance (this is no time for puns...). While on the phone to the police, I looked back at the area where I'd been attacked and could still see two shadowy figures in the dark area. Another cyclist, who had been some distance behind me and hadn't seen the attack, stopped when he saw me and at the same time as the police on the phone were asking for descriptions of the two, I asked him. Neither of us could give any more details than that they were about my height. No clothing details, no skin colour, age, build, nothing. Once I was off the phone, I asked the other cyclist how my face looked, pointing to the mess that was my nose and now starting to bleed less. He winced and gave a noncommital "I don't know, there's a lot of blood, it's pretty f*cked up." - I had no idea, it was cold, numb and beginning to swell.

I waited. I could still see the figures hanging around in the dark section of the path, a third guy on a moped came and joined them and they sat down on a bench. When the police turned up (in an unmarked car), one of them walked / ran with me back up the path to find out who the figures were. As we approached them, four policemen on mountain bikes hendered out of the north side of the park towards us as backup and the plain clothes policeman's partner ran over.

The problem was that as the police questioned (and searched) the three of them, they said they hadn't seen the attack, it was nothing to do with them and as they walked towards the park they'd seen two black guys running away with their hoods up. It was a conceivable story: I'd been busy running to the end of the path so had had my back to my attacker(s), I got my phone out straight away and it was obvious I was phoning the police, it's possible whoever hit me made themselves scarce then. I had no way of proving that the lads the police were questioning were the same ones who attacked me, unfortunately.

So I walked over to the ambulance, my bike went off in the back of a police car to East Dulwich police station and I was taken to King's College Hospital A&E. I was seen very quickly, checked over and given drugs and came home. I went back the next day as I noticed I appeared to have cartilage sticking from the middle of my nose into one nostril, and it shouldn't be like that. An afternoon in A&E, a quick trip over to Guy's Hospital ENT unit and I have to go back on Tuesday morning for them to decide "how agressive" they need to be about patching up and straightening out what's basically an open fracture in my nose.

Long and short: don't cycle across the dark bit of Burgess Park after dark, kids...





Post Script: I'm typing this on my birthday. Yes, I'm 30 years old today and I actually feel a little bit more grown up. Only a little bit, don't worry. Although the above incident has meant I had to postpone my birthday party at the last minute - I didn't want my comically swollen face to be the centre of attention and generator of uncomfortable sympathy, I want a proper party where people don't feel nervous about staring so it will have to wait a while - I am having a really happy birthday. It's been great, I had a quiet evening last night and today have been realising just how blessed I am. Even my dad came up to London for a surprise visit, which was brilliant and has really made my day. A happy birthday indeed.

P.P.S. wince-inducing and rather graphic photos at http://stuf.fotopic.net/c1238254.html

P.P.P.S as I thought, and a few other people have independently observed, I could definitely have come off worse. Someone was looking after me: nothing was stolen, nothing except me was damaged and my nose will heal (maybe with the assistance of surgery). If the blow was an inch higher it would have hit me in the eyes, a couple of inches lower and it would have taken out quite a few teeth and possibly broken my jaw and if I hadn't ducked at all it would probably have caught me across the neck. The force would probably have crushed my windpipe and broken the cartilage that keeps it open. The consequences of that shouldn't really be considered.

Thank God.

If your child is 8 years old with no genetic predisposition for obesity and weighs 14 stone, you are a bad mother.

If your child will only eat processed, fried or sweet food and screams and has tantrums if given anything else, you are a bad mother.

If your child is on the verge of being taken into Social Services care for his own good, you are a bad mother.

If you are incapable of saying "no" to your child and use the excuse that "he only eats what he likes," meaning that you feed him 3 times the average daily calorie intake of a child his age and you are unwilling to let him go without food until he is more prepared to eat what he ought instead of what he craves, you are a bad mother.

Why has no-one in today's media (I mean, the radio I've heard today) said this?

...or should I start reading the Daily Mail and take up hand-wringing?

For probably the last time in my life, I've just been asked for ID while buying alcohol.

The conversation went something like this:

Cashier: Alright boss.

me: Hiya.

 C: Just these yeah?

me: Yes please.

 C: How old are you?

me: I'm, um, (tries to remember) 29.  I'll be 30 next month.

 C: Do you have any ID?

me: um... actually, no.  I'm going to pay with my own credit card,
    if that helps.
    And I know it's not actually ID, but I'm starting to go grey.
    See?

 C: Oh, right, yeah.  Well, had to check yeah?

I feel somewhat bemused. And slightly flattered.

taken from my window this morning



gesus need to learn to spell.

This article in today's Guardian saddens me. I've always loved fixing things; following last night's conversation with Alex I think I still maintain my childlike Lego-based belief that nothing's really complicated, you just need to break it down into the little bits it's made from.

As someone who works with fixable things, I've certainly seen plenty of examples of "this would cost more to repair than to replace," but they're almost all cheap to start with. I suppose it further reinforces my intent to buy decent stuff in the first place so that it a) lasts longer and b) can be fixed in future.

We're getting a Dualit toaster for our new flat. :)

"If Morrissey were to write the new Eurovision entry, what would it sound like?"

- let's hope it sounds more original and creative than every single radio news report this week that's chosen this as their "humourous news" story and instead of coming up with inventive ideas, simply waffled a bit about Morrissey and played a few seconds of "This charming man".

http://mytornadohell.livejournal.com/

Kensal Rise. It's a bit like Bulwagh.

I should point out (as most of the blog commenters seem not to have grasped) that the blog, i.e. livejournal, is only a reprint of an article originally in the Evening Standard.

Caroline Phillips, the poor beleaguered author, deserves to have her 15 minutes of fame. Whether it's due to sympathy or ridicule is another matter, however.

Sorry, been a while I know. Change of job, will doubtless explain at some point, now actually working with bikes.

Reason for "journal"-ing?

Excellent ad music work - a snippet of the Nutcracker Suite played exclusively on bicycle parts, for a Specialized Christmas ad. Great stuff.

"Ah, hmm, yes, good afternoon, I was wondering if I could task you with undertaking the replacement of a pair of bicycle tyres tomorrow."

"I'm sorry?"

"uhm, I'd like to task you to undertake, er, changing a pair, er, that is, two of my mountain bicycle tyres on tomorrow afternoon."

"You'd like us to swap your tyres over tomorrow?"

"Yes."

... but sadly I have met (online) a few of the more unpleasant ambassadors of that nation.

Aside from the infrequent and humorously bait-able 419 emails, I've had the misfortune to encounter some foolishly felonious individuals recently. I'm currently trying to sell my Orange SPV M5000 on't E Bay. I've had no success so far, due to the efforts of "Mrs Laura Kate" and "Gallus Chris", who used Buy It Now and promptly sent me emails along the lines of:

Hello seller,
         i will like you to mail me the total cost of the
item and shipment via DHL/UPS to Nigeria.And also your
paypal email address so that i can proceed with the
payment.
Thanks.

I reply along the lines of "it's going to be about £55 p&p to Nigeria" and send a PayPal invoice. The next day I receive:

Hello seller,
       how are you today i hope you are kool i just want to inform you that i
have made the payment through paypal so i want you to shipout the item through
DHL to the address below

(etc)

Of course, upon checking the PayPal account, I've received no payment. I reply with "I haven't received payment to my PayPal account. When payment arrives, I'll ship the item".

I've had a couple of emails so far along the lines of:

Hello,

How are you doing, hope thing is doing great with you, I just want you to know
that I have just called the paypal company now and the good news is that they
told me that they are only waiting for you to send them the shipping
information, so that they can have your money fully credited into your personal
paypal account, contact there customer service care
at:pay.pal.cashstatus@consultant.com or call there customer service care
at:+44-704-011-2868 okay. 

Thanks

...o rly?

PayPal, for some reason, want me to send _them_ the shipping information. To an email address that has nothing to do with PayPal, and to verify "there customer service care" I can call some mobile phone in the UK? I'm almost tempted to phone, just to see what sort of answer I'd get.

So, I'm still baiting the idiot, he's no longer registered with eBay so I get my fees refunded and I will re-list my phone. And try and be a bit more careful where I'll allow it to be shipped this time...



* this is probably only vaguely humorous if you're also showing your age in recognising the B-side to Spitting Image's 1986 single, "The Chicken Song"...

I stopped on the way home today to hear the Ricciotti Ensemble, a "standup orchestra" playing under the arch outside the Peckham Pulse, because I could. I hadn't planned to stop, it turns out they hadn't planned to play there; it wasn't on their "MetroPole Tour" schedule, they'd just found out they could play there this afternoon, turned up and set up.

It was great. Maybe because it's been a while since I heard anything resembling an orchestra live, maybe because it was a lovely summer evening, maybe it was the freedom of just being able to stop the bike on the way home and stand and listen to some interesting and different music, maybe it was the energy and enthusiasm of the young people involved, maybe it was because they followed a salsa-esque piece by Tito Puente with a reggae/jazz piece by a Dutch Jazz musician or maybe it was the really cool thing they did during the last piece where most of the orchestra walked through the audience while playing their instruments then various people played solos and the audience became surrounded by the orchestra, I don't know, but it was the most enjoyable 45 minutes of the day thus far.

That's all.

Haven't blogged for a little while. I've now left the ambiguously and vaguely-named firm of corporate accountants at which I was previously temping, I have at last started work in a bike shop.

Said bike shop will doubtless be the source of many future blog entries - at least I hope so - so I won't bother trying to encompass everything just now. However, having worked there for only four days I have already realised I need to come up with a bike shop mechanic's version of the sound engineer's "DFA" function.

A chap brought his bike in to us today. I should have suspected something when everyone else in the workshop suddenly decided to look very busy, engrossed in whatever job they happened to be doing, thereby ensuring I was the one who went out to listen to his problem.

He explained that he'd brought the (fairly inexpensive hybrid) bike in to be serviced less than a week ago and ran through a brief list of parts of the bike that had been fixed or replaced. He went on to explain that he still wasn't happy because "the back wheel still has a bit of a wobble at speed," also taking care to tell me that it was very unlikely that I'd be able to spot the problem upon taking the bike for a quick spin round the block, presumably because I'm somehow unable to reach anything like the speed that his Competitive Commuter legs could achieve.

Fair enough, his bike _did_ feel a tiny bit sketchy at the back, but I think it was probably because his rear tyre had a couple of skid-induced flat spots and the rear mudguard wasn't very well attached. I rode back in to the shop and told him that I'd take the rear wheel off, put it in the stand and make sure it was running true.

Ten minutes later, after a couple of very minor (quarter turn) adjustments to about four spokes and returning some decent pressure to the tyre, I wheeled the bike back out and gave a rambling explanation about how I'd tightened some spoke tension, corrected the lateral truing and made sure the wheel was running straight (which, to be honest, it was anyway). He wheeled the bike out of the shop with some satisfaction and I was left wishing I could have provided a "DFA" explanation.

For those who have no idea what I'm on about, I learnt a valuable lesson while working the sound desk at a professional music venue. (I forget which gig, but I have a horrible feeling it was Chesney Hawkes, which may ruin the illusion of professionalism somewhat.) The rhythm guitarist was unhappy with his sound, which we had spent already too long tweaking, and we were starting to lose our tempers with his fussiness. The other sound engineer winked at me and shouted to the guitarist that we were going to tweak the DFA on his sound, reached across to a completely unrelated knob on a rack unit (on a CD deck, I think) and faffed for a bit.

The guitarist was apparently amazed with the difference in his sound, thanked us and we moved on to soundchecking another musician.

DFA, of course, stands for "does f*ck all."

I can barely believe it. - buy Nestlé products, enter the media carnival of the idiots.