cycling rules

Not a car.
Don't go fast.
Don't use main roads.
Exercise not sport.
Not a race.
Not a status symbol.
Pedestrians idiots but softer than bike.
Pigeons fair game.
Cyclists smug bastards.

When I cycle home at night, I feel like a spy on the secret life of the city. Between Dickens and High Capital, the quiet of Monday nights and the frenzy of Friday nights, the cruising cars with darkened windows, the cigarettes and whispers in doorways, the swish of tyres on the road, no-one notices me, perfect freedom for a short sweet while.

blah blah blah blah

No, ignore that, this is one of the good ones. It is. But I do spend a goodly part of my life reading things like this. I get paid for it even. So far I have had 3 cups of coffee, 2 cups of tea, 6 glasses of water (good), 4 apples, 2 oranges (also good), a geo bar (good for the producers, bad for me - have you noticed how much sugar they have in them?), half a tin of soup, 2 slices of toast (with Clover reduced fat butter spread and organic honey on one), and expect to have a packet of crisps before cooking supper (stir fried chicken breast salad). It's a good job I cycle 4.89 miles to work and 4.89 miles back every day. Although not today, I'm at home, hence the above.

Christ my screen is dirty - comes of eating lunch on it.

a wing and a prayer

Failing the existence of a god, can we pray to the blogosphere instead? If so, please can I make the following prayers:

Please can my sister see her daughter as separate from herself.

Please can my daughter see the broader picture.

more to follow

you're beautiful

Interesting after the Rimmel mascara pull - if only they knew - well they do now. But it raises really interesting issues about our notions of beauty which have probably completely been overtaken by the photo- or cine- genic. There is something we recognise as beauty (wherever that comes from) when we come across it in the real world, and it can be very disconcerting - I always suspect it is because we can't stop our pupils dilating and it becomes too revealing of us, our desire too naked and embarrassingly Pavlovian, and uncomfortably cross gender. Really there is no need for photographic models to be beautiful in that sense any more and even the beautiful are retouched to the point almost of unrecognisability - so will the successful models become those whose facial structure lends itself to retouching - the new definition of photogenic? After all the old photogenic is often almost unrecognisable to the non-expert, being to do with the 'laws' governing the translation of facial planes into a photograph, and has little to do with 'real world' beauty. And will there be a premium on 'real world' beauty and if so how will we know it if we only ever see retouched images or 'debunking' ones like pap shots? Reality beauty? Or will 'real' beauty become like glamour, or whatever we call that aura of celebrity that can only truly be experienced first hand - as an extreme sport perhaps? Sadly what is most likely is that it will all be as subject to disavowal as anything that interferes with our fantasies ever was - "I know but nevertheless".

bloggin' lunch!

This so called lunch, working of course, complete with laptop heresy.

In the background you can see the lovely thin keyboard to the lovely thin 20" iMac which can't be used because IT have locked it down so tight that I can't transfer stuff from my laptop. So it sits there looking like a very expensive telly and hides stuff that I then forget to do.

Reject

Just in case I want to take it back.

driving me nuts

Daughter has just passed driving test at fourth attempt. Surprisingly she didn't rush back from college at the first opportunity and drive my car. Instead she has spent the last two days cleaning the car and complaining that I don't want her to drive it. This has enabled her to put off actually getting in it all on her own and driving it all on her own. During this brief interlude, my car is actually sitting outside my house, within view (that's it, the white bit sticking out from behind the bushes), waiting for me to drive it at whim. This won't last I know.

six eyes

Have taken to wearing two pairs of specs, one holding my hair back, shades style, the other to read with. This is not intentional although it might start a trend.