I'm perfectly serious about this. If you have to think about the Way Forward, how do you construct an understanding of cycling as a cultural narrative? How do you think about the future of cycling? Where is your start point?
Is it wrong of me to want to lick the chain?
I reckon we all have our Gods. It may be carbon fibre or a Leitz Noctilux f1.0 lens or some Jimmy Choos or a Doris Troy 45 or a hefty salary or the ballet. Personal altars keep us going.An overarching spirit does me fine and the fact that grumpy bachelors in white collars roughly agree shouldn't counter my suspicions.I am very much anti-scientism, the Dawkinian Torqemada that tries to shut the lid on the bulging trunk of past conceits as though they were children's toys. I'm rather big on toys.
They that ride so, and ride not warily, fall into bogs. Henry V, 3.viiAll the world's a stage,And all the men and women domestiques.They have their sprinting and their mountain cols,And one man in his time rides many bikes,His bikes being seven ages. At first the infant,Scooting and wobbling on his Like-A-Bike.Then the careless student with his booksAnd unoiled squeaking chain, sailing through redsUnwilling e'er to brake. And then the sportsman,Panting like furnace, with a straining balladOf gears and HRM. Then, the crew's coach,Full of strange oaths, and muddy from the path,Battered in frame, sudden, and quick to dismount,Riding and looking different waysWith megaphone to mouth. Then, commuting,On trusty leather with good Proofide rubbedWith eyes severe and peeled for bendibus,Full of wise saws and modern Cyclecraft;And so he stays alive. The sixth age shifts(Unless on lean and slippery singlespeed)With cryptic sheet for route and saddlebag,His tea and cake well earned; no world too wideFor his stout crank, and you may hear his voicePour scorn on childish treble century,An audaxer year-round. Last frame of allThat ends the history of this strange eventIs Paris-Brest-to-Paris ancienOn trike, on Brompton or on bent, on anything.
Stumbling from a warm bed, to unfreeze the shed locks in a cup of hot water.6 mile climb, wrapped in cotton wool, rising from the clinging fog, like a diver from the deep, on the last 100m to the Ridgeway.Gazing over the Vale of White Horse, a vast expanse of white seascape, a band of vermillion blue shading to russet pink delimiting the horizon - Epiphany...Plunging back down Ashbury, legs pumping at 170rpm, a film of ice forming across the shades - Mummmmmmmmmy!One "like the hat" through Sevenhampton.Slumping against the rad, cup of tea in hand.Anyway, can't spend all day chatting to you lot, got work to do.
I would like to to see more use of the word "floccinaucinihilipilification" in normal everyday conversation, i.e. "David Cameron is engrossed in the floccinaucinihilipilification of Gordon Brown's proposed policies."
Down to five now...I have visions of who these people are; a small cell of zen yoni-worshippers, crazed on badly-fermented yaks' milk and the writings of Captain W.E. Johns and whipped into a frenzy by you-tube recordings of Clare Short at rut.Or something.
Ah, too scaredy to cross the event horizon and discover the naked singularity of simplicity
Think of it as a forum that is packed up, very small, and looks like something else.