I don’t review shops, online or otherwise, except in extreme circumstances. My disposable income, as discussed already, is swallowed by sport. Oh. And food. Food and sports kit. I don’t buy clothes, or a lot of music, or go out socialising very much… I’m pretty much a hermit with a carbon fibre and lycra habit.

This means that reviews of online shops aren’t very helpful unless you too are looking for a shop that will sell you esoteric sports kit and bike bits. If you are looking for a shop to sell you esoteric sports kit and bike bits, because you’re a habitual purchaser of such things, then you’ll already have your favourites and don’t need me to tell you where to go. Your favourites are probably the same as mine, because that’s the nature of the beast.

I, and other people like me who buy from these shops, are looking for an easily defined set of qualities. If you run one of these shops, here is what you should know about what the average recreationally competitive cyclist/triathlete wants from you (other than what you are selling):

1. Fast turnaround — When we discover or decide that we want that Continental GP4000 in blue in 700x25c we tend to want it now. If not yesterday. And while we comprehend that there’s this thing called ‘the post’ we will be exceedingly happy if it turns up the next day and will definitely come back to your shop and deal with you again. We are competitive. We like things fast. We also like our toys. Ordering something is like setting the calendar to Christmas Eve. Imagine waking up on Christmas Day and being told Santa hadn’t got around to you yet. You would be disappointed.
2. Shipping costs — Some shops sell the items really cheap and make up the money by charging an inordinate fee for postage. Things don’t cost that much to ship. I can and have sent a fully padded bike bag the size of a small horse by next-day special delivery and it costs about twelve quid. Do not charge me six quid to send me a carbon fibre stem cap, two caffeinated energy gels and a puncture repair kit. Especially if I won’t get them for a week. It will make me angry. I will not come back to your shop. If you charge me anything more than £2 postage and I’m not buying a bike (and if I am, shipping should be free because I’m spending so much already) that thing had better turn up the next morning or, at a pinch, the day after. This is even more especially the case if you have a free delivery option and a priority delivery option. There are shops out there who can get things to me the next day for free, FFS. This is particularly galling if your shop is one of those that charges my credit card upon receiving the order. That means you’ve got my money for far longer than I have my toy. This will also make me angry. I will not come back to your shop.
3. Order tracking — We ♥ order tracking. I love getting the email that says “your order has been dispatched”. Then it’s definitely Christmas Eve. If you offer me order tracking I will make use of it. My shopping experience is made so much better by being able to watch my package, in a virtual sense, as it wings its way to my excited little paws. If you offer me order tracking and a fast turnaround then I will forgive you charging me for postage when there are shops who will send things to me for free because you have just made the entire transaction an order of magnitude more engaging. Order tracking should be thought of as an extra layer of wrapping, and even if you already know what you’re getting, unwrapping packages is so much fun.Order tracking means I am much more likely to come back to your shop.
4. Range of stock — I know this should probably go without saying, but anyone who is serious about a sport that involves serious kit, such as cycling or triathlon or kiteboarding or whatever, is impressed by a shop that sells things no one else does. I am likely to forgive you many failings if you happen to sell something I want and can’t get anywhere else. And here’s something else of which to be aware: we know what we want. We will consider all the options carefully and in many instances we will come to your shop because you have turned up in an internet search as having that one thing. You may make an additional sale on the back of that one thing. If you sell that one thing and meet all the above criteria, then you are likely to get a repeat customer. When you consider how much money people like us are prepared to spend, it’s worthwhile giving us a good experience. The corollary to this is: if you claim to have a particular thing and list it on your website and we find your shop because we want that one thing, and order it from you, it had better be there. If it isn’t there, make sure you contact us immediately and explain as much. Which brings me to…
5. Swaps — As I’ve already said, we know what we want. Do not make a decision for us if what we want isn’t there. Pick up the phone. Email us. Tell us what’s going on and let us decide what to do about it. We gave you our contact details for a reason and thought that was why you wanted them. The only exception to this is if you have a specific section on your order form that asks us what to do in case of the item not being in stock (there is one shop I use that does this).
6. Customer service — We want to give you our money. We want to give you our money and have you send us objects of delight that will make us happy/go faster/feel lighter/dance up hills/give us shiny bicycles. In other words, what we are doing here is exchanging cash for pleasure. This isn’t life or death. We’re not paying for something that we need and can’t live without. You do not have us over a barrel. Good customer service is therefore part of what you should offer if you want us to come back, because there are plenty of places that offer excellent customer service and we will give them our money instead if you don’t. We like to reward good service. Bad customer service is, more than any other factor, likely to make customers turn away. Not only will they turn away but they will tell all their friends about you, and not in a good way.

And this is why I’m posting today.

When I went across to Ireland to do the Galway Triathlon last year I had to drop into Nigel’s Cycles to pick up some CO₂ canisters because I wasn’t allowed to take mine on the plane. While there I had a nose around, as one does in a bike shop, and he had the Hydrapak Gel-Bot bike bottle in stock, something I had not seen before. I came very close to buying it because it’s exactly the sort of utterly superflous, but dammit so intrinsically useful-looking thing that I find irresistable. At the time I was already over-budget for the trip by some way and couldn’t justify the expenditure.

Then I read a review of one of these things last month and was reminded of how cool it had been, and decided that I’d like one. I hunted on the internet for this item (see point 4) and found a range of places, including Ebay. Most of them had the running version, which I didn’t want. I wanted the bike version (see point 4, again). The three places I looked at initially were good enough to state that it was out of stock (see points 4 and 5). Then I found Pure-Sports, who said they had it in stock. It was a good price, too, notwithstanding the £3.99 postage cost, which set my hackles on end (see point 2).

I duly put in my order. They had order tracking. Excellent (see point 3). By that afternoon my payment had been processed and stock had been allocated, according to the order tracking. The countdown to Christmas had begun.

A week later my bike bottle had not turned up (see point 1). Santa was spurning me. I was disappointed. I called.

My item was not in stock. Not only was it not in stock it had been discontinued. Someone had ordered the replacement model on my behalf and they were waiting for it to turn up (see point 5). Ah, but did the replacement have the gel flask, which is why I wanted it? They couldn’t tell me. Someone would get back to me.

Nobody did. I emailed them. No response (see point 6). A further week later I called again. Apparently the replacement model did not have the gel flask and I was being refunded. Fair enough, but with this level of communication failure the shop had already lost any future custom. At this stage, however, I would merely have crossed them off my list of potential retailers.

Cut to a month later. I still haven’t had my refund. This is why I am moved to post about it. This particular shop has demonstrated complete failure at every one of the things I ask for in a shop. The turnaround was shocking. The shipping costs were excessive. The order tracking was there but it lied. (How can non-existent stock be allocated?) The one item I wanted from them wasn’t there and they did not contact me within seven days, which the website claims they will if there is a problem with an order. They made a decision about what to send me instead of asking me what I wanted and, finally, their customer service has been shockingly poor.

In contrast, I called All Terrain Cycles yesterday because they also had the Hydrapak Gel-Bot bike bottle on their website. They had three in stock. The nice man checked to make sure it was the bike bottle not the running version and was evidently appreciative that I knew the difference although he didn’t. I placed my order at just past 4pm and did not feel any need to quibble over the postage. This morning I received an email saying that it has been despatched by 24-hour courier, complete with tracking number (>click<). Now, even though I know I won’t get it until Monday because I had it shipped to my work address, I am already in a state of excited anticipation.

Pure-Sports: you’re doing it wrong and I’m telling all my friends.

All Terrain Cycles: you’re doing it exactly right and I’m telling all my friends about that, too.

I sometimes wonder why we are so fixated on the provision of cycle facilities in this country. The Beauty and the Bike project is only the latest in a number of initiatives to try to tackle the issue of increasing the popularity of cycling by installing infrastructure. They come right out with it and say: It’s the infrastructure, stupid!

Regular readers will already be aware of my feelings about this, and the organisation that started it all, Sustrans , which is not, and never has been, a cycling organisation.

Here’s why it’s not the infrastructure:

Selective attention blindness is probably the main cause of SMIDSY incidents on the road, as discussed by the author of the original study, Daniel Simons, in this Seed magazine article. The phenomenon is one in which an observer is so focused on looking for one thing that he fails to see something else that is right in front of him. Hence, in the above video, people who haven’t heard about it will be so absorbed in counting the passes between the white shirts that they completely fail to spot the gorilla. Seriously. It may be impossible to believe but it’s true.

Did you spot the gorilla?

It’s also why no amount of fluorescent material or bright lighting will help a cyclist be seen —apparently you’d be better off wearing the same colours as road signs, because drivers are expecting those— and why segregated facilities are not only unhelpful, they make the problem worse.

Drivers are looking for other cars. This is a peer group phenomenon. The other members of their peer group are more important to them and have higher priority, and there are so many more of their peer group that road users who are not members of that peer group are involuntarily ignored. Frequent cyclists who are also drivers tend to be more aware of cyclists sharing the road for the same reason. Other cyclists are members of their peer group. The more frequently a person cycles the more he is likely he is to spot other cyclists from behind the wheel of his car.

I’m basing this on personal experience, incidentally. I’m not sure if any formal studies have been done into the correlation between cycling frequency and likelihood of spotting cyclists on the road.

If we combine selective attention blindness with peer-group attention selection and segregated facilities, we’re creating a situation in which cyclists won’t be able to use the road even if they want to. Drivers will become less used to seeing cyclists and if cyclists become more unexpected than they are at present, then they’re even more likely to end up in physical conflict with motorised road users.

Cyclists on the road in a world dominated by car culture are the invisible gorilla beating his chest in the middle of the screen. It’s bad enough right now. The more cyclists who choose to give up their right to the road and let drivers get away with not having to look for them, the more imperative it will become to have a fully integrated, segregated network of routes for bikes. The more segregated routes we have, the more dangerous the roads will become.

I don’t know about you but that strikes me as a move in completely the wrong direction.

I shouldn’t look at websites like Bike Belles and their ilk any more. They’re sexist, they’re insulting and they’re trying to make my cycling experience even worse than it is already.

When will people accept that getting more people cycling shouldn’t be done at the cost of those who are already out there doing it? It’s not the infrastructure: it’s evolutionary biology. We can’t tackle this problem by treating the symptoms because there isn’t enough space in this country for building yet more paths. We need to tackle the source of the problem, and the only thing that will do that is getting more cyclists on the roads.

Every single person who chooses to ride on a segregated path is part of the problem. Every single person who chooses to ride on the road is part of the solution.

Which one are you?

So you’re thinking about doing triathlon.

Maybe you’re a runner, bored of marathons, or a swimmer who fancies doing it in a wetsuit —legally— for a change. Maybe you’re a cyclist and the challenge of PBP or L’Etape isn’t doing it for you any more.

Maybe you’re having a midlife crisis, or looked in the mirror one day and realised that the sleek, youthful figure maintained by partying and late nights is starting to sag around the edges.

Maybe it’s a dare. Maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Whatever your reasons for taking up multisport, there are a few things you should know before it’s too late. By ‘too late’ I mean preferably before you have pointed your browser at EntryCentral and estimated your 400m swim time for your first novice race, but definitely before you have applied for your race licence from your applicable home nation association.

I’ve been at this for four years now. That’s long enough to have become resigned to it without being so long that I can’t remember there was ever any other way: trust me. I know these things.

1. Say goodbye to your disposable income

   If you take up this sport seriously, even if you confine yourself to pool-based sprints (and Huntly), you will need a suit, shoes for running, shoes for cycling, a helmet, a bike and various ancillary gubbins including goggles, training devices (kickboard, pull-buoy), number belt, elastic laces… It all adds up. Races cost between £25 and £40, depending on what goodies and facilities the organisers have laid on. Then there’s travelling to races, particularly if you choose to race abroad.

   If you decide to extend yourself to open water and longer distances —and you will— then you will need a wetsuit, anti-chafing creams, specialist sunblock etc etc. Oh, and the race prices go up as well. Entry into the branded races can set you back more than a hundred quid.

   This expenditure assumes that you are not, as in fact most triathletes are, a gadget whore. If you happen to like toys, and any excuse for buying new kit is to be pounced upon like a kitty with a catnip mouse, then the list is almost endless. I have objects in my training kit that wouldn’t look out of place in a BDSM fetish club.

   Fist gloves, anyone?

2. Say goodbye to your social life

   If you are the sort of person who likes to go out with his or her workmates for a pint on a Friday night, and maybe on a Wednesday; and there’s always curry nights, don’t forget Orange Wednesdays at the movies… forget triathlon. Triathlon means not training for one sport but training for three, so if you currently run for an hour three times a week, or go to four hour-long classes at the gym, assume you’ll end up trebling it.

   Twelve hours of training a week doesn’t leave much room for drinkies and dinner parties.

   

   Yeah. It's the thought that counts.

   There are training programmes out there that claim to get you race fit in four hours a week and if the only race you ever plan on doing is the New Year’s Day, just the once, just for a bet, and all you want to do is finish, then the title probably isn’t too misleading.

   In fact, the New Year’s Day is probably the best race to go for if you only want to do the one. It’s a miserable bloody experience, and should put you off. If it doesn’t put you off, and you get to the end thinking that March sounds like a good time to start your racing season, then you’re exactly the sort of person who needs to pay close attention to every point on this list.

3. It will hurt

   At my last race I was standing at poolside waiting for the previous heat to finish. It was my second race of the year. Standing next to me was a chap who had been in my lane at the previous race as well. We’d been chatting at that one, and I’d told him that I wasn’t looking for a great performance because I’d been injured and had only been on the bike twice and running three times in the last couple of months or so, all in the last ten days. This time he asked me how I got on. “It was pretty rubbish,” I told him, “But I was expecting that. Looks like I’ve got a stress fracture or something this time.”

   

   The face as the 5th ablative braking surface

   He grinned at me. “But you’re racing anyway?”

   “Yeah.”

   “Sounds like a typical triathlete to me. Shouldn’t be racing, doing it anyway.”

   That’s triathlon. Triathlon is topped only by serious adventure racing and ultra-endurance in the “doing it anyway” stakes. A friend of mine wrote something that sums it up eloquently, after successfully completing IronMan Switzerland:

   When it’s cold, and wet, and dark, and windy out, and you still go and train. When work is unbearable and after it’s finished you just want to go to bed, you still go out and train. When someone is having a drink, you say great, I’ll come along later after I’ve trained. When it’s early and the alarm goes at the weekend, and other people are staying in bed, and you’re flying later that day, you get up and train. When you’re exhausted because you’ve been away all weekend, or haven’t slept enough, or ate enough, or have a cold, you go out and train. And no, you don’t “just this once” skip it. You deal with the conflicts with work, and home, and socialising, and family, and everything else that goes with daily life. And you make room to train. How much you give in that year running up to the event is what determines what you get back at the end.

   This is more true for long-distances than short ones, but the last sentence holds true for all events: how much you give in the time running up to the event is what determines what you get back at the end. Triathlon isn’t a fun run. Triathlon isn’t enjoyable if you haven’t put in the work. So if you’re not going to put in the work there’s no point in doing it.

   Add the following to your list of expenses: physiotherapy and sports massage.

4. People will assume you are some sort of superbeing

   Now don’t get me wrong: for plenty of people this might seem to be a plus point. Some athletes, I’m sure, get a kick out of folk in the staff canteen giving them kudos and respect for running, swimming and biking 3 – 4 times a week (each) and getting out of bed at 5am every few Sundays to spend between 1 and 3 hours beasting themselves under the critical gaze of the race marshals. Personally I get a little tired of the “You must be so fit!” comments. This is mostly because it is, almost without fail, phrased exactly like that. “You must be so fit!”

   No. Rich Roll is fit. Catriona Morrison is fit. I’m a woman in her mid-thirties with early-onset arthritis and a massive case of Lara Croft envy who likes the excuse for buying natty bike gear.

   On the other hand, short of an unlikely encounter with a radioactive spider, a black ops super-soldier project, a childhood spent under the tutelage of a parkour guru or all of the above, it’s pretty much the closest you’re likely to get to being a superhero, funny-coloured lycra suits and everything.

And that last point is pretty much the one that makes the rest worthwhile.

Really, Mattessons? Is it really?

If by “primal” you mean “pandering to sexist stereotypes” then by gods then I think I might just agree with you.

Let’s just take a look at this homage to the Hanna Barbera caveman era, shall we?

What we have is an advert that starts with a man who has a tupperware lunchbox that is empty apart from an apple. Evidently angered by the lack of man-food, he beats upon said box to demonstrate that he desires to be fed. Rather than, for instance, asking his partner if there is anything else to eat or, gods forbid, actually going and getting something for himself.

We cut to a young woman who has either only just noticed she is hungry or is experiencing period pain. It’s hard to tell from her expression. Either way, she too has lost the power of speech and registers her discontent with the state of her belly by slapping it around a bit.

A pair of male hands thumps a shiny green metal table. Splice in shots of several women coming to attention like meerkats seeing an eagle. The shiny green table turns out to be a car, and the hands to belong to a man engaged in that most manly of pursuits: working on the car. Surrounded by sparks and shit, just in case you needed further explanation that being a man is important, hard, dangerous work that only men can do.

A woman trots past, pushing a shopping trolley, looking for something and in a hurry to find it because a man is hungry, is far too busy being a man to find something to eat himself, and it’s her duty as a woman to appease his hunger. She is watched in bafflement by the only character in this advert who shows any sign of having a foot in the real world: the shop assistant. He’s presumably more used to seeing people shopping in their pyjamas, not dressed up like a model for the latest range at Marks & Sparks.

We see teenage girl again. She’s still beating her own abdomen, only now there’s something a bit scary about her expression. Determined. Perhaps she has decided that self-abuse is the only appropriate response to hunger, in case eating makes her fat and thus no longer conventionally beautiful. Because that, obviously, would be a disaster.

Cut to children. Children! Children who have been taught that the correct way to request food is to roar and beat their chests like an enraged silverback. That will stand them in good stead when they reach the age of taking a prospective partner to a restaurant to woo him or her. Rather than picking an item from the menu they will smack themselves and throw a tantrum until someone puts some food in front of them. Charming.

Finally the sausages are acquired. The drums pause, a moment of relief, followed by several shots of food magically appearing in front of the hungry. The women who were responsible for preparing it have been reduced to a single hand, or a sliver of cloth. After all, their only importance is in the fetching of the food. Once food has been acquired they are no longer worthy of attention.

Note, if you will, that there is not a single man hunting the refrigerated section of the supermarket for cheap processed pork products. No. What we have are some women who, despite doing nothing more than taking a trip down to the shop, have taken the time to apply cosmetics and carefully coif their hair so they will conform suitably to accepted beauty conventions while in a situation where other people might see them.

We have men, doing man-things, and teaching their children that the correct way to express a wish to be fed is not, for instance, asking whoever is the chef of the day what might possibly be for dinner and is there anything they can do to help, but instead to act like an enraged toddler who wants a sweetie. We see that the correct response from the busy woman who not only has a house to run but has her own career (nobody dresses like that for doing the housework) is not to tell them to bloody well get it themselves but to leap up immediately and go all the way to the supermarket for sausages. We learn that a man does not consider an apple to be proper food: only heavily-salted, fatty, processed meat products are satisfactory.

I find it hard to stomach that in the 21st century we are seeing adverts that demonstrate such blatant sexism. The gender stereotyping on display is offensive to both sexes. Anyone who doubts that sexism is an ongoing problem should take a long, hard look at the way men and women are portrayed in the media, particularly in the flash-shorts of commercial advertising.

I watch horror movies when I get a chance — which isn’t often, as Frood isn’t a big horror film fan.

I have yet to see one that is really all that scary, although, to be fair, there is a difference between horror and fear. The gore-fests of the Saw and Hostel franchises aren’t scary. They serve as a form of titillation; provoking, if anything, disgusted fascination rather than fear.

I haven’t seen many things that have frightened me, probably because enough weird, scary stuff goes on in my head and it would be hard for a film or TV show to compete. Dead Calm bothered me so much I couldn’t watch it, because I practically grew up on a boat and it hit some buttons. For similar reasons I found Jaws pretty scary when I first saw it as a kid. (I watched Evil Dead not long after that and thought it was hilarious, for the sake of comparison.)

Estara posted about Glove and reminded me that one of the few films that has scared me is Yellow Submarine, in which the blue-painted forces of Greyface take on the chaotically-psychedelic army of creativity.

I instinctively recognised a depiction of the Introduction of Negativism when I saw one, and those things scared the crap out of me.

Of course, the Charley Says public information films they used to show when I was young scared the bejeezus out of me as well. It was the cat, with his alien gibberish that the boy could nevertheless understand, and the way the boy himself spoke like a drone who had already fallen prey to his alien kitteh overlords and was no more than a mindless mouthpiece for their propaganda and fear-mongering.

Yeah. I was a strange child.

“Urgh, gerroff. You’re lying on my food.”
“I’m not lying on your food, I’m lying on your ribcage.”
“And it’s pressing all my food over. I have a food baby.”
“You have a salad baby?”
“And maybe a pie baby. Because of the half a dozen mini pork and pickle pies I bought in the shop.”
“YOU HAD SIX PIES?”
“Er… No?”
“No?”
“No. I had one pie.”
“You said you had six!”
“I bought six. I had one.”
“What happened to the rest?”
“I was mugged.”
“You were mugged.”
“Yes. By a bat.”
“A bat?”
“Yes. It swooped down and mugged me for a pie.”
“But that’s one pie.”
“Then I was mugged by a doggage. It swooped down too.”
“A swooping doggage?”
“Yes.”
“And the next pie?”
“I was mugged by a cathedral.”
“A cathedral?”
“Yes.”
“Did it swoop too?”
“No, it was lurking.”
“Okay, so that’s four pies. What about the fifth pie?”
“I was mugged by a band of unruly elementary particles. They wafted in and stole it. I don’t know what sort they were because they were too small to see.”
“Elementary particles. Right. What about the fifth pie?”
“That was han archangel.”
“Really. Which one? Because I’ll ask them.”
“The archangel Piethief.”
“Are you sure you didn’t just nom all the pies yourself?”
“No! I only had one pie, the pie you saw me eating. I didn’t buy half a dozen pies and schrompf them all, oh no. I was mugged. By a bat and a swooping doggage…”
“And a cathedral.”
“Yes.”

Note that you too can share in the brain-melting world of Frood by following him on twitter. Good luck and be warned: it’s catching.

I have a shameful confession to make: I am addicted to Top Model.

I spend most of my work day dealing with situations that are either technically or diplomatically complex, or both, and when I get home of an evening I don’t have the mental energy for anything other than mindless viewing. There are a few programmes on the telly that manage to provide this without causing sufficient aggravation to make me want to kick the box, which is the main problem with soaps. I don’t want angst. I don’t want human relationships. I don’t want anything that will make me cringe. People who are engaged in a competition that is marginally reliant on something resembling skill or ability, and which they think is the most important thing in the world despite it being completely pointless on a practical level, is about my level of braindead television. Project Runway and its UK equivalent occupy a similar niche.

Most of the time Frood goes and does something constructive while I’m in a near-catatonic state of vegetation in front of this programme, however he often comes through for the final judging in which Tyra and company critique the girls.

Frequently the contestants are told to “bring it” and it has exercised us, on a casual basis, to determine what this “it” is. We have been confused. What is “it”? From whence does “it” come? How big is “it”? What does “it” look like?

After careful perusal of advertisements and the sort of programmes that seem to be popular, we think we have determined what “it” is.

According to the Thompson’s advert it can fit in a suitcase. It can’t be overly heavy because the skinny girls on Top Model have to be capable of carrying it. According to a Ministry of Sound advert one is required to inflate it (“pump it”). It may or may not be blue.

We think “it” is a one-man bouncy castle. It’s the only thing that meets all the requirements.

Darling.

So if you want to win a $100,000 contract with Cover Girl cosmetics, the thing to do is visit a company specialising in industrial rubber and get them to make you a bouncy castle big enough for Miss J Alexander but not so big that you can’t carry it. Remember to tell everyone not to wear high heels.

My last day of work before the New Year’s break had Munky emailing me to inform me that my birthday present had been nabbed by customs. My birthday was way back in November, and I knew he was getting me something because he’d told me it was going to be late, so you can imagine that the sense of intrigue was somewhat fierce by this point. Being told that it had failed to get through customs made this even more so.

Shortly after I got home Frood emailed me, subject line: “You can has claws!” I opened said email and found the following message and attachment.

“Didn’t get through postal customs.”

At this point I jumped to an over-excited conclusion. Because the man in the picture is wearing trousers very similar to the ones Frood had been wearing when he left for work and I’d received that mail from Munky explaining that my birthday present had been caught by customs, I figured that Munky had got these for me as a birthday present and sent them to Frood because he works in a postroom, Frood had taken delivery and this was a picture that a colleague had taken on his phone.

I was so excited. I had visions of filling a room full of cardboard boxes painted as ninjas and running around yelling “Meega nala kweesta!” and “Snickt, bub!”

I mailed Frood back immediately, peppering him with questions, no doubt sowing the seeds of confusion. His response:

“No, they are from a news story. They were seized at the international mail hub in Coventry. So you can’t actually have any claws. “

Only, in my now-disappointed excitement, I failed to see the first sentence and fired back another email suggesting that perhaps all we had to do was present ID to the post office and pay the duty charges and we could get them through. Then I grabbed the phone and called Munky.

Me: Hi!
Munky: Hey you! How are you?
Me: Never mind that. What’s this about claws?
Munky: What?
Me: The claws! The claws stuck in customs!
Munky: What?

And then the whole sorry story came out and finally, with Munky gasping for breath in hilarity at how I had been beaten very profoundly with the coincidence stick until I’d grasped the wrong end of it and clung on like a kitten with a catnip mouse, I realised that I could not, in fact, has claws. At all.

Bah.

And I still don’t know what he’s getting me for my birthday.

Frood got me this for Christmas.

Heeee!

I seemed to upset a few people recently by getting worked up about the Beauty and the Bike campaign after it did the rounds on twitter.

Beauty and the Bike, for those of you who either don’t follow cycle campaigning or have an understandable mental blind spot when it comes to anything that’s all mouth and no trousers (pun entirely intended) is a cycle advocacy project that sent a bunch of teenage girls from Darlington across to Europe in an effort to see why girls over there cycle while British ones don’t.

While I have no problem at all with the basic premise — let’s find out why girls and young women don’t cycle and try to do something about it — I have a few issues with the apparent focus of the resulting campaign. Like the Sustrans BikeBelles project, there is an immediate presumption that a major reason why girls don’t cycle is cosmetic:

I cannot be fashionable on a bike.
Answer: On a Dutch bike with a low entrance and a skirtguard, you can even cycle with a long skirt.

As irritating and sexist as I find that (I hope the ladies of SweetPea Bicycles never read it), the bit that annoyed me the most is seen in this quote here:

“Why do British girls stop cycling? By simply asking this basic question, the film reveals the damage that has been done by 50 years of car-centric transport policies. Whilst we fill our lives with debates about risk assessment, cycle helmets, cycle training and marketing strategies to try to persuade people to cycle more, the basic barriers to cycling remain untouched – generous urban planning towards the car, and the resultant poor motorist behaviour towards cyclists. Is it any wonder that most people find cycling unattractive in the UK, but attractive in cycling-friendly towns and cities? It’s the infrastructure, stupid!“

That’s their emphasis. It’s the infrastructure, stupid! So there you are. If you, like me, have been merrily cycling on the road, where you have every right to cycle, and explaining to moronic drivers that they need to learn how to share, that they shouldn’t be passing you so closely your elbow leaves a clean streak on their paint, or yelling at you for being on the road, or any one of the hundred other ways drivers treat cyclists like shit: you were wrong. It’s the infrastructure, stupid!

I’m not particularly keen on re-hashing the various arguments about driver culture and conflict points and engineering: they’ve been done to death elsewhere. I’m not going to detail the studies that show a strip of red paint down the side of the road is counter-productive, leading drivers to give cyclists even less room; nor Ian Walker’s report that women cyclists tend to be given more room anyway. Take a look through a few back issues of CityCycling. In fact, here’s your starter for ten — an article I wrote in response to the Sustrans Bike Belles launch.

It’s all very well having a bunch of teenage girls say “We want more cycle lanes!” Unfortunately I want doesn’t get. More to the point, paths are not necessary. They’re a placebo, a palliative aimed at making us shut up and giving the impression that the powers that be are doing something to follow through on their promises. It doesn’t address the underlying issue. In fact putting more cycle paths in place is just going to make things worse.

Here’s an example of the typical attitude of someone who is angry about cyclists who don’t use paths, as seen in the comments section of an article about the effect of the new Princes Street tram lines on cyclists:

Between Gilmerton and Dalkeith, Edinburgh and Midlothian council have spent millions of pounds on an off road cycle track, which runs next to the road. Guess what, these cyclists ignore it, and prefer to hold up the traffic by cycling on the main carriageway. Simple solution, get the police to stop every cyclist on this stretch of the road and obtain their details, then get the councils to bill each and every cyclist for the cost of the cycle track. That way, folk like me, are not paying for a cycle track that doesn’t get used, and cyclists are punished for failing to use facilities specifically built for them.

Error compounded by misconception, but clearly showing that providing a cycle path will cause at least a portion of drivers to behave even more negatively to cyclists who continue to exercise their right to use the road.

In contrast, here’s a good pictorial summary of the problems encountered on cycle paths and the reason folks might not want to use them (hope you don’t mind, Anth).

My point is that the current method of asking people who don’t cycle what’s best for cyclists is about as useful as asking a vegan how he would prefer his steak in the belief that will make him start eating meat. Rather than asking girls who don’t cycle why they don’t, how about asking girls who do cycle why they do? The main barrier to cycling isn’t external. The roads do not make it impossible to ride. What to do with your hair is not an insurmountable problem. If this were the case there wouldn’t be anyone out there on the roads at all. The very fact that we already have female cyclists riding on the roads means that the major problem is cultural rather than practical. It’s a mental, not a physical one.

It’s not the infrastructure. It’s the culture. It’s the fuckwit drivers who believe the myth of road tax and treat non-motorised road users as moving obstacles.

And don’t call me stupid.