Picture the scene. It is an unexpectedly busy morning at the bike workshop; we have just opened and all the other volunteers are busy fixing bikes and suddenly we have six guys waiting with vouchers for bicycles, and just three bikes ready to be given out.
With a mimed plea for patience, I go to get the key to unlock the available bikes and head back to the fray wondering how I’m going to handle the resulting chaos.
There I find all six guys neatly lined up in a queue, in the order of their arrival, with delighted grins on their faces.
Seriously, if that isn’t a sign that they are ready to integrate into British society, I don’t know what is.
I should probably stop blogging about my knitting efforts, if only because it makes it embarrassingly clear how slow I am – I see that I helpfully recorded starting this in December 2024, which means it has ‘only’ taken me over a year to complete.
In fairness to me, I did also knit two hats (one very small) and a pair and a half of fingerless mitts as well, but we’re still not breaking any records here; it’s not even a personal best. I did get off to a good start and completed the body in reasonable time, but then got somewhat lost on ‘sleeve island’ (knitting the second one of anything is always a bit dispiriting) and even casting off took basically a week (I had naively signed up to a pattern with an i-cord bind off which does give it a nice edge of contrasting colour around the neck and button band but that was about 17 million stitches to cast off and each one took about three additional stitches to do).
I probably only finished it because I had some compulsory online training to do of the kind where you have to sit through every single screen and seriously, this is the sort of thing that made me go freelance in the first place, so it’s galling to still have to do it anyway. I do love it when clients decide to inflict all the disadvantages of having a proper job on you, like actual meetings and mandatory anything, without any of the actual advantages.
But hey, the training is done, and so is the cardigan and now I just have to wait until it’s more like cardigan weather to actually wear it (it’s reasonably warm but not brilliant for layering).
Anyway, let the record show, that I have not started anything else yet (apart from that other half of the pair of mitts) so I whenever I finally finish the next thing, I am free to pretend I did it in a reasonable amount of time. But don’t hold your breath.
There is a pothole on my cycle route home that I think of as my nemesis – not because it has done anything terrible to me yet, but because I fear that one day it surely will. Not only is it so big that it actually has a second pothole within it, but it is deep and it is sharp edged and it lies directly in my path when I am cycling home (or what would be my path if I forgot about it and cycled into it). When the weather is wet it lurks within an otherwise innocuous puddle and, even when it is dry, I have on occasion been cycling home somewhat lost in thought and only noticed it just in time. If I did hit it on the bike, it would be impossible to stay upright, and might even cost me my front wheel (upsetting given the effort I went to build it) if not actually my front teeth.
I’m clearly not the only one who fears the pothole, as over the new year it gained a traffic cone. I’m pretty sure it’s not an offical coonsil cone as it has lost its base at some point (but then again, over Christmas, someone started annotating the potholes on Nearest B Road with the sort of cones you use to mark out children’s sports activities and those potholes all got filled shortly afterwards so you never know, local authority budgets being what they are). So far, this pothole has not been filled but the cone itself has migrated from the side of the road (where it was actually a bit of a hazard to me as it blocked off one of my routes to avoid the pothole) to the pothole itself. Where, inevitably, it either fell casualty to a passing driver or just lost the will to live and is now in danger of disappearing into the depths altogether.
I’m always a bit ambivalent as a cycle campaigner about complaining about potholes. The fact that our roads are littered with hazards that bikes are able to go round but cars can’t actually makes those roads a bit safer to cycle on (as long as you’re paying attention and you’re not being forced into a one by careless overtaking), and besides, if the powers that be got wind of the idea that they could use the active travel budget to fill potholes we’d never see so much as a dropped kerb between now and the heat death of the sun (which I believe is the date by which all of Bigtownshire’s potholes are projected to be filled). But on the other hand, if I do hit this one, I’ll have nothing but this poor defeated cone to save me from a nasty accident, and that perhaps might serve me right.
They say in the end that all local politics devolves down to dog poo and potholes. And as this post proves, so too do all local blogs. Probably because unlike everything else in the world right now, potholes can actually be fixed. Although not necessarily faster than the weather gods can make them.
* Remember that? Did we really have so little to worry about in the early nineties?
So, I’m back, having raced to King’s Cross yesterday morning to catch the first off-peak service heading north before Storm Goretti dropped its weather bomb over what remains of our transport infrastructure. I was fully expecting a prolonged and chaotic journey home and decided to postpone my planned trip along the Settle Carlisle for a day when there wasn’t a mosaic of weather warnings across the entire country, but in the end I caught what appeared to be the only delayed service on the East Coast Main Line, due to an unrelated fault in the train, but still got home an hour sooner than I would have had I stuck to my orginal bookings. This after a journey down when a broken rail at Peterborough turned half the network into effectively a massive train traffic jam and we crawled into London two hours late – an experience that turned out to be excellent practice for my first encounter with the full majesty of the British legal system, which is also prone to initial problems due to crumbling infrastructure (or outsoruced incompetence) turning into a cascade of endless delays, although sadly, unlike the trains, the court doesn’t do delay repay….
The last time we were in London was two years ago, and that was for a funeral. This time, I’ve been attending court during my niece’s trial. I’ve been hearing about it in detail from my sister, but there’s no substitute for experiencing it for myself, alongside the other families, friends and wider supporters. I’m not going to get into the rights and wrongs of the case here (you can follow the proceedings on Real Media and make up your own minds) but it has been sobering to watch six young people’s entire futures being determined by this ancient and somewhat arcane process (one young American sitting next to me in the gallery asked if the judge was dressed in red robes, a wig and furs because it was Christmas; in fact a little googling reveals that this was actually known as modern court dress). And also, if David Lammy thinks he can cut the court backlog by abolishing jury trials in a system where proceedings can easily be delayed for an hour or even a whole day by something as simple as a missing packed lunch or a prisoner not appearing because they ‘weren’t on the list’ for prison transport in the middle of a trial that they’ve been attending daily for weeks, then he’s in for a rude awakening.
It’s also been eye opening to spend some time in a new part of London as my sister has moved out east and the trial is across the river in Woolwich so the journey has been a complicated epic of buses and the DLR which I haven’t used since it was shiny and new and considered a bit of a joke. Walking alongside massive dual carriageways and negotiating huge gyratories on foot in an attempt to save one bus journey quickly made us realise that this corner of London is very much for the motorised (my sister would have ordinarily cycled, which would have been quicker, but it was -4C on the one day it would have been feasible and we wimped out.) Still, I was tickled to see the DLR takes the ‘drive the train’ seats seriously enough to provde some controls, something that was probably intended to gladden the heart of a five-year-old, but was also delightful to this 56-year-old (and if they’re not also planning a dummy steering wheel and a horn in the ‘drive the bus’ seats on top of the double deckers then they’re missing a trick). Also, call me a hypocrite, but neither my sister nor myself, seasoned cycle campaigners and committed human-scale urbanists though we both are, could deny that sailing over a bridge past City Airport on the bus while a plane came into to land right over our heads, was actually pretty cool.
London has changed in many ways out of all recogntion since we moved up here in 2008; indeed, even since my last visit it’s grown a new underground line and rebranded several more so I can’t even rely on my internalised tube map to guide me any more. On my one free afternoon I had to spend in town, I found myself a tourist in what was once my native city, doing what I always do in such cases: walking impractical distances with no real objective other than to buy a newspaper (a goal that started to feel like a hunt for the Dead Sea Scrolls, from the blank looks I got in every supposed newsagent I tried), take in a little culture, and find somewhere for lunch that didn’t cost How Much!? Ultimately, my feet found the London Review Bookshop, a favoured haunt of mine in times past (or it would have been if I’d ever trusted myself to go in there with any means of payment). Browsing for books sounds in theory like a wonderful way to pass the time in a city like London without paying through the nose at some tourist trap but in practice, a glance at my bank statement suggests that in a place like the LRB it clocks up at about £2 per minute, not counting the chiropractic bill for sorting out your shoulders after lugging the books home.
All in all, it’s been a worthwhile trip to support my sister and nieces, and to see friends, and I am glad I went, but I’m even happier to be home. This trip has underlined the fact that London has left me behind, and I have left it. I hope to come back in happier times (especially as it looks as if I’ll get my entire train ticket refunded thanks to the two hour delay), but I’ll still be sprinting for the first train out rather than face any possible delay in getting home.
Look, I’ll admit, I wasn’t quite feeling it yesterday morning as I contemplated cycling down to Bigtown to catch the Rail Replacement Bus to Carlisle to meet a friend. It wasn’t just the prospect of the Rail Replacement Bus (though those three words do more to strike a note of dread into my heart than almost any other), it was the way the wind was buffeting the house and the frost outside.
I think I’ve mentioned before that one of the downsides of finally having a lovely well insulated, warm house is that it does make going outside in bad weather just a whole lot less appealing, for all the many thousands of articles published at this time of year about the need to get out. And we’re so exposed that the wind especially tends to make itself felt in a way that doesn’t immediately say ‘yay! Bike!’ But needs must, and I chose a moment when the worst of the gusts seemed to have eased off, and set off.
It was, at least, extremely beautiful, even if the photo really doesn’t show how absolutely effing Baltic it was.
By the time I’d reached town I was feeling quite pleased with myself for having made the effort and got outside. Even the bus service wasn’t too horrible (although for the love of mike can someone explain why, when the bus is there and ready to go and the passengers are standing beside it in the freezing cold also ready to go, and the driver is there and the people in high vis who are organising it are there and they’ve had their little conversation and spoken into their radios and everything, can we not just get on the bus and out of the cold there and then rather than stand around staring at the bus and trying to manifest its doors open by the power of thought alone?) And it was great to catch up with a pal and even to cycle home in the freezing dark again, witnessing the brightest shooting star I’ve ever seen as I plugged up the final hill to home. Although not quite as great as the sensation of getting back to our lovely warm house and shutting the door behind me.
Perhaps a thousand think pieces about the joys of getting out in winter actually have a point? In which case add this one to the pile.
It’s been something of a quiet year when it comes to going places – indeed, a quiet five years, if I’m honest. Less frequent travelling in recent years has done nothing to tackle my travel-related anxiety. It’s not helped by the ongoing reliability issues on some of our trains and the revised bus timetable which has tipped the bus service from ‘inconvienient’ to ‘borderline unusable’, but even so the only real cure is to keep on getting out of my comfort zone and keep on going places.
In the past year I have started to push back a little and climb out from under my moss-covered rock – and suddenly I seem to be ending 2025 and going into 2026 with a full schedule of outings to catch up with friends in various places. I’ve already been to Carlisle and Edinburgh in the last week, with another jaunt to Carlisle on Saturday (despite the perils of the Rail Replacement Bus) to meet up with another friend, and then almost a week in That London the Monday after that (mainly to witness the British justice system in all its glory, or not, but with no doubt some additional gadding about on top of that). Booking this last was an interesting exercise as the various engineering works meant that not only were the normal services interrupted, but three different websites (National Rail, Scotrail and Avanti) seemed to have three different opinions about which route I could take on my return home with prices ranging from how much?! to OK, you’ve got to be kidding right? Anyway, I’m hoping that the fact that at least one train website allowed me to book on the option I finally went for (including a side trip on the Settle-Carlisle line to avoid another rail replacement bus service to Oxenholme) means that it does in fact come under the magnificently vague and tautological ‘any permitted route’ allowed by an open return. We shall see. Perhaps I should have taken my own advice and just gone down to the Bigtown train station and asked the older guy in the booking office who takes great pleasure in finding you the cheapest possible route. He doesn’t seem to come as an app yet, and I feel that should be celebrated while it lasts.
All of these trips have been to connect with friends but one of those friends is a fellow cycle campaigner who has now made the leap into actually implementing things. Carlisle has been busy building cycling infrastructure which meant last Saturday’s trip was also a chance to try it out in the company of someone who knew a bit about the scheme, although an unwary attempt to let Google navigate initially led us to some impromptu cyclocross along what turned out to be very definitely a footpath (the Thorn has many strong points but ‘being easy to negotiate through a kissing gate’ is not one of them; see also: heaving up a flight of steps).
It was nice to touch base with my inner kerb nerd although as neither of us had brought a tape measure for some reason, the finer points of the infrastructure in question will have to be considered on another occasion. However, while I have no doubt that people will want to quibble about the details, this is the kind of infrastructure that we could only dream about a decade (or more) ago when we all started campaigning. Perhaps after all, it hasn’t been entirely a wasted effort, even if we haven’t seen much of this sort of thing happening in Bigtown. I’m just going to have to spend more time travelling if I’m to enjoy the fruits of my labours.
This year, like last, I’ve been getting a bit crafty with some of my gifts, which is as much for my benefit as the recipient’s, if I’m honest.
Mrs Pepperpot wanted bird decorations for her minimalist Christmas tree and I spent a happy afternoon obliging.
And Mr Pepperpot is finding driving his mobility scooter hard going with bare hands in this weather but doesn’t feel he’s got enough control with gloves on. It’s a well-kept secret in the knitting world, that fingerless gloves are actually really easy and quick to knit, but always look dead impressive when they’re done, so I sprang into action a couple of weeks ago and now I’m almost done. So that’s my Christmas Eve plans sorted out.
Coming out of the pub yesterday after an early evening drink, I was alarmed to reach the bike rack and find half the bikes on it skittled, including partially my own. Someone had been marking ‘Black Eye Friday‘ (no, I had never heard of this before yesterday either) by messing with the bikes, including, weirdly, removing my front light from my handlebars and my bottle from the bottle cage, but not making off with either, just scattering them around the place. They’d had a go at my pump too, but were clearly defeated by the concept of a velcro strap, and yet had somehow not taken my pannier bag off or my back light, and – the real bonus – not tried stamping on the wheels or causing any lasting damage.
My past London self is hyperventilating at this point at the fact that I leave all this stuff on my bike at all, let alone on the last Friday before Christmas, but that is – or was – one of the joys of Bigtown cycling: it’s just more convenient to put your bike lights on in daylight when you set off, rather than be fiddling around in the cold and the dark on your way home, so that’s what I do. And having a handy pump on the downtube is more convienient during hedgecutting season than having to rummage around in the bottom of the bag for it. And pannier bags are wonderful on bikes but a giant pain in the neck off them, so it’s easier to leave them on. All of which supposes your bike will be left in peace which, until yesterday, it always had been.
Some of this might be the fact that I’d parked it on the rack used a lot by the asylum seekers whose bikes do, sadly, attract a lot more unwelcome attention these days. Only on Wednesday we had been attempting to unpringle a back wheel on a bike that had been badly vandalised in the local park (possibly by an aesthete offended by what was objectively a truly terrible bike – one of those full suspension bike shaped objects made apparently of scaffolding poles and cheese – but its owner loved it and was insistent that we fix it if we could rather than swap it for something simultaneously less heavy and more solid as we’d offered). So maybe I should be warned. And at least relieved that the mischief in question was so half hearted. I think I preferred it when the run up to Christmas was all carol singing and mindless consumerism, rather than mayhem and vandalism. But that’s the modern world for you I suppose.
Anyway, Black Eye Friday or no, it’s not Christmas around here until the Festive Digger appears (I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about this yet but apparently not) – a fairy-light festooned JCB that gets parked on the outskirts of Bigtown right before Christmas itself (presumably until then it’s busy doing digging things). It hasn’t been sighted yet this year, but it should be arriving soon. And then it really will be Christmas.
… between weather warnings yesterday, with glasses-snatching Storm Bram finally subsided, and rain all weekend in the forecast, I managed to cycle down to Bigtown and IT support call to the Pepperpots in what counts as a lovely day in December in these parts.
There’s an inspirational poster version of this post in which I claim that it’s the endless days of wind and rain and grey gloom that make weather like this all the sweeter, but I’m not sure I buy that.
Perhaps if we promise to be REALLY REALLY appreciative of the nice days when they come, the Weather Gods will only grant us an week of rain between them, instead of an entire fortnight as seems to be the pattern now.?
(Braces for whatever punishment they deem fit in response to this barefaced cheek)
… and then two come along at once. Because no sooner had I pressed post on yesterday’s offering than I remembered that I needed a carrot from the garden and headed out into the teeth of Storm Bram to pull one up. It was no weather for cycling, that was for sure, with the wind apparently gusting over 60 mph, but I didn’t think any harm could come of going into my own back garden – even after I’d had to wrestle with the back door just to get it open against the wind. And then, just as I was surveying the bed with the carrots in it to find a likely victim, the wind snatched my glasses off my face and they were gone.
How gone, I didn’t realise until I staggered back to the back door, wrestled with it once more to get it open, got my spare glasses (which are made of sturdier stuff) and went back out to retrieve my main pair. By this time it was starting to feel a little bit scary just to be outside, with the wind buffeting my back every time I turned it, and everything in the garden whipping itself into a frenzy in the howling gale. I didn’t want to go back in without my glasses because they were a) expensive lenses (ultra thin due to my general blind-as-a-batness) and b) hard to replace frames. Indeed, the only reason why I was wearing a pair so loose and easily snatched by the wind was because the frames I favour (padless metal bridges) are hard to find. The last time I was in this situation I let the frames get so loose they ended up flying off my face while I was on my bike and being run over by a tractor. But at least I could actually find them even if they didn’t really function that well as glasses after that. But this time my poor old glasses could be anywhere. I’ve searched the garden and as much of the field downwind from the house as I could manage in the fading light. and had no luck They are just too small to be easily seen and apparently light enough that they could have ended up almost anywhere.
For now I’m having to do with my spares, but they’re no longer really spares as they have a different, stronger prescription for use on my bike, while the ones that were taken were optimised for working at the computer (and being extremely comfortable). So I will need to get some replacements as soon as I can. Some concentrated googling last night has tracked down some frames that look like they might suit my needs (for ‘only’ £180) and I suppose after ten years I can hardly complain at needing to replace them. But the lenses will be at least that and more – and then probably need to be replaced after a year as my precription is still apparently changing.
Long long time readers may recall that when I first started growing vegetables, I kept a spreadsheet of my profit and loss which revealed mostly that you’re never going to save much money growing your own veg, but if you don’t go mad with the seed orders and fancy tools, you can probably break even, which is more than you can say for most hobbies. But that was before I headed out into the garden to dig up approximately 20p’s worth of carrot … and lost myself 400 quids’ worth of eyewear.
Oh, and a flagpole. But I’m not going to shed any tears for that.
Posted by disgruntled 
Town Mouse 