The trouble with nostalgia is, well, that it's nostalgia. There's no point harking back to a time that's gone forever, changed, behind us, it's place taken by something new. Brexit, for example, we can't go back to how we were before Europe when apparently the sun always shone and everyone was happy.
It may be that cycling has had its day. The days when we could allow children at ten to pass a cycling proficiency and immediately be given permission by parents to ride their bikes on the public roads to school, scouts, guides, doing stuff with friends, exploring their area have gone. That was so 1978. Or at least, for me, that was the year when I passed the cycling proficiency and was out there on the public roads, using my bicycle to get to places. It's gone. Forget it. That's no longer the dream and we shouldn't wistfully seek to go back to the 1970s in the same way as we wouldn't be looking to go back to pre decimalisation. It's gone.
We should settle for the modern compartmentalised life. Exercise must happen in the gym, where it's clean and safe. Travel should be in the car, even the train is out moded, inefficient, a victim of it's own lack of success, unusable because the frequencies and destinations make it defunct.
Everyone should order all their shopping on the internet and have it delivered. We should not have any kind of casual conversation as a result of shopping or anything dangerous like that. We might meet nutters. We need to be kept safe, preferably hermetically sealed in houses. On no account should anyone have fun which has not been pre prescribed, signed off as accepted by at least 80% of society as normal. Everyone should probably work from home.
If we're on the roads and we're not in cars, we need to get with the programme. The car is the safe way, it's the right way, it's the capitalist way and it keeps us in jobs and keeps the economy afloat.
Pavements are for people walking, but we need some better rules here, things about making sure if the car needs the pavement more, the people walking just disappear. There should be rules about minimum walking speeds, maximum walking speeds to make sure that nobody runs and nobody gets in anybody's way. Sigh.
The 1970s are over. Deal with it.
Thursday 31 August 2017
Fit for
There's a ground swelling of people who think people on bikes have no place on our roads. It's unsafe, it's not right, people get in the way of people in motor vehicles and it slows the whole system down, brings our cities to a halt.
Then there are people on foot who think people on bikes have no place on the pavements - even shared pavements. I've been dawdling along at walking pace and been gesticulated and shouted at and told to get on the road even though the sign was there. I was alarmed and puzzled, and have never ridden that shared path ever again. I ride in the road, an unpleasantly narrow bit of road with many people in cars in it.
Then there's the Canal and River people who recently wrote to say that the towpaths are not the place for commuting by bicycle. They, apparently are a destination, not part of a journey and if you want to make a journey you should be on the road.
Because of the choices I freely confess I've made, in where I live and where I work and the distance between them, much of my ability to fit exercise into my day is tied up with my cycle commute. Fitness is how I stay sane, how I stay healthy, how I avoid obesity at the age of 49. It has started to feel like I'm making a selfish choice, this reliance on cycle commuting to maintain mental and physical health. I feel selfish for my commuting choice of preference, my bicycle, because quite clearly, my choices are affecting other people in a negative way. I shouldn't be there, on the bike travelling to work. This makes me feel sad, and feel trapped.
I still have choices. I can change job, or the way I do my job, or I can move house. I like where I live far more than I like where I work. I can't bring myself to live near to my workplace, the area is rough and it's too far from the hills, and I'm selfish, I want to be near the hills.
I genuinely don't know what to change.
Then there are people on foot who think people on bikes have no place on the pavements - even shared pavements. I've been dawdling along at walking pace and been gesticulated and shouted at and told to get on the road even though the sign was there. I was alarmed and puzzled, and have never ridden that shared path ever again. I ride in the road, an unpleasantly narrow bit of road with many people in cars in it.
Then there's the Canal and River people who recently wrote to say that the towpaths are not the place for commuting by bicycle. They, apparently are a destination, not part of a journey and if you want to make a journey you should be on the road.
Because of the choices I freely confess I've made, in where I live and where I work and the distance between them, much of my ability to fit exercise into my day is tied up with my cycle commute. Fitness is how I stay sane, how I stay healthy, how I avoid obesity at the age of 49. It has started to feel like I'm making a selfish choice, this reliance on cycle commuting to maintain mental and physical health. I feel selfish for my commuting choice of preference, my bicycle, because quite clearly, my choices are affecting other people in a negative way. I shouldn't be there, on the bike travelling to work. This makes me feel sad, and feel trapped.
I still have choices. I can change job, or the way I do my job, or I can move house. I like where I live far more than I like where I work. I can't bring myself to live near to my workplace, the area is rough and it's too far from the hills, and I'm selfish, I want to be near the hills.
I genuinely don't know what to change.
Wednesday 30 August 2017
My tribe
And another thing.
I am grappling to understand the identification of people as part of a tribe. I don't get the whole tarring people with the same brush thing. Labelling and dividing and divvying up into you and me, us and them, black and white. It's weird.
I'm guilty of it too, you know. I have a tendency to group together BMW drivers as being particularly dangerous. It does feel sometimes as though people driving "high end" cars do entitlement rather well. And selfishness too. And blindness to other people's existence. Sometimes I find myself thinking the same way about the very rich, or the tory voting. In fact, the way I find myself clumping together brexit voters is up there in, for me, in the ridiculous thought pattern.
From the inside of the group labelled as cyclists, there are, in fact, many sub groups, and lots and lots of individual human beings, and some of the sub groups overlap. Commuters, or utility cyclists are, to me, a really important group. It's bloody difficult not to find myself perched up there on some kind of moral high ground, but this is the group who, I believe, are doing something good. They are low polluting, low congesting, low impact, staying healthier through simple day to day routine. They may even be happier than those who don't, who knows.
So, I'm a cycle commuter, and a utility cyclist. I'm also a leisure cyclist. In fact, yes, put simply I'm a cyclist. But I see people on my commute who I would plonk in a sub group called people who ride bikes to do stuff. To me, those are the people who need to be looked after most. I'm someone who chooses cycling as a fun activity, I'm committed to it, I think about what I'm doing, what other people are doing, I'm aware of all manner of issues out there on the road, politics and safety and behaviour. I care, and I want change.
People who ride bikes to do stuff should be able to get on with that without all the other shit affecting them. It shouldn't require any more thought and comprehension than stepping out of the front door to walk to the newsagent.
I wish I could live in ignorance, I really do. I wish I wasn't so conscious of primary positions, secondary positions, left swipers, close passers, car door openers, exhaust fumes, pot holes, narrow roads, shared use paths that aren't. I wish I could just ride my bike to work A to B without all the thinking.
I am grappling to understand the identification of people as part of a tribe. I don't get the whole tarring people with the same brush thing. Labelling and dividing and divvying up into you and me, us and them, black and white. It's weird.
I'm guilty of it too, you know. I have a tendency to group together BMW drivers as being particularly dangerous. It does feel sometimes as though people driving "high end" cars do entitlement rather well. And selfishness too. And blindness to other people's existence. Sometimes I find myself thinking the same way about the very rich, or the tory voting. In fact, the way I find myself clumping together brexit voters is up there in, for me, in the ridiculous thought pattern.
From the inside of the group labelled as cyclists, there are, in fact, many sub groups, and lots and lots of individual human beings, and some of the sub groups overlap. Commuters, or utility cyclists are, to me, a really important group. It's bloody difficult not to find myself perched up there on some kind of moral high ground, but this is the group who, I believe, are doing something good. They are low polluting, low congesting, low impact, staying healthier through simple day to day routine. They may even be happier than those who don't, who knows.
So, I'm a cycle commuter, and a utility cyclist. I'm also a leisure cyclist. In fact, yes, put simply I'm a cyclist. But I see people on my commute who I would plonk in a sub group called people who ride bikes to do stuff. To me, those are the people who need to be looked after most. I'm someone who chooses cycling as a fun activity, I'm committed to it, I think about what I'm doing, what other people are doing, I'm aware of all manner of issues out there on the road, politics and safety and behaviour. I care, and I want change.
People who ride bikes to do stuff should be able to get on with that without all the other shit affecting them. It shouldn't require any more thought and comprehension than stepping out of the front door to walk to the newsagent.
I wish I could live in ignorance, I really do. I wish I wasn't so conscious of primary positions, secondary positions, left swipers, close passers, car door openers, exhaust fumes, pot holes, narrow roads, shared use paths that aren't. I wish I could just ride my bike to work A to B without all the thinking.
Monday 28 August 2017
This happened
So, this happened.
Guardian - courier convicted for death of woman
I feel a lot of things about this. The highest one on the list is fear. It makes me more scared to be out on my bike, commuting through well used roads through city centres. It's already quite an uncomfortable experience.
My cycle commute is 16 miles there and 16 miles back. Like many commuters, I travel into a city centre from somewhere more suburban, or in my case, rural. Manchester city looks like a spiders web of commuter routes leading into the centre, criss crossing but ultimately the main strands a condensed accumulation of people moving in the same direction. City bound.
There are other ways I can commute. I can, and do, for example, catch the train a few times a week. I can, and do drive in maybe four times a year. That proportion is down to the unpleasantness of the traffic, the cloying, exhaust fume laden, noisy, angry, argumentative feeling drive. Everyone vying for space, and it feels like nobody is doing this with any kind of cooperative instinct. It's really stressful. It also doesn't make sense for the environment, just one person in a vehicle, using fossil fuels in a pretty selfish fashion. I feel guilty when I do it on occasions when there's something that needs carrying or somewhere to be after work which hasn't proven possible by bicycle or public transport. I feel bad every time, only mildly alleviated by offering a lift to one of my regular travelling companions. For me, driving = hassle, for sure.
My cycle commute is a route made to bring out the worst in human nature, as far as I can tell, but my choices are incredibly limited as to how I navigate my way along the spider's web into Manchester. My biggest restrictions are getting across the M60 at Stockport. The A6 is the only way which doesn't involve a particularly risky roundabout manoeuvre. One of the roundabouts has the added complication of having an exit devoted to M60 traffic. It doesn't really feel great on a bike. For reasons unknown, the footbridge which did go across the M60 through a park just to the side of the A6 has been shut for quite some time, and there is no diversion, other than a sign suggesting to walkers they go via the A6. All because of this crunch point, my route is restricted to the A6.
I've had obscenities shouted at me on the A6. From a bloke driving on the opposite side of the two lane section, going in the other direction. There's no way my presence could possibly have had any impact at all on him. I wouldn't have delayed him or scared him or surprised him or had any kind of interaction prior to that encounter. He just yelled abuse at me, a random stranger, for committing the sin of riding my bicycle home from work.
People seem to forget I'm flesh and blood, someone's daughter, lover, friend. I've had, more than once, people move their cars to one side with the clear intention of blocking me. It's hard to describe, but trust me, there's no other explanation for some of these. People seem to resent me filtering sometimes, making a bit more progress than they are in their cars. I don't know why that should be the case, nor why someone would wish to put my safety at risk because of it. None of it makes sense. People come from behind me, and turn left with a pretty high frequency, going across me, expecting me to, to, to what, exactly I cannot tell. Disappear perhaps. I'm not angry, I'm just sad when this happens, and I'm resigned to it too. I have coping strategies for such matters. I'm alert to overtaking people, and watchful of their indicators. I can slow down so they go round me without hitting me, or I can allow myself to be pushed over and turned left despite my wish to continue straight on.
But the Guardian article makes me afraid. I've had several, what I can only describe as "punishment passes". Punishment. I don't know what it means. I don't think you'd do it to your child. Punishment in advance of something you think they are about to do? Punishment because of something their brother did yesterday? And what's the lesson I'm expected to learn from a close punishment pass? Did it Serve Me Right? Does it Teach Me A Lesson? When articles like that become headlines, I leave the house anticipating a greater frequency of punishment being doled out because, well, cyclists are bad, and it proves that.
I don't understand. 400 people on foot are killed by people in cars every year, 100 cyclists are killed. Where are our headlines about those human beings? Why aren't we on a crusade for each and every one of those, asking that sentences be punitive, asking that something is done about it? Why don't those people matter? We're people, all people, the ex courier was a person riding a bicycle, the woman who died was a person going about her daily business. She didn't deserve to die that day, and her husband should not have become a widower. Yet, if a person driving a car had taken her out, would we all have simply shrugged? How would that have been fair either?
I wonder how we've ended up somewhere where people seem to think of cars as having some kind of life, thoughts, decisions of their own, why we don't identify clearly that each person driving a car is a person who has made decisions. Why do we shrug our shoulders when something happens involving a car, in the same way we do if a dog is the perpetrator of a minor demeanour. Ah well, he couldn't help it, he's just a dog. Ah well, it's a car, that's what they do. Except they have drivers, people, thinking human beings who should have compassion for the other human beings around them.
I'm worried, I'm afraid, and anticipate repercussions of this incident being on people going about their commuting or shopping or school runs, or daily life on their bicycles. I'm scared.
Guardian - courier convicted for death of woman
I feel a lot of things about this. The highest one on the list is fear. It makes me more scared to be out on my bike, commuting through well used roads through city centres. It's already quite an uncomfortable experience.
My cycle commute is 16 miles there and 16 miles back. Like many commuters, I travel into a city centre from somewhere more suburban, or in my case, rural. Manchester city looks like a spiders web of commuter routes leading into the centre, criss crossing but ultimately the main strands a condensed accumulation of people moving in the same direction. City bound.
There are other ways I can commute. I can, and do, for example, catch the train a few times a week. I can, and do drive in maybe four times a year. That proportion is down to the unpleasantness of the traffic, the cloying, exhaust fume laden, noisy, angry, argumentative feeling drive. Everyone vying for space, and it feels like nobody is doing this with any kind of cooperative instinct. It's really stressful. It also doesn't make sense for the environment, just one person in a vehicle, using fossil fuels in a pretty selfish fashion. I feel guilty when I do it on occasions when there's something that needs carrying or somewhere to be after work which hasn't proven possible by bicycle or public transport. I feel bad every time, only mildly alleviated by offering a lift to one of my regular travelling companions. For me, driving = hassle, for sure.
My cycle commute is a route made to bring out the worst in human nature, as far as I can tell, but my choices are incredibly limited as to how I navigate my way along the spider's web into Manchester. My biggest restrictions are getting across the M60 at Stockport. The A6 is the only way which doesn't involve a particularly risky roundabout manoeuvre. One of the roundabouts has the added complication of having an exit devoted to M60 traffic. It doesn't really feel great on a bike. For reasons unknown, the footbridge which did go across the M60 through a park just to the side of the A6 has been shut for quite some time, and there is no diversion, other than a sign suggesting to walkers they go via the A6. All because of this crunch point, my route is restricted to the A6.
I've had obscenities shouted at me on the A6. From a bloke driving on the opposite side of the two lane section, going in the other direction. There's no way my presence could possibly have had any impact at all on him. I wouldn't have delayed him or scared him or surprised him or had any kind of interaction prior to that encounter. He just yelled abuse at me, a random stranger, for committing the sin of riding my bicycle home from work.
People seem to forget I'm flesh and blood, someone's daughter, lover, friend. I've had, more than once, people move their cars to one side with the clear intention of blocking me. It's hard to describe, but trust me, there's no other explanation for some of these. People seem to resent me filtering sometimes, making a bit more progress than they are in their cars. I don't know why that should be the case, nor why someone would wish to put my safety at risk because of it. None of it makes sense. People come from behind me, and turn left with a pretty high frequency, going across me, expecting me to, to, to what, exactly I cannot tell. Disappear perhaps. I'm not angry, I'm just sad when this happens, and I'm resigned to it too. I have coping strategies for such matters. I'm alert to overtaking people, and watchful of their indicators. I can slow down so they go round me without hitting me, or I can allow myself to be pushed over and turned left despite my wish to continue straight on.
But the Guardian article makes me afraid. I've had several, what I can only describe as "punishment passes". Punishment. I don't know what it means. I don't think you'd do it to your child. Punishment in advance of something you think they are about to do? Punishment because of something their brother did yesterday? And what's the lesson I'm expected to learn from a close punishment pass? Did it Serve Me Right? Does it Teach Me A Lesson? When articles like that become headlines, I leave the house anticipating a greater frequency of punishment being doled out because, well, cyclists are bad, and it proves that.
I don't understand. 400 people on foot are killed by people in cars every year, 100 cyclists are killed. Where are our headlines about those human beings? Why aren't we on a crusade for each and every one of those, asking that sentences be punitive, asking that something is done about it? Why don't those people matter? We're people, all people, the ex courier was a person riding a bicycle, the woman who died was a person going about her daily business. She didn't deserve to die that day, and her husband should not have become a widower. Yet, if a person driving a car had taken her out, would we all have simply shrugged? How would that have been fair either?
I wonder how we've ended up somewhere where people seem to think of cars as having some kind of life, thoughts, decisions of their own, why we don't identify clearly that each person driving a car is a person who has made decisions. Why do we shrug our shoulders when something happens involving a car, in the same way we do if a dog is the perpetrator of a minor demeanour. Ah well, he couldn't help it, he's just a dog. Ah well, it's a car, that's what they do. Except they have drivers, people, thinking human beings who should have compassion for the other human beings around them.
I'm worried, I'm afraid, and anticipate repercussions of this incident being on people going about their commuting or shopping or school runs, or daily life on their bicycles. I'm scared.
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