Round and about

Spotted in The Dark Place over the last few days. Taken on my phone, hence the execrable quality of the pictures.

I would avoid the bacon in this pub. 

This week's Private Eye. I assume that Dominic Lawson is reassessing his view of the Right's behaviour given his own paper's attack on Ed Miliband's dead dad, or as I'm putting it in tabloidese: 'The Belgian Who Battled For Britain and the Paper that Batted For Berlin'.

Interesting bit of left-wing agitation posted at various sites around the city. The use of the West Midlands Police logo is quite cunning: people do tend to stop and read them. 

Rather lovely letter and newspaper box on the Central Library. A bit Deco, a bit Nouveau, and the luxury of separate slots for papers and letters!

I've had an interesting, if expensive morning already. The daily hate of the Today programme riled me up good and proper. It finished with a reading of a Dylan Thomas poem. Brilliant. Read by… Prince Charles. Because when you need a voice which really expresses the joys of a dissolute, cultured, Welsh thinker, you automatically think of a billionaire monarch-in-waiting with a plummy English accent and a courtesy title to remind Wales of its subjection. Next week he's back to read The Road to Wigan Pier, followed by a preview of his new album, This Land Is My Land: Prince Charles Sings the Hits of Woody Guthrie. 

After that, it was off to the bike shop with both my bikes. The 1967 Moulton Classic needs a full service, and the Forme is getting its 3-month once-over. I don't think the guys in the shop had ever seen a Moulton, and needed persuading that it isn't a shopper or Bike-Shaped Object. Then they started to notice the weird and interesting bits and got quite interested. Needless to say, the simple servicing visit was a trap: I walked out with a pair of Specialized cycling shoes and the associated pedal clips, and significantly financially lighter. Despite my politics, I have a terrible weakness for techy stuff: it's my capitalist Achilles heel. It's the same with my photography and fencing: there's always an essential extra bit of kit with my name on it…

OK, time for some work. Got a friend's book chapters on 30s Welsh literature to read, and a lecture on Volpone to write. I did one last year but it didn't quite work, so this is attempt No. 2. 

Call that a bike?

THIS is a bike!

I went down to Oxford yesterday to pick up this little beauty. While gazing out of the window at the gentle green beauty of the Oxfordshire countryside, I spied four figures on horseback crossing the fields. Looking more closely I realised that they were David Cameron, Rebekah Brooks, George Osborne and Jeremy Clarkson. Hunting pensioners.

It's a good job I was going to Oxford anyway - being an absolute spanner, I'd left the free book I'm reviewing for the LSE Review of Books on a train. The only copy I could find in the country was at Blackwell's, a divine book shop. I couldn't even buy one online, thanks to my bank card being defrauded and blocked within a week of arriving. I really resent having to spend actual money on it, as it's one of the most dishonest and unpleasant books I've ever read - and I've read Martin Amis.

Obviously I couldn't buy just the one book: I came away with Sowell's Intellectuals and Society (the one I'm reviewing - watch this space), a really beautiful second-hand copy of C. Day Lewis's Selected Poems (in the 1951 Penguin Poets edition):

…a classic 1962 orange Penguin copy of Waugh's The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, Josipovici's What Ever Happened To Modernism (looks flawed but pungent), Stefan Collini's feisty What Are Universities For? and a cheap used copy of Trollope's gargantuan The Prime Minister, mostly to hold doors open. Despite his misogyny and dubious politics, I'm on a Trollope kick at the moment. But if you think that Foster Wallace and Rowling needed a stern editor, you should try Trollope. Good for self-defence, I guess.

But the actual purpose of my jaunt was to collect my new/old bike. It's a mid-1960s Moulton F-frame (that video is wonderful). Stiff, heavy steel frame, the first bike to have suspension (front and rear) and a bit of an icon in its day. They're still made, but as the entry level one is about £3000 stretching to £15,000, I'll be content with my old one.

It's a beauty. Paul - who restored it then realised that his young family has more bikes than people and space - added a lighter seat post, racing saddle, a light headset with racing bars and decent modern brakes, a 7-speed internal hub gear, and Schwalbe Kojak tyres (i.e. bald, for speed). It's enamelled in stove-grey, and looks absolutely stunning. It sure doesn't look or ride like a 40-50 year old bike.

Ladies and gentlemen: I give you The Midnight Vole.

Look: no logos!

On your bike

This looks like paradise to me. The sped-up footage gives it the charm of a Harold Lloyd film (imagine it in black and white). Look out for The Man On Two Bikes. What a hero.

Cambridge might be a little like this, if it actually catered for cycling seriously rather than merely tolerated a lot of cyclists.

Halfords: liars

A few days ago, I wrote about how friendly and helpful Halfords were when I took my bike in for the brake and gear cables to be changed. I didn't mind having to wait ten days because they were busy. I was pleased when the guy said he'd be able to do it 'today or tomorrow at the latest'.

I was less pleased but still fine when I called four days later to be told that the bike was 'half done' and it would be ready the next day.

I was downright annoyed when I called in today, assuming I could collect it, only to find that, far from being 'half done', it was completely untouched. A simple phone call to apologise for the delay would have kept me happy. Being blatantly lied to, on the other hand, just makes me angry.

So angry that I'm going to spend the day buying books. Oh, and looking at a flat.

On your bike

It's been, in a meandering sense, a productive day. I took my old boneshaker into Halfords (a car and bike stuff supermarket) for a service before going for a painful 60 lengths. I've tried to arrange Euro for my long weekend in Germany, and failed, and still need to look at places to store books. I mean, places to live.

There are two excellent bike shops in Wolverhampton, into which it's a geek pleasure to venture.

But. My main bike is a Viscount Apollo tourer. It's at least tenth-hand and is probably thirty years old, but was apparently a very decent cheap racer, despite the Death Forks, which I need to check. The two proper bike shops would laugh in my face. I love all the gear associated with proper cycling, and dream of owning a new Moulton NS Double Pylon (pictured below), but I wouldn't do it justice, and can't afford it anyway.

Going into a bike shop is like going to a record shop - you have to run the gauntlet either of sneery, superior gits who see your choice of bike/record as emblematic of your invertebrate status, or of pitying experts. My bike, bank balance and ego aren't up to it. And so I crawl off to unjudgemental Halfords, where they take my money and don't pass judgement.

Also, the main posh bike shop is manned by a guy with a goatee, baseball cap and facial piercings who addresses me as 'buddy', though we aren't acquainted. The man at Halfords, of similar age, talked knowledgeably in a genuinely friendly fashion without resorting to the trappings of false bonhomie, and for that, he wins my respect.