I like to ride my bicycle

So this is mine now. I was 40 recently so I decided I was allowed a mid-life crisis purchase. In my case, a 15 year-old Bridgestone Moulton purchased via eBay for a price I don't even want to think about, let alone type.

It's a folly, of course: I already own a much-modified 1960s Moulton which needs some work, and a perfectly serviceable and much more standard Forme Longcliffe 4.0 (in a much more sober colour scheme and thanks to the Cycle to Work scheme), but I decided that as I'll never be able to justify a £17,000 Moulton New Series Double Pylon, it was OK to go for this one.

If you're anything like the guys in the bike shop I went to yesterday, you're thinking 'why has he bought a folding shopper bike?'. Well it isn't. It doesn't fold, for a start. The original Moultons were the first to have suspension, front and rear, which allowed them to have small wheels at ridiculously high pressure, making them hugely fast and unlike any other bike to ride. Plus they were hand-built utterly beautifully - they became one of the icons of the swinging 60s. Last year I had the enormous pleasure of keeping up with a guy on a Pinarello to his huge annoyance and my satisfaction.

This new Bridgestone is a variant of the original – built in Japan by Bridgestone from aluminium rather than steel, with some changes in the suspension design. Mine is one of those tweaked and kitted out by the Alex Moulton factory at Bradford-on-Avon, so it's got a few special touches: carbon seat-post, Ultegra and Dura-Ace components and so on. It's in the bike shop now having the bar-end shifters replaced with STI levers.

OK, it's an indulgence but there are worse things to spend my money on. Now if only I could shake this achilles tendonitis, I might be able to get some serious miles done…

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!

I probably shouldn't admit this…

…as I'm giving a lecture on New Media next week, but here goes.

I don't understand the internet, and how people use it. Today I've had 212 visitors so far. The numbers have been going up all week, from a previous respectable average of 60-70 hits per day. These new readers are mostly in Europe, with a hefty number from the US, Africa and Asia.

Are they all entranced by my ongoing battle with Paul Uppal, MP for Paul Uppal? Perhaps it's my love of lovelorn lo-fi, or photographs of trees and badly-lit sports halls, or lists of books I've incontinently purchased.

It isn't. Virtually every new visitor is reading a short note I scribbled about the sad and ironic death of Spencer King, inventor of the Range Rover who came to despise the uses to which his practical vehicle was put, and who was killed while out on his bike. Nobody's leaving comments, but they keep coming.

Seriously, why do you think this is?

I am, you may have gathered, a non-driver. I once crashed a Volvo 340 into the back of a rubbish truck at Keele University, but I was only going at 4 mph and somebody else was changing gear, so no damage was done. I'm not anti-vehicle though. Given the choice, I'd like a luxury train, this bike (please, send me some money, it's only £15,000) and this car and this car, though they'd either be given cold fusion engines (still entirely imaginary) or just sit in my driveway as works of art. Although I don't actually have a driveway either.

The Moulton Stainless Double Pylon would always be my first choice. I'd die under the wheels of a guffawing roadhog, but I'd die in considerable, shiny, style. I've lusted after very few things in my life, but this is the one. Oh, and an airship done out in luxury steampunk style.

This is why I love cycling. My only vehicle is a 1970s racing bike in poor condition.

At last, it's Monday

Good morning, and a happy Monday to you all. Saint Monday, by the way, was the icon invoked for people wanting to take Monday off. I'm taking the morning off - sort of. Going for a swim.

The weekend was full - building more bookcases with Neal on Friday, not getting my washing machine fixed (gits), going for a Thai meal with Neal in gratitude, an Open Day (farcical) and playing on Laura's Wii Fit and eating chocolate while I used her washing machine. Iustin very unkindly filmed me doing very badly on various balance games… I reclaimed my Moulton bike from my old house thanks to Gerry and Mark, then I spent the rest of Sunday finding new places to hide books, drinking from proper cups and saucers, and eating guinea fowl (delicious, by the way).

What did you get up to?

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.

I just need to unload

I've seen some strange things today (and yesterday).

The Waterstones notice above the cycling books reading 'Peddle Power' - I don't think it was a sophisticated joke about selling cycling books.

Also on cycling-related matters, I treated myself to new handlebar tape, lights, lock and pump today. I didn't choose the lights available for £423.99! Now, I love cycling gadgetry. My ultimate bike is the Moulton New Series Double Pylon (c. £10,000) though any Moulton would be heaven. I have a 196os Moulton F-Frame (not my bike pictured) which needs serious restoration by an expert before I can ride it and an old Viscount racer which Neal's done up for me. But. Almost £500 for a set of lights. That's not rational.

Outside the bike shop, a man listens to a radio pressed to his ear. A silent radio. They're coming, you know.

Finally, some etiquette advice. If you go into a local pub in the UK, you don't take the stool at the end of the bar. It belongs to someone called Bob, even if he's not there. Even if you've been coming to this pub for 10 years. Even if Bob's dead. It's his place. Likewise at the swimming pool, there's a system called queuing, which is a fair way of providing space according to the order in which people arrive. I've been swimming three times a week for a year now, so I'm not Bob, but I know who the Bobs are. They arrive early, queue and wait patiently, swim in a stately fashion and nobody gets in their way.

Today, we were all patiently waiting for the 11 o'clock shift. At 11.55, two women walk in and go straight to the front. They object to waiting until 11 and stay at the head of the queue. Then when they appear in the pool, they hog a lane to themselves. Which is fine, if they're going to use it. But they don't. I did my 44 lengths in the time they took to do 7, in between a lot of chatting and standing around in such a way that nobody else could use it. Selfish gits. Sorry, it's really annoyed me: public amenities should be used with regard for the needs of others - it's how community works.

Oh yes, the other weird thing. Listening to the posh bloke (Ed Stourton) on Radio 4's Today programme, playing and discussing Slayer. Apparently the band's very popular amongst US soldiers as a soundtrack to killing Iraqis.