To Harrow: nostalgia for method

from the just-like-the-good-old-days department
Long ago, in a former life, I would escape the cares of the surgery by going out, then writing about it afterwards. There were certain artistic rules: cycle travel was a given; the concentration and physical effort abolishing any lingering distress I might have had from the poorlies I had been salving at NHS-speed all afternoon.
Naturally I hoped the concert, or art show, or talk, or date, or party would be amusing and enjoyable, or at least interesting. If the event was public, and I liked it, I would often write a review on my then blog. On the principle that if you can't say something nice, best say nothing at all, I gave few, if any, negative reviews. But there was always the bike ride. And sometimes only the bike ride.

I was single then, but a family man now. Just sometimes I look up from the trough of our three squares per day, and think "I was free once, just to ride out for adventure in the night, just for the sensation, and the pleasure, and the boasting of it afterwards to my special secret friend the internet, and now look at me, making the porridge, and telling the boy to put his shoes on half-a-dozen times so we can walk slowly up the damn road to creche." Getting going again is essential for health reasons: my kilometrage has been approaching zero some weeks for too long, and one of my new year's resolutions was definitely to get out on the bike more.
First of course, I needed a bike. Happily I have found a nice one, a 'seventies-era Holdsworth road frame with Campag bits. It's just a tad oversized, but I have oversized male relatives to pass it to when I'm done with it in a couple of months, and with rack, mudguards, lock and lights fitted it's a handy winter machine.
And my second resolution was to scorn the purist and jump the train if the timetable demanded it. And so all the parts were in place for adventure. I first encountered Philip Lee at show on the South Bank with Siobhan, eons ago, before the move to France. He was doing his thing—pouring potter's slip from a large tray on the gallery floor over his nude body, slowly, over an hour. It was a big group show—a St. Martin's degree show?—and hundreds of people were coming and going as he slowly transformed himself into a clay-covered gargoyle. But I'd happened to arrive just as he was starting the show, and so I stayed throughout, and complimented him on the work after, and he's been sending me emails to his private views ever since. My move to France has meant it has always been necessary to send my regrets, but I've always remembered his work. It was cool.
And here was the day, and there was my bike. And there was the sunshine over Sussex's pleasant valley. I sent off the job to Thibaut. Alexandra cancelled our lunch. Martin was safely in the crêche. Time to go. First, I had to fit my cleats on my new shoes. A short run to the shops had taught me that I cannot ever go back to toeclips. It's bad enough getting used to riding on the left again, and the general mania, ignorance and carelessness of Ingerland's motorists, and lots of unfamiliar road territory, without having to look down to see if your foot's trapped the toestrap. And I've been needing a new pair of cycling shoes for a while now. I pulled off the tab on the sole of the show, and screwed on the cleats. Whenever I've done this before, I've always been making an exact copy of the position of the cleat on the old shoes, so this is the first time I've had to do it from scratch for more than... fifteen years, I reckon. Blimey.
The sun is still shining as I pack my bag. I wear my summer jacket, but I pack the winter one. I have a few tools and the pump, some Golden Syrup cake for bonk rations, a bottle of water, my notebook and pen, a camera, maps, all in a lovely new Ortlieb. Riches.
I eat a partially premasticated egg sandwich. I drink some water. Now it is time to go. The plan is to ride as slowly as possible to Hayward's Heath, then skip on the train to London, and find my way to Harrow aka bleedin' Wales, for its extremely northerly and westerly relation to more civilised parts of town, for the cyclist at any rate.
I unlock the bike. It looks OK. I think about for a moment, then I put the bag on the right side so its reflector will be on the offside for following traffic, and jut out for a slight illusion of width, and get going. There is a little downhill immediately. As I turn the pedals for the first time at the bottom of the slope, I realise I am going to have to stop and adjust the 3mm Allen bolt on the bottom clip of the Ortlieb to stop it brushing my heel each turn of the pedals.
This I do. In the sun. It is very pleasant and effortless. Afterwards the pannier attaches very firmly. I decide to tweak the stem bolt while I'm at it. It wouldn't move the other day, but I left a bit of lube sinking in, and Lo! It turns. I drop the bars a couple of cm and straighten them, and things are much better.
In another couple of hundred metres I meet Stanley heading north on his bike, so we stop for a little chat. We need to book him a week in advance apparently, such is his oppressive work schedule. He heads off to his society meeting, and I decide to raise the saddle another 12mm. This rocks. Very comfy now, and legs turning effortlessly, there is now no excuse for not fulfilling the plan.
Hemmed in as the campus is by the delightful A27 (Noisy all day! And all night!), there are little cycle crevices of escape, and one of these led me to the foot of the road to Ditchling, and up and over I went.
It is very steep, and I am carrying a few kilos that by rights should be a pig's, and it was a new bike, with unfamiliar gear ratios, but there was that nice wee ring on the triple that I specified, and there was me, twiddling up a valley wall that felt like 45°, but perhaps was about 1 in 10.
I quickly remembered why I emigrated. English drivers are weird round cyclists. If the road is clear the other direction, they'll overtake you properly, going wide. If it's not, they just barge past with inches to spare, causing both the cyclist (me) and the driver of the vehicle coming in the opposite direction intense alarm. The longer the tail of traffic behind the leading motorist, the hairier and more ignorant (in the sense of ignore-ant) each successive overtaking manoeuvre gets. They just don't know how to drive properly, because if they did, they would slow down, and wait for the good moment to overtake, like they do in France.
There was a Stop/Go at the top, and a crew were lopping overhanging branches with chainsaws on sticks. This was good to see, as were the sweeping lines of seedling green curving off through the chalky soil to approach infinity. I did not pause for a moment at the top, but plunged down, taking the lane to prevent my pursuers from cutting me up, and braking rather cautiously for the curves, which were unfamiliar, and potentially still gritwashed by melting snow products from last week's extravaganza.
Then it is flat, and the houses cost a million and are sold by Rudyard Kiplard and other Country Life estates agents, and the post office is in a half-timbered building that hasn't just retained its original features: it is the original feature.
I saw one too many country casuals striding out to Range Rover on gravelled drive in battered Barbour, and I know one should not yield to visual prejudices, but, let's face it, almost certainly tossers.
Hayward's Heath came all too soon. The very helpful ticket agent proffered me a route sheet for the train without being asked, and I accepted all her advice with a slightly cheeky "I am in your hands madam. And a very pleasant sensation it is indeed." This made her laugh, and her younger colleague blush, so that was a result.
My problems set in at Olympia, where the connecting train from Clapham filled up so alarmingly with suited corporate warriors, none of whom, I inferred, particularly wanted my oily chain and muddy mudguards pressed against the lower half of their immaculately clad bodies.
So I got off. Well, I was north of the river: how much further could it be? My knowledge of west London is sketchy indeed, and once I get beyond Harlesden it is non-existant. I managed to find my way from Olympia to Shepherd's Bush, by creating a parallel route to the rail line I had just left and spotting Goldfinger's Trellick Tower off in the distance. Through the straitened squares of North Kensington, where every basement is a luxury kitchen, even if the view from the oak refectory table is to the shoes of passers-by about three metres away. I even recognised my crossing point at the Regent's Canal! Now I was getting somewhere. But also it was 1730h and every motorist in London had had the same idea as I: of heading north and west and out and away from the grimy city where pale, slack faces look ill and tired, and cocky city boys strut and fret, and every shop window offers international phone cards, crap sweets, and maybe some dusty fruit, up the hill through Freyant Country Park, where the queues of traffic are so long and so tedious (if you are not overtaking them all on a bike) that the drivers drift and weave and you think "Are they drunk?" and sure enough they're texting on their mobile phones. I made a few choice remarks as I passed (Dude! You're driving. Pay attention!)
I tried quite hard to buy an A-Z. But newsagents and garages yielded nothing but helpful directions, and even the offer of a lift, which I declined. They are car oriented in these parts, and now in the dark I was contending with two lanes of impatient motorists in each direction, who showed little mercy or consideration for the cyclist, and I thought "You're well off your manor my son," and cursed the unforgiving, harsh road environment for cyclists, and congratulated myself on my prolonged absence from this scene.
At last a kind gentlemen outside a tattoo parlour said, "University of Westminster? Second right and walk through the tube station." And he was right. I found some bike racks and walked up to the door of the gallery, to be greeted by a lady in piebald pinks whose poems, handwritten on coloured paper, were attached on a rack down the front of her suit. This is the clothes sense of frontal lobe disinhibition, but she welcomed me nicely, and I told her I had come to see the show, which pleased her, and I passed security and into a bright light hall with a side gallery, and serious, clever, animated people, and best of all (for there were more than 30k in my legs, and very little lunch in my stomach)... A BANQUET. My kind of show, definitely.
I weary (~0200h, 31/01/13). Coming up in Part II--paintings, sculpture, a show. Images thereof, and annotations.
Update (0122h: 01/02/13) Part II is on flickr, here The brevity of the images' comment boxes is in many ways a relief. (Getting late again, remember Balzac, whose death at 51 was surely not unconnected with his work habits).

Chemical warfare against the people

How unpleasant it is to be tear gassed! Our familiar route home along the banks of the river Erdre looked as nice as ever late on Saturday afternoon, but the air stung your cheeks and eyes. Shoppers and families were going about their business. The anti-airport demo, which we had caught up with late, approached the Prefecture, and reportedly someone threw a stone, injuring an unfortunate police officer. The police then started spraying the crowd with water cannon. At this, the crowd, some thousands strong in the gathering dusk, gave a very angry roar. It is a sound I have heard before only in the context of a football match. It is the sound you hear when the home striker, through on goal, with the ball at his feet, is hacked down by a desperate defender on the edge of the box. This is not a sound that any politician wishes to hear at the gates of the palace.
Whether the CS gas was mixed into the water cannon, or grenades were launched separately I do not know--we, toddler in hand, were already on our way home at the first sign of trouble. Nonetheless an unpleasant burning sensation pursued us home up the quay. I don't know what the regular folks standing at the tramstop made of all this: we were particularly sorry for a mother with a baby in a pushchair and a toddler walking alongside who could not leave the area quickly. Doubtless a thousand such stories were told last night.
Does the French government really intend to gas its way to building this damned airport, whose construction flies in the face of all reason? Shame on them! As for the stone-thrower: I trust you are being well paid by your criminal bosses to try to divide a reasonable political movement. Or perhaps you are merely an idiot.

Update: Apparently the sequence of events was as follows: some demonstrators tried to climb into the grounds of the Prefecture. The police then used the water cannon on them. Stones were then thrown at the water cannon operator. The police then let off a tear gas grenade. Tsk tsk!

Hawk? Handsaw? Who knows?

I do like living in France. Adopting the mental pose of a curious anthropologist studying in wonderment the hidden codes of the natives is a remarkable aid to sanity. When things don't seem to be going my way, I relax and content myself with noting the difference in our assumptions. Culture is, after all, just a convention of shared madnesses. Vive la difference!
But this relaxed attitude slips a little when I contemplate the issue of the proposed airport at Notre-Dame des Landes near Nantes. To recap: there is already a prize-winning airport 8k south-west of the city (and 500m from a tram terminus). Currently serving 3 million passengers/year, it is nowhere near its maximum capacity, which is estimated to be 7 million passengers/year. Airbus has a plant next to the existing airport that employs 2000 people, relies on its runway for deliveries, and has stated it does NOT want the move.
The alleged "public utility" study for the compulsory purchase of the land was flawed. The rail link to the proposed airport from Nantes was counted as a benefit of the scheme, but its cost was not counted, as revealed by the independent CE Delft 2011 study.
The IMF calculates that the price of oil will double in the next 10 years. 34% of the cost of an air ticket is the fuel costs. Low cost air travel is about to become a thing of the past. Wild air industry claims for traffic growth are simple lies.
Air travel, and especially short-haul air travel generates twenty-nine times more carbon emissions/kilometre than rail. Nantes-London is already possible in less than five hours by TGV. You can get a TGV direct to Charles De Gaulle airport from Nantes if you simply must fly long-haul.
The deal with the multinational corporation Vinci hands them a €250m. public subsidy—then gives them exclusive operating rights for 55 years: a public-private partnership of the most craven kind.
So while the mainstream media here would like portray the opposition to the airport as violent anarchists and tree-huggers, in fact there is every reason to oppose the airport across the entire political spectrum, for the most conservative of reasons.
In short: we don't want to buy a white elephant, while destroying a rather green and pleasant part of France in the process.
The environmental arguments against the airport are well-rehearsed. In particular it should be noted that the wetlands at the site serve to replenish the aquifers on which all Nantes residents depend for drinking and bathing. That the study of this vital issue should be fixed to give the right answer by the powers-that-be is beyond contemptible.
Whenever you see local government proposals that fly in the face of reason, as this monstrous proposal so evidently does, it is necessary to look behind the stated positions of all the players and analyse the actual reasons for their actions.
Local government is all about maximising land values. The prevailing wind in Nantes is from the west, which means that flights landing at the existing airport at Bougenais usually pass over south-central Nantes. Noise levels in such parts of town are such that residential development in this zone is inhibited. As anyone brought up watching Scooby-Doo knows, evil property developers are always behind any supernatural phenomena. It is probably the case here as well. Doubtless, large sums of money have been staked on the change of land use, both to the south of Nantes and around Notre-Dame Des Landes. If I were a French airport protester, I'd be doing a little Qui bono? detective work with the land registries and the family holdings of the players involved.
I have also heard various theories that the new proposed airport is so vast because it is being secretly conceived as a massive airplane park in the event of some global crisis. This seems somewhat far-fetched: there are lots of places drier and warmer than Nantes in winter to store rustable technology. Nor do I agree that there is any sort of military imperative to building Bagram 2 north of the Loire to dominate the north west of France. Aircraft couldn't care less if the Loire is in the way of anything!
As for the safety argument—that it is not safe to have planes overflying the city—which, inbelievably, is used by the proponents of the airport here as a serious element in their propaganda, well, it's ludicrous. The aviation industry is rightly proud of its safety record: it has to be, because if crashes were not vanishingly rare, no-one would buy a ticket, so no-one would be paying to fly. And as a former resident of London, over which planes destined for Heathrow pass every sixty seconds from 0600h to 2300h every day of the week; well, frankly, it is pitiful. Whether there is any truth in the story that air traffic controllers are being told to route traffic over the city centre to bolster the case for the new airport, I do not know. It would be beyond all reason if true. Certainly the pilots do not agree that the current airport is particularly dangerous.
The arguments about job creation are also false: any airport jobs in the region already exist. Moving them across town doesn't increase their number: that would require increased traffic, and as we have already seen, the growth of the past cannot continue. Some jobs may even be lost if Airbus decide to cut their losses and consolidate their operations elsewhere, as they could easily do in Toulouse and St. Nazaire. If you want to spread a half a billion euro public subsidy around the construction industry, spend it on improving the energy efficiency of homes and businesses, which would create a lot more jobs, and make everyone better off in the long run.
It is true that where you see dairy farming you see agriculture in the doldrums, at the nadir of imagination of food production, but it is the time-honoured tradition in these parts, and I'm the last man to ask for a reduction in his cheese ration. But if there is a glut of dairy produce, this is an argument for supporting imaginative small producers, not 2000 hectares of new concrete. The occupiers at Notre-Dame des Landes have already shown the way on this with minimal investment. Imagine the beautiful and diverse rural landscape that could be created with only the tiniest sliver of the money the taxpayer is currently committed to giving Vinci.
I have some sympathy for the poor policemen who are being asked to do the dirty job of kicking out the occupiers, the foot soldiers for the corrupt corporate interests outlined above. They must examine their consciences. Honorable servants of law and order in the republic must surely satisfy themselves that justice has been done in the most rational and impartial manner, and in the interests of the people—so how they can execute this duty with satisfaction, having made even the most cursory scrutiny of the issues I do not know. Surely instead they should be calling their anti-corruption colleagues to investigate?


Ce texte est aussi disponible en français ici: http://velofou.blogspot.fr/2012/11/sur-la-distinction-fine-du-faucon-et.html

Notes:
This article was first published at 1645h, 15 November 2012
The safety paragraph and a few other minor revisions and links were added at 0645h, 16 November 2012

Copying: CC0: copy away! Credit and links always appreciated, as would be news of any translations.

Inspiration: credit must go to France24 who pretend to run a comment system on their articles. Their refusal to publish an abbreviated 1500 character comment along the lines of this article was the kick up the backside I needed to get on with getting this out myself.

My comment for their site read: "In your haste to paint the opponents of the proposed airport as violent anarchists, you omit a critique of the arguments for its claimed necessity: 0) Nantes already has a prize-winning airport. It is nowhere near its maximum capacity, estimated to be 7 million passengers/year. Airbus has a plant next to the existing airport that employs 2000 people, relies on its runway for deliveries, and has stated it does NOT want the move! 1) The alleged "public utility" study for the compulsory purchase of the land was flawed. The rail link to the proposed airport to Nantes was counted as a benefit of the scheme, but its cost was not counted, as revealed by an independent 2011 study. 2) The IMF calculates that the price of kerosene will double in the next 10 years. 34% of the cost of an air ticket is the fuel costs. Low cost air travel is about to become a thing of the past. Wild air industry claims for traffic growth are simple lies. 3) Air travel, and especially short-haul air travel generates thirty times more carbon emissions/kilometre than rail. Nantes-London is already possible in less than five hours by TGV. You can get a TGV direct to Charles De Gaulle airport from Nantes if you must fly long-haul. 4) The deal with the multinational corporation Vinci hands them a €250m. public subsidy——then gives them exclusive operating rights for 55 years: a public-private partnership of the most craven kind. Saying NON! is a no-brainer for prudent taxpayers and tree-huggers alike!"

If you're going to fix it, fix it proper

Froome looks back at Wiggins on the final ascent of the 17th stage of the 2012 Tour de France. (Photo: Bernard Papon/L'Equipe)

It's a family trait to have difficulty throwing away newspapers, but the debris from this year's study of the Tour De France is littering my office, and it's got to go. But before it hits the archive, I thought I'd capture what for me was the most telling image of this year's Tour: of Froome looking over his shoulder at a spent Bradley Wiggins on the last mountain stage, and discovering that he, Froome, could have won it. Only team orders prevented this outcome in Paris.

Now, such phenomena are very much a part of the fascination of the Tour: road cycling is fundamentally a team sport. But it also leaves the whiff of corruption and backroom fixes. When Wiggins held the peloton when Cadel Evans punctured, L'Equipe was quick to praise Wiggins for his so English fair play ; but there's also another sporting saying from over the channel that is equally important, and it is: "May the best man win!" The sad thing about this year's Tour (again!) is we're not sure that he did.

Still, it didn't stop me growing a pair of sideburns in hommage to Wiggins' achievement: anyone capable of a podium place in Paris is a mighty hero, and Wiggins is the first Englishman to pull it off. Bravo!

pruning the tweetstream

I do like Twitter, but the number I'm following had crept up to almost three hundred. Inevitably at this level attentional scotomata will occur, so merely as a matter of survival, I've been trying to cut  down the number of tweets I receive.
This evening it occurred to me that if you've got more than 2000 followers, you've got enough attention already, and if you do something really great, it'll doubtless be retweeted my way. And after all, you should really save your love for those that can love you back.

Pruned tweetstream: unfollow all with >2000 followers (honourable exceptions: @wikileaks, @DalaiLama, @Twips2, some locals) #we'llsee

— Juliuz Beezer (@JuliuzBeezer) July 13, 2012

So farewell then George Monbiot, William Gibson, David Graeber, Moxie Marlinspike, Schuyler Erle, Kutiman, Tim Berners-Lee, Andy Schleck, Fiona Godlee, Richard Smith, Biella Coleman, James Boyle, Cory Doctorow, SpaceHijackers, Jeremy Hardy, MadeUpStats, GuardianStyleGuide, Irvine Welsh, Teju Cole, Jakob Appelbaum, UbuWeb, Translation Guy, Democracy Fail, John Thackara, Petra Boynton, Jon Udell, Rue89, Peter Tatchell, LGBTScotland, SchNEWS, and Alain De Botton.
A pang of regret at no longer being able to keep up with all of you: this list will serve as a reminder should this rather drastic purge result in a dull sense of loss.

On not shooting your stockbroker

If Attila the Stockbroker were to listen to today's Democracy Now! his response is easy to predict:"HANG THE GOLDMEN BY THEIR SACHS!"
— David Rovics (@drovics) July 9, 2012

 I've only ever seen David Rovics perform once—at a squat Vortex gig in Stoke Newington c. 2005. It was a interesting night for many reasons, and so I've followed him since, as you do on Web 2.0. A while back he shouted out online for someone to read his memoire, and so I volunteered. He was kind enough to say that my comments on the manuscript were "the best, most useful feedback i've ever gotten on anything" which was a nice compliment. He also turns out some thoughtful blog posts.
All this throat clearing is a warmup for saying: "Artists: please do not promote violence! There are enough criminal idiots in the world without you joining in!" By idly proposing actions no sober person could agree were just, such blustering makes it less likely that effective action against the bankers, such as prosecutions for fraud, will take place. Much the same phenomena was observed with prosecutions over the Iraq War and torture. Comment threads were ridden with so-called anti-war commenters whose favourite lines were (if they had their way they'd) "string 'em up" or "send 'em to the Hague," the utter plonkers. Bless! When laws have been broken there should be no need to summon the mob. To do so, is in fact complicit with inaction on such major injustices. The truly radical artist makes calm (and devastatingly accurate) calls for justice to be done.
Hmm. Whatever happened to that Chilcot Inquiry then? Iraq War all quietly forgotten? Not in Cabinet Beezer it's not.

breakfast of champions

breakfast of champions
Originally uploaded by Julius Beezer

I didn't naturally use to be an early riser, but these days you'll quite often find me at my desk before 0600h. This is nice as my office faces south-east, and I can watch the dawn appear on the underside of the clouds through the French (natch) windows.
If I've got paid work on, I just get right on with it: the concentration and calm that come after natural awakening from an undisturbed night's sleep are precious indeed, as is the feeling of already having cracked out more than half a day's work by eight o'clock.
If I'm not working for bucks, I'm usually on general internet patrol, curating links for my various interests, gathered through my RSS and Twitter feeds.
This morning was a bit different though. As part of my apprentissage en français, I have resolved to read every word of this year's Tour de France coverage in L'Equipe. Even with Thursday's strike, which blocked distribution of almost all of the national press, including L'Equipe, I was already a little behind.