A Writing Exercise

Write what you know. What do I know? I made a list as follows:

1)      Cycling (only the actual moving part, not the mechanical aspects like repairing, or health and fitness and nutrition)
2)      Dogs (but again, only the experiential aspects of owning one – obligation, responsibility, tidying up etc)
3)      Babies (again with the tidying up and also general pulling-of-faces-to-entertain – although have just become proficient at swing-pushing)
4)      Pub football talk (no real understanding, just amassing huge amounts of random trivia and statistics to bedazzle other pundits with similar goals)
5)      Reading (often without understanding – inhabiting a role as a consumer of books)
6)      There is no number 6. Number 6 submerged beneath the rising tide of bleakness.

As exercises go I have had more success losing weight with Suzanne Somers’ Thighmaster ™.

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Rage, rage against the piling up of shite.

It’s Local Election Day in Cardiff, and on my way out with the dog, I am greeted by the smiling faces of the Liberal Democrats’ Plasnewydd Focus Team. I had naively believed that I might go one day without being harassed by the Liberal Democrats, but obviously today was not going to be that day. Nonetheless, it was the final straw for me and my paper-thin patience. A little history, and some contemporaneous comment, would be useful right about now I think. The Lib Dems have led the council in Cardiff since 2004. My sources in the Welsh Conservative Party have indicated that they are about to take a complete pasting in today’s local election, with Labour way out in front, likely to come close to the 50 members they had back in 1999. In my opinion, this is a justified spanking. And yet I am unable to justify this on a political level. According to some of the bombastic nonsense that comes through my door unbidden every single day of the week and often on weekends too, ...

There's a bit missing...

Bike sheds and urinal ettiquette

I noticed something today, something that I had previously ignored, on locking up my practical (in every sense except cost-effective) bicycle this morning in the bike shed provided by my place of work. When I entered the enclosure (see diagram 1 below), I realised that nearly every other bike hoop had been taken, so I started thinking about which space it would be most proper to appropriate for myself. Normally, at 8.15am this is a mere formality, as I park in a nearly empty bike shed at the far end, directly underneath the security camera. Today, I'd dropped off le petit monstre at his nursery (that is not an euphemism for anything before you begin) and so was a few minutes later than is usual, hence the rather replete shed. What am I doing? I thought to myself, this is not a toilet, just take the first space available. Diagram 1. Our shed has a nifty half-pipe style roof. Great for nearly keeping the weather out, bad for bashing helmets...

There's a bit missing...

Stay angry, people.

Ed's dead, baby. Borrowed, with thanks, from the Independent I was unsure whether or not to write a post, post-election, on my post-election blues. For the most part, this was because I'm sure that political commentators, bloggers, activists, and people with far more understanding of the political landscape and the effect that the latest result would have on the lives of those for whom the spectre of a Tory government was only a bad dream, a shade that haunted at night when the lights burned low and the wolves howled at the door, had already used all of the adjectives and metaphors of despair in ways far more eloquent than anything I might come up with. I find however that I must say something, even if it doesn't help matters, to explain to myself more than anyone else why it is I feel so miserable. I will probably have no right to bemoan a Conservative government - my country still has a socialist leader, in theory if not in practice - particularly as I did very littl...

There's a bit missing...

From The Centrifuge

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