Work

Hannah and Oliver at our house

We have recovered wood turned out by householders when Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) were doing a Skip-it Don't Tip-it day in Putney Avenue.

It was full of staples, bolts and nails but once cut up, and stacked, burned well. On eBay Lin discovered a palette manufacturer not far from us who regularly give away kiln dried off-cuts. A few days ago, a neighbour messaged me 'I'm having a dead tree removed. Collect?' Contractors loaded parts of her felled tree into the borrowed HHH van. I stacked them in front of the house.

This afternoon, just back from Gloucestershire, I began cutting up the lesser girths with an electric chain-saw.

This timber, though from a poplar already dead, is too young to split. In a year it may be ready.
Earlier in the - around 8.00 this morning - Lin and I were in bed in Rock Cottage, in Lydbrook. The phone rang. Dot, her mum, was calling from her kitchen floor in Cannock.
"I've fallen in the kitchen, and I can't wake Arthur"
Lin dialled 999
"I'm 100 miles away in Gloucestershire" she told the operator.
"Is your mother bleeding?"
"I don't know I'm a hundred miles..."
"How does she look?"
The ambulance was on its way to Cannock in 15 minutes. Lin rang Wilf, next door, to unlock the front door, so the crew wouldn't have to break in. Then Arthur was awake. Lin was patched to the ambulance dispatcher.

Lin on the phone to her mum, waiting at her home for an ambulance

"Mum may have broken her wrist or her arm. It's badly bruised. I'm going to collect dad and take him to the hospital. Mum doesn't half pick her times. I'll bring them home."
We'd been working on tidying up Rock Cottage. Enjoying seeing Lydbrook again. Making the place ready for the family to enjoy again after Martin and Sandra and their son Adam have done so much restoration since August 2014.

Traveller's Joy on the path up to Rock Cottage - looking over towards Courtfield

In an hour we were packed up, tidying and heading back to the Midlands, Oscar in the back, We ate a picnic in the car, mackerel pâté sandwiches from a brown bloomer; wedges of pork pie.
*** *** ***
Handsworth Helping Hands has slightly changed direction.  Gaelle Finley included my thoughts on the futility of doing the same thing over and over....

RUBBISH? A BIG LOCAL ISSUE
What’s abandoned and not abandoned tells much about local and global economies. Once upon a time it was worth it for sellers of bottled drinks to pay people (often children) to return empty bottles. It meant fewer soft drinks containers littering the streets. One of the things that strikes anyone collecting street waste is the sheer amount of alcohol being consumed in the area – not beer but liquors of every kind.
Right now far less discarded metal is collected from the street. Why all these fridges? Disposing of them is no longer free to householders. The manufacturers encourage consumers to change fridges more frequently. There’s money to be made from the metal innards of fridges, especially the copper coil in the motor. Now, that’s less likely to be the case, and though people are still dumping fridges, we find fewer ‘gutted’ ones. Why do we see far fewer discarded ovens or washing machines? Because suppliers at point of sale are throwing in disposal-of-your-old-model in return for delivery and installation, which entails plumbing for washers and wiring in direct for all but very small stoves. Fridges and freezers are just plugged in.
Why so many clothes and other soft materials left lying around clothes recycling bins? There’s a market for old clothes often discarded in good condition, and people just want free clothes for themselves and their families. Going through discarded clothes, people select what they want and leave the rest on the pavement.
In our area, not many people want wood. I have delivered wood cut by Railtrack maintenance workers to a wood-stove owner in Handsworth. I use such wood for our wood stove, but there are not many wood stoves around – getting ones efficient enough for accreditation in a smokeless zone tend to make gas cheaper.
We wonder at how much expensive baby equipment is either dumped or given to Handsworth Helping Hands (HHH) as donations. This stuff is not cheap, but even less well-off people like to pay for new things for a baby. We got second hand push chairs for our children but we met friends who are shocked we did this.
Birmingham City Council Fleet and Waste managers attribute the volume of dumped furniture – sofas, armchairs, beds, shelves, sideboards, wardrobes and other items made of chipboard and MDF – to the high turnover of tenancies and the tendency to buy furniture that doesn’t last long. When a new tenant arrives they also want to clear out everything in close contact with previous tenants. A lot of that ends up on pavements. We know that more of this should be paid for by landlords, but it’s an extra too many seek to avoid.
Rarer items thrown in the street, which HHH has encountered, are the big polystyrene blocks that cannabis growers have used to insulate their growing spaces, serving also to hide their activities from the heat sensor in the police helicopter.
Very large accumulations of black bags – a familiar sight in the whole inner ring of the city – suggest the waste disposal methods of tenants a landlord doesn’t wish to be recorded for tax, so that their premises get no, or far too few, wheelie bins.
Add to these issues the vast messiness of trade waste and the low attention given to regulating trade waste licences in our area and you have another major source of rubbish.
We can no longer expect to leave out metal to be collected by the scrap men who roam around HHH street cleaning events – quote from an article in the Guardian last November ‘the bottom dropped out of the recyclable materials market. The global economic downturn means that the global response to “any old UK iron?” is a big fat “no” as scrap metal reputedly plummets from £175 a tonne to a mere £25, plastic prices falling by a reputed £100 a tonne and copper by a huge £1,500 a tonne’. 

Nick, Mike (Chair), Flea (cat) and Lin (Treasurer) ~ HHH committee (photo: Simon, Secretary)

Members of our voluntary group – Handsworth Helping Hands – enjoy what they do. We live in Handsworth. We care about Handsworth. We work hard and we work as a team. We are even used to thinking that we, our partners and residents, are having a real impact in the area. But more and more we’ve had to recognise that we find ourselves doing the same street clean-ups over and over. We are vexed at how many people seem impervious to change; at how our neighbourhood seems stuck in a rut, remaining an obstinate and notorious mess.  For example, HHH carries out one of its regular ‘Skip-it Don’t Tip-it Days’ in one road, with partners and residents. Afterwards things looks great – for a while. We’re all very pleased – for a while. A job well done – for a while. A few days later, we find the same street that looked briefly as a street ought to look, is again as bad as before people got stuck in cleaning it up.

Picking up Bogan's 12m³ skip - hire charge £240 paid for by Neighbourhood Funds 

The same fly-tipping and littering has occurred again, in the same places we picked it up a few days before. We are a small group – 7 of us. We take pride in our local reputation, but we aren’t regulators. We have no authority. We see the same rubbish reappearing and we collect some if it. We resort to the repetitive and often futile labour of reporting it to an overloaded local council.  Knowing all this, experiencing it over three years, the HHH committee decided a few weeks ago to experiment with a shift in approach. We won a grant of £2140 from Birmingham Community Safety Partnership ‘Mobilising Communities Small Grants Fund’.  We selected four avenues – Putney, Brackley, Poplar and Crompton, each with fewer than 20 households, and have named it the ‘4 Avenues Project’. We will strive to engage people in these small places.
We continue to involve our Neighbourhood Office, Birchfield Residents’ Action Group, Midland Heart and Fleet & Waste, .....

Fleet & Waste bring sweeper and compactor truck to Putney Avenue

...but want to do things WITH rather than TO or FOR people. We are learning. So are residents. So, maybe, is everyone involved; learning together about the same intractable challenges that exist in longer streets, in larger areas, but with – just perhaps – a greater chance of doing something about them.
We would really like to balance the disproportionate emphasis on blaming feckless neighbours. There are such people, but just as with crime and health there is more to it. We need to continue to be hard on littering but harder on its causes.

Fish and chips break in Putney Avenue - Nick, Ruth, Oscar, Lin, John and Jimoh 

*** *** *** ***
Last week I donated blood for the 119th time. As a long term donor I'm allowed to continue after age 70, and as a volunteer for the Intervals Study, I'm giving blood more frequently. This time my appointment was 8 in the morning, dawn breaking ...

Cycling down Constitution Hill into Birmingham city centre

65 New Street - Blood donor centre is on the second floor

..On the way home on Constitution Hill I passed a clothes mannequins shop, including a dog mannequin - Tradelines. These give me an idea for a scarecrow on the allotment, especially as the shop has second hand models

** ** ** ** **
I offered to child-mind Oliver, instead of waiting for Amy to ask us as a favour. Oliver is just at the stage that ought to go on forever, where he's always asking "Why?" about things and I just love inventing the answers I don't know. We were strolling with Oscar down Gibson Road. The old car has been slowly bio-degrading for as long as we've lived nearby.

Gibson Road ~ Oscar and Oliver walking in Handsworth

Looking at this venerable Vauxhall Cresta Oscar asked "Why?"
"It is owned by the man in that house. Fifty years ago when he was a young man, about your age, he was given that car by his mum who had bought it second hand from the Queen. He was so excited he decided to drive it round the world via America, Russia, South America, China, across Greece to England where the engine exploded, so he bought a house and parked his beloved car in the drive..." "Why?"
"Because he'd driven so far and the car had looked after him he loved it. He could not even think of getting rid of it. So there it's stood for near 60 years!"
"Why?"
We walk on. Later I met up with Amy and Liz and Henry James and Hannah at One Stop. We had a meal at Wetherspoons.

Oliver, Liz with Henry James, Amy and Hannah at The Arthur Robertson (JD Wetherspoon), Perry Barr

...after which Oliver and I took a train from Perry Barr into New Street where I had a coffee and Oliver a choc ice-cream cone...

Oliver in Grand Central, Birmingham

...after which I cycled and walked  - Oliver sat on my cycle rack, Oscar in the handlebar basket - down to Fazeley Street where we slipped down an alleyway onto the Grand Union Canal...

 ...we headed through dark tunnels, under bridges and up locks to the junction at Aston Top Lock with the Birmingham & Fazeley. We followed that all the way to Spaghetti Junction where the canal turned east towards Minworth and Amy's home

Just east of Spaghetti Junction on the Birmingham & Fazeley Canal

...Oliver rode, walked and sometimes ran up and down the slopes of locks and hump bridges where a siding canal joins the main, keeping up a running conversation. We stopped at the KFC on Kingsbury Road backing onto the towpath - orange juice and a chicken leg for Oliver and corn-on-the-cob for me - then on in the gathering dusk to where after Minworth locks the towpath deteriorates and we were picking our way through puddles and mud until we came to Minworth Green Bridge hardly a 100 yards from Oliver's home on Summer Lane.
"You realise we've covered nearly 8 miles. All the way from the city centre to your house!"
We were hardly a minute waiting outside the house when Liz turned up, and soon after that Guy and Amy and, a good bit later. Linda. We had an Indian take-away.

****** ******
Dora Metallinos, on the Ano Korakiana website, praises the city of Corfu, το Πόλη - which seems so far away at the moment....

Πόλη, Κέρκυρα 
Γράφει ο/η Δώρα Μεταλληνού   01.02.16

Κάτω απ' αυτό το κομμάτι ουρανού είδα το πρώτο φως!Μέσα σε χρώματα,ευωδιέςκαι μνήμες!Τύχη μεγάλη το θεωρώ! Ευωδιάζει η ομορφιά εδώ και καθρεφτίζαται παντού. Μέσα στα σοκάκια περπάτησα τους πρώτους εφηβικούς έρωτες, Με μπλε ποδιά και άσπρο γιακαδάκι αγνάντευα κομμάτια σύννεφου...Οσο μου επέτρεπε το κενό ανάμεσα στα στενά σοκάκια. Πάνω στους υγρούς τοίχους,μουσκεμένα αποτυπώματαοι ολοφυρμοί ανθρώπων που γνώρισαν τη βία των κατακτητών. Κι ήταν πολλόι....Σε κάθε γωνιά οι σφραγίδες τους πάνω στα μνημεία. Αναμφίβολα υψιλής αισθητικής.  Ρούχα να κρέμονται σαν σε ικρίωμα, από τη μια μεριά στην άλλη στα καντούνια ,να περιμένουν να στεγνώσουν κάτω από όσες αχτίδες μπορούσαν να τρυπωσουν. Και εμείς να γελάμε με τα κρεμασμένα εσώρουχα των κυράδων. Σκάλες ξύλινες ατέλειωτες να οδηγούν μέσα στα σύννεφα! Ετριζαν καθώς τις ανεβοκατεβαίναμε κι έκαναν τη φαντασία μου να οργιάζει. Κυράδες με κρινολίνα και ομπρελίνα, κύριοι με ''μπαουλίνα'' και καπέλο ,να κοσμούν τους δρόμους.Κι εκεί σε κάποια τραπεζάκια του "Λιστόν"  η διανόηση να συσκέπτεται με αγωνία για τη γλώσσα και την ελευθερία. Και οι χωριάτες στη λαική ,εικόνα κι αυτή ,στου νου μου τα κιτάπια, να κάνει εμφανή την κοινωνική διαφορά. Να φαντάζομαι πάντα την αδικία του να μη μπορούν να σεριανίσουν στο δρόμο των ''ευγενών''. Και οι δυο κορφές της πόλης να αγκαλιάζουν σα δυο μεγάλες φτερούγες τους κατοίκους και τα σπίτια. Αιώνες ζωής πέρασαν από πάνω της...Η υγρασία, η αδιαφορία, η έκπτωση των αξιών,η αλλάγή προτεραιοτήτων, μόνιμο επίχρεισμα, έφερε τη φθορά στους τοίχους, στα μνημεία, στους ανθρώπους...  Οξειδώθηκαν όλα....Μόνο μια παρηκμασμένη αρχοντιά έμεινε..Μια εκπνοή μεγαλείου.... Η περηφάνεια των κτηρίων μόνο,που στέκουν περήφανα,ευθυτενή.....μα τραυματισμένα....  On the Liston on my Brompton (photo: Linda Baddeley)

In the classroom

It's my good fortune to meet people people who've worked in jobs in local government on counters in council offices, as well as people who've worked as dog wardens and park rangers and all the innumerable services employed or commissioned by local government , as well as chief executives and senior civil servants in ministries of state. Today and for the next two days I'm on campus at Priorsfield in Edgbaston tutoring and lecturing our Oversight and Scrutiny event working with officers from Birmingham, Allerdale, Leeds, Barnsley, Copeland, North Norfolk, Wiltshire... and my colleague Andrew Coulson, cycling home around 5.30 pm.

And in Ano Korakiana there were end of term celebrations in the schoolyard and I recognise Natasha our neighbour in this picture from the village website.

Τέλος σχολικής χρονιάς 2009-10

Το τέλος και της φετινής σχολικής χρονιάς σφραγίστηκε από τη μαθητική γιορτή στο προαύλιο του Δημοτικού μας Σχολείου, που διοργανώθηκε χθες, κατά τις 7 το απόγευμα. Εκεί, στη μία πλευρά της αυλής, προς τον κήπο του Μαστραντώνη, είχε στηθεί από τις δασκάλες και τους μικρούς μαθητές το σκηνικό για τις απαγγελίες και τα σκετς....

The end of the school year is marked by a student celebration held at 7 pm yesterday in the courtyard of our Municipal School. A side yard - the garden of Mastrantonis - was set up by teachers and students as a setting for recitations and skits ..

* * * As I'm on Richard Pine's circulation list I got his LETTER FROM GREECE in the Irish Times:

Greeks rail against being urged to become more 'European'...Europe is divided east and west: the west cannot tolerate the indirectness, the obliqueness, of the eastern mind. And Greece is, definitively, the meeting-place of east and west, which is why it creates so much angst among those who are committed to the success of the European project. It isn’t so much the cost of living, as the cost of loving. The price of being Greek is the real cost of loving – and embodying – one’s country.

... and a friend's reaction:

I wholeheartily agree with this article. The Greeks must be who they are. It is what we love and hate about them. But, I wouldn't want them to be anything other than who they are, and I'm among those who would have them continue being fully Greek and not try to (God Forbid) homogenize them to become Westernised. They are a beautiful people in all their Greekness. Love X

And Lionel's reply to Richard:

Hello Richard. Your portrayal of a country beset by strife is flagrantly exaggerated. Sure, there have been demonstrations and strikes, but only in a few isolated cases have they been violent. There has been much discussion, but certainly all that I have met have voiced support, albeit sometimes reluctantly, for Papandreou and his measures. Such distortion serves to inflame a volatile situation and does nothing for Anglo-Greek relations. It also sabotages the European Union. Is that your intent? Incidentally, you did not mention that Greece ran efficiently under the Colonels! Regards, Lionel

** ** ** It sounds as if the deep sea oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico may be even worse...and it has attracted far greater attention than the harm done by the oil industry elsewhere - especially Nigeria's Ogoniland, but also in many other third world locations where our hunger for oil binds governments and multinationals. (see also 'death by car'... these 6 June '10 reflections on BP's CEO)

More rain

Had a meeting on campus and then took the train into New Street from where I cycled home in increasing rain. The towpath was a succession of puddles through which I splashed - the waveless surface of Birmingham Mainline corrugated and curved by gusting wind and sheeting rain. Back on the road gutters were awash. A motorist swerved from one long brown pond into another throwing up a bow-wave that broke behind me. I and my pannier were waterproofed but for my shoes and socks. Then came thunder. Water fell perpendicular from the overcast, bouncing off the tarmac, squirting from gutterpipes, weighing down trees, soaking foliage so thoroughly it could give no shelter, and increased until I was cycling through curtains of water. I travelled through the unslakeable urban landscape like a spaniel in a marsh - almost happy. It rained like this in Corfu one day last September. Poured for 10 hours as we lived on Summer Song while Corfu Yacht Yard cleaned and painted her hull. * * * e-mail from my friend in the Middle East:

Dear Simon Since I was a secondary school student, I was dreaming of the heavy rain of London. I like rain very much, especially when it mixes with the odour of soil. It reminds me of my childhood, my dreams, and my early mature ideas about the universe, the other sex and the unseen. Rain in London must be special, but so it used to be in Iraq. Now I am afraid that rain is only reminiscent of God's wrath, and the deterioration of the quality of our environment. My heart was beating and my feeling of the approach of the date when Birmingham will send me the offer was mixed with a devastating disappointment by the recent incidents that took place in Glasgow and London. My wife and I condemned the awful attempts of the terrorists to disturb the life in UK even before we were thinking of going there. Now our condemnation must be doubled. I really hate such ungrateful people who bite the hands that extend support, peace and love to them. Islam has nothing to do with those people. Political, cultural or religious positions must find more human and peaceful means to express themselves. Please, accept my apology on behalf of my culture and religion. I am aware that these incidents may complicate matters for me but this is not new to me. When I graduated from the Department of English in 1992, I ranked first among my colleagues. There was a cultural exchange programme running between Iraq and the UK at that time and all first rated students were awarded scholarships to the UK. My name was at the top of the list. But the UK diplomatic relations were suspended with Iraq when Saddam ordered the execution of a UK citizen from an Iranian origin who was accused of being a spy for the UK. The whole programme was cancelled and I lost the chance of studying in the UK. See how I am accustomed to mishaps. Today, I received a welcome note (brochure) sent by Birmingham University. Does this mean any progress in my application? Please, again accept my sincere apology and condemnation of what is happening in the UK these days. Best Regards ****

Dear xxxx I appreciate your generous intentions in offering apologies on behalf of your culture and religion but I simply cannot accept them. I could only consider accepting apologies for what has been happening if I felt there were some measure of blame or culpability that could be attached to you, your culture or your religion. I do not. My only concern was the possibility that the net of suspicion, being cast wider, would hinder your plans to study here after local circumstances have made it impossible, because of present dangers to you and your family, of continuing to serve your countrymen as an educationalist and academic. This is a misfortune that is outside my experience and anything I will continue to do as much as I can to mitigate and ease your transition to an academic position here. I don’t know if the welcome brochure means anything more than that you are in a queue whose existence is known to the university. On that score you should question xx xx. (I will ask him myself as well). Here the rain continues though we hear there is some probability of improvement by the weekend. My 90 year old mother in the Highlands of Scotland is in the middle of moving her possessions to a new house a few miles from the larger house that she decided to sell. I am impressed with the energy she’s bringing to this transition from a home she occupied for 40 years to a smaller bungalow. Luckily she has various loyal helpers to deal with the carrying and the storing and we will be going up to Scotland shortly to visit and see her settling in her new house. Tomorrow we have our annual “Classroom in the Park” http://www.flickr.com/photos/sibadd/336656503/ The above URL is of an earlier event before our local park was improved. Many schools arrive with hundreds of children to perform songs and dances and recitals and I am in charge of a stand which displays a history of the park, available to answer questions from teachers and children. I hope the rain is not too strong! Kind regards, Simon

* * * DEFRA NEWS RELEASE Ref: 201 /07 Date: 2 July 2007

Flood response efforts 'magnificent' says Benn Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, today reiterated the Government’s commitment to supporting communities affected by flooding in many parts of England. In a statement to Parliament Mr Benn paid tribute to the heroic efforts of the emergency services, local authorities, voluntary sector, military, and Environment Agency, describing their collective response as magnificent. With more heavy rain forecast for the coming weekend he encouraged householders and businesses to make use of the Environment Agency’s Floodline telephone number and website for advice. Mr Benn also took the opportunity to confirm an increased flood defence settlement in the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007...

Cycling the towpath - in distinguished company

My rainy route to work Originally uploaded by Sibad.

I can cycle to the University by joining the towpath of the Soho Loop off the Birmingham Mainline Canal where it runs parallel to Clissold Street in Hockley - a mile from home - and following it almost to the top of Farmer's Locks where I cross a bridge and take a right onto the Birmingham and Worcester Canal, passing the edge of the country's greatest waterway intersection, and heading westward to Edgbaston, leaving the canal a hundred yards or so further on from this picture and surfacing via the steps up to Somerset Road.
 * * *
Who cycles? Power and influence sometimes work best - for good or evil -when unseen to most of us. Do you know how many ministers, academics,barristers, surgeons, senior civil servants and other establishment figures are navigating our urban streets by bicycle? More than you might imagine. The car is increasingly the chariot of the masses and the object of proletarian desire. It therefore has a powerful resonance in a democracy which makes moves against this sacred artifact something best kept under the radar. Recall too that for a public figure to be associated with walking or cycling is to risk the inference that such ways of getting about are preferable to motoring. In other words to cycle or walk is not simply a choice it is frequently interpreted as a public political gesture. Any public figure who becomes associated with cycling or walking will be transferred within months or less to the ranks of the slightly odd or the amusingly eccentric with every public statement they make thereafter on any subject under the sun prefixed with the words like "the well known 'pedestrian'" or "the '(insert age) year old cycling enthusiast'". Even an obituary headline will contain some similar reminder of their distinctive association with their preferred way of getting from A to B. This is not a call to apathy, just a reminder that power is sometimes most effectively exercised behind the scenes or by quiet example. That said, Jeremy Paxman cycles the capital. "It is easily the quickest way around London, faster than bus, tube or taxi. You can predict precisely how long every journey will take, regardless of traffic jams, tube strikes or leaves on the line. It provides excellent exercise. It does not pollute the atmosphere. It does not clog up the streets." Vivienne Westwood regularly bicycles through the streets of London wearing a mad-looking pair of shoes from Balenciaga and Gilles Tapie's recent book of photographs of the dancer Sylvie Guillem shows she’s an urban cyclist. Eric Clapton collects and rides Italian road bikes while Bea Campbell wrote "In the context of debates about identity politics - are you gay or straight, nationalist or republican, British or English and so on - I would ask, 'Do you ride a bike?' I love everything about the machine - the sensation of the tyres on the road, the mobility - and I love the fact that you have this intimate relationship with the elements, and the landscape." Michelle Pfeiffer cycles. Madonna rides with Guy Ritchie and little Rocco and no doubt a procession of reluctant but well paid heavies. Robin Williams owns lots of road bikes and rides with his friend Lance Armstrong. Ex-Shadow Secretary of State Bernard Jenkin drives to his London home on Sunday evening and cycles the rest of the week: "...everywhere, every day - to Westminster, to meetings in the West End and the City, to the Albert Hall, to the Royal Opera House. Cycling offers a huge financial advantage and it keeps me fit." Des Lynam wrote in the Telegraph: “I decide on the spur of the moment to fly home...I see my loved ones and ride my bicycle in the fresh Sussex air.” Jarvis Cocker cycles in town. Jeff Banks and Paul Smith are avid cyclists and Smith's business has sponsored cycle teams. We may yet see them design proper day clothes for cycling in the city (:)). Sheryl Crow, a singer but also Lance Armstrong's girlfriend,rode close to 70 miles at the recent Ride for the Roses in Austin and speaks of writing a song about cycling. Jon Bon Jovi is a mountain biker sponsoring an MTB team and even though Jeremy Clarkson is rude about cyclists in general he and his wife keep fit on Raleigh Pioneers. "Don't listen to what I say, watch what I'm pedalling (?)" Grateful Dead rent studio space from Marin and their guitarist Bob Weir is a mountain biker, and often rides with mountain bike co-founding father, Gary Fisher. Weir said: "Bicycles are almost as good as guitars for meeting girls." Sir Rocco Forte took up cycling when his love of endurance sport led him to triathlons. Of all the sports he pursues cycling is "the thing I love best...I am addicted." John Kerry (remember him?) is a keen road cyclist, owning a Serotta Ottrott. God help me, even President Bush took up mountain biking in 2004 "Nothing compares to getting your heart rate up to 170-something, riding hard for an hour-twenty, getting off and not hurting, as opposed to 24 minutes of running, at the end of which I hurt. When you ride a bike and you get your heart rate up and you're out, after 30 or 40 minutes your mind tends to expand; it tends to relax." Yes well. That's one of the most coherent sequence of words I've ever heard from those lips. I've passed Jon Snow on his Dutch city bicycle near Trafalgar Square. He probably persuaded Paxman it was the best way to get around London. I've used Snow's advice about getting cool in the studio after a fast ride. Apply an ice cube to the temples and back of the neck. Snow says his "... whole day is built around meetings that can be achieved around bike rides. My contract actually offers me a free car from my home to my office and back, but I suppose I am addicted to cycling." Alexei Sayle may write about cars in the Independent but he commutes by bicycle and, with Jon Snow, is a customer of Condor Cycles along with Adam Woodyatt, Jill Halfpenny, Mick Jagger, and Chris Tarrant and wife who've bought a tandem. Retired Treasury mandarin Sir Steve Robson always rode to work and still gets off road in the Sussex Downs sometimes. Boris Johnson MP cycles to and from Parliament and has argued for cyclists being able to use mobile phones on the road as they only endanger themselves unlike drivers doing the same thing. The Prime Minister of Belgium, is a cyclist and a fan of cycle-sport. He said: "In politics, one can learn some things from cycling, such as how to have character and courage. Sometimes in politics there isn't enough of those things.” Lee Iacocca ("when you die, if you've got five real friends, then you've had a great life") former boss at Ford and then GM, invented the the SUV, repented and is now into electric bikes and rides his company's products. He said: "After 50 years in the auto business, I'm bringing you the future of transportation - and it's electric!" Kraftwerk's 1980s Tour de France album is a classic and they do other bicycle things though they are a bit reclusive, which brings me back to my original point. I agree that most of these people are celebs rather than people in government or the professions - but I would be undermining my case if I started on another list here. I though Belgian PM and a Conservative shadow minister would be OK though (:)), though I can't resist my favourite European politician, Romano Prodi, one of Italy's most successful post-war politicians, lives in Bologna and goes to work on his bicycle. In my v.small way, I never ever advocate cycling or walking in the lectures I give around the UK about local government, but in one corner of the room there's always a folding bicycle and when I submit my expenses there's always the reference to "20p a mile for the journeys I've done by cycle", and when I sign into hotels the space for a car number plate remains in-your-face blank, and some may even notice that for a 65 year old I look in rude health cutting quite a figure in the suited self that emerges from my wet wear on a rainy winter morning. My favourite famous cyclist is Emil Zola but he never went on about it. He fought for justice and wrote like an avenging angel - and happened to love cycling.