Various notes

[nineveh_uk]

I have only three weeks left at work until Christmas. This is both good and bad...

My colleague won't be in the office today because she is in Stockholm for a long weekend. A romantic long weekend with her new boyfriend, who is a barrister. Am I envious? Too right I am!

To the cyclist turning right last night on Woodstock Road in dark clothes, no bike lights or reflectors, and wearing a helmet: O HAI U BE DOIN SAFETY RONG!

Went to WNO's Barber of Seville last night at the New Theatre. Fun production and good singing, but the theatre decoration makes it feel like one is sitting inside a pink and red jukebox, and the leg-room in the balcony - ow! Ruddigore at the Barbican tomorrow.

My picowrimo production for the month has hit 8000! I am resolved to keep going and try and finish the story this time. Of course, it would help if it didn't just seem to be betting longer. For a story I think of as "Potterverse/Wimsey mpreg Corsican crossover (with bonus valet-rogering" we aren't yet anywhere near either mpreg or Corsica. Or rogering.

Comments

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

You lived in Cambridge for a while, surely you are used to this? I'm generally more shocked if everyone has lights...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm never surprised when people (particularly student-aged, as this person was) don't have lights. No lights, but wearing a helmet, though, strikes me as a rather odd choice. Did she think it was a magic Helmet of Invulnerability?

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely, and traffic is held at bay by the Power of Cycling Smugness...

[tree_and_leaf]

Maybe her batteries had gone flat and she decided to chance it? Still stupid, though...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Possibly - but not an excuse you'd get away with in a car. (I'm not anti-bike, though I am too risk-averse to cycle in Oxford as the facilities aren't adequate, I was just baffled by the no lights but a helmet approach. You wouldn't think it was OK to smoke a cigarette in a petrol station because you were wearing a seatbelt. Though some people probably do.)

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

You also get people wearing helmets which aren't actually done up...I think this is the oddest.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That does seem bizarre.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Or helmets done up very loosely, looking like they're going to slip off the back of the head at any minute. It drives me mad.

[tree_and_leaf]

Oh, I cycle too, and I think the police are quite right to fine people for riding without lights.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Somebody had bought them a helmet but either not lights or not a perpetual supply of batteries?

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I didn't see any reflectors on it, either, but that might have been because there was no passing car.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I used to keep mine in my bag for that reason. A nuisance, though (can't you now get ones that lock on?). But it was the helmet that boggled me - lightless people are not uncommon, but if someone is going to the trouble of a helmet, I'd haev thought they'd want lights.

(Is that you on Snowheads, by the way?)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

People will pinch anything. F*ckers.

(Curious! Someone else obviously likes your name (I hadn't read posts by them, just seen the logged-in note)! Which is why I'm Nineveh_uk on LJ, because someone had bagged plain Nineveh.)

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

It does seem a bit odd, most of the eejits I see around here with no lights don't wear helmets either. Could be worse though - a friend of mine was saying someone she knows went out riding her horse in the dark the other day, with a dog too, on country lanes with no lighting, with no lights and wearing no reflexive gear... If she's got a death wish, all well and good, but I felt very sorry for the poor horse and dog, and for any motorists they met. Amazingly they all returned in one piece though.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I think my perspective is partly informed by the fact that I see helmets as a fundamentally second-line defence (I never wore one myself when I cycled, partly because once I've got one on I can't take it off and appear in public until I've washed my hair, which renders anything bar sports cycling pointless, and in any case I don't cycle at the moment), so it was weird to see someone in that, but not in the lights, which I'd regard as a definite first-line.

The horse-rider is pretty impressively irresponsible.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on helmets, I'm not a fan myself. I prefer to avoid the threat of being hit by a car and cycle on tracks/off road only, which largely negates the need for them in my opinion* - I've never fallen off a bike head first in my life!

*Well, the way I do it anyway - the Boy used to do competition downhill cycling and needed all the protective gear he could get for that!

Impressively irresponsible - I thought so too. I was quite boggled when she told me.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I loved cycling in Denmark, where it was all off-road on city routes, and various facilities outside the built-up areas - though the consciousness that car drivers were really alert to bikes was really one of the big things for me. I never saw the sort of behaviour by drivers that is routine on my journey to work and makes me feel unsafe cycling here.

[alitheapipkin.livejournal.com]

From the behaviour I see around here, and the number of times the Boy has been clipped by drivers* (mostly buses who apparently think they are bikes and like to use the cycle lane on the main road just down from my flat), no helmet in the world is going to make me feel safe cycling on the roads around here :( I would love to live somewhere with proper cycle lanes and considerate drivers!


*Fortunately not resulting in serious injury

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

I am a great advocate of helmets after being knocked off my bike (by another cyclist) when I was twelve. My knees and an elbow were thoroughly messy, but my head (which hit the ground first) was completely fine. The size of the scrape on the helmet was impressive!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I know that lot of people swear by them, but as for me they effectively prohibit my wearing a bike, I'd hate to see them compulsary. And I assume that though you like your helmet, you don't routinely cycle in elbow protectors?

Ed. That said, I think there are arguments for the use of helmets is by children, whose accidents tend to happen at lower speed and don't involve cars, and if I had a child I'd probably want her to wear one.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

No, but I've skinned my knees and elbows enough to be less afraid of it than of landing on my head, and judging by my ability to fall off/under/into things I think (for me at least) it is a good idea... I just remember the horrible feeling of flying over the handlebars and skidding along on my head, and wouldn't feel confident cycling (on the roads in particular) without a helmet.

There are lots of arguments for and against. I don't say they should be made compulsary, but they've certainly saved me from being hurt at least once. Although the second time was when I walked into a door frame. Yes, I am that clumsy.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I can't take it off and appear in public until I've washed my hair
Are you the person this was designed for? (http://www.hovding.com/)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm the person this (http://www.odense.dk/web4/cyklisternesby/cycle%20city%20odense/~/media/SUBSITES%20OG%20WEBLIGHT/Cykelby/Find%20vej/Cykelstikort%20OK%20ny%202009.ashx) is designed for :-)

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

Aren't we all. There is a reason why I have hardly cycled at all since coming back from Finland. UK cycling just looks horrific by comparison.

People do cycle round here on single carriageway rural roads with no verges where the cars that do appear are doing 70 mph round blind bends but I don't fancy it myself.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

The highway code backs you up on that one. You 'should' wear a helmet but 'must' have white front and red rear lights.

Actually, I've just noticed that my bike doesn't exactly meet regulations at the moment - I have a white front reflector (optional) but the red rear one (another 'must') must have fallen off at some point. I'm pretty sure I used to have one but I don't seem to have one now. I wonder whether the reflective bits of my rear light count.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Lights are a legal requirement, they protect the rider, and they also protect everyone else. Helmets are a personal choice that benefit the rider only, and not a legal requirement.

Reflectors do have a tendency to fall off. It is annoying.

[custardpringle.livejournal.com]

"Potterverse/Wimsey mpreg Corsican crossover (with bonus valet-rogering"

Every time you mention this I become both a little more interested and a little more frightened to see the end product.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I am having enormous fun writing it, but even I have to admit that it is going to be a bit odd!

[custardpringle.livejournal.com]

Just a bit, perhaps!

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

I am very jealous of trips to the theatre and must plan some (other than Alice in Wonderland for age 5+).

Your picowrimo progress is terrifying.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

You must! Possibly when in the SE on half-term weekends...

I am feeling very pleased with my pico progress. I do wish in a way that the longest story I've ever written was a more serious subject*, but I am telling myself that I am learning about handling OCs and so on, and so it is valuable in that sense.

*Or at least didn't involve mpreg.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

10-19 February? There must be something on somewhere.

It is all good practice. And you can always leave out the mpreg in the next one...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Crazy for You (Gershwin) is on in London - not cheap, but looks like it would be great fun.

At the moment it feels like the next one has to be the story of Bunter's secret sock-fetish.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

To the cyclist turning right last night on Woodstock Road in dark clothes, no bike lights or reflectors, and wearing a helmet: O HAI U BE DOIN SAFETY RONG!

On my way home from work a few nights ago, I came face-to-face with a young man cycling along the pavement, minus lights or anything. Yes, cycling on the road without lights isn't very safe, but knocking down pedestrians who fail to see you in the dark also isn't great. (Also, hello; I hope you don't mind my friending you.)

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

AARGH! Stop giving the rest of us a bad name, idiot boy! I don't 100% object to cycling on pavements, especially where children are concerned, and those bits of road that are particularly barking, which are many of them. But at least do it considerately.

Friend away!

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

I am pleased you enjoyed at least some elements of Barber. What is laughingly called "legroom" is just one of the reasons I (at 6' 1.5") don't go to the theatre more often.