SV-Wolf's Bike Blog

[MZ33]

As for the other item you mentioned - the transponder thingy, I have no idea what this might be or even what it might look like

If you think the permit tag is a bad idea, the transponder thingy would probably put you in (a) hospital--either for hypertension or unrelenting apoplexy. It would be more expensive to purchase and maintain, and they bill your credit card automatically when your account runs low. I think what would really send you over the edge is the fact that it also keeps record of every time you run through its scanner.

[sv-wolf]

Hi MZ

It seems the UK government is way behind the US on this issue - though probably not for long. We are promised all kinds of electronic marvels in the next few years that could turn these islands into a police state (er I mean a surveillance paradise) before you know it.

Thanks Wrider. Eventually, I will have to go back to the dealers with this, but for now I can live with it.

That's an interesting question about what gear I have it in when I blip it. I'm trying to think back. Usually it is in neutral while it is warming up, but sometimes I get impatient, so I clutch in and put it into first ready to go. Not sure. I will have to check it out.

[jstark47]

Goodness! A bit touchy about your speed cameras, aren't you?? Jolly good, I must remember to stir that pot more often!!

How come I ended up with a bike as eccentric as this?

[Edit:] Don't answer that, Mr Stark. You've already disgraced yourself enough for one day.

Much too easy a shot - wouldn't be sporting to take it.....

[sv-wolf]

Goodness! A bit touchy about your speed cameras, aren't you?? Jolly good, I must remember to stir that pot more often!!

How come I ended up with a bike as eccentric as this?

[Edit:] Don't answer that, Mr Stark. You've already disgraced yourself enough for one day.

Much too easy a shot - wouldn't be sporting to take it.....

LOL

If you had to put up with thousands of the damn things all over the place you'd be a mite touchy too, I warrant.

I must tell you Mr Stark that nothing you could do to stir this issue would ever be anything like as irratating as the little yellow beasts themselves.



( )

[jstark47]

There's a site I was browsing earlier today, forgot to bookmark it, full of pictures of the things done for in dozens of ways by creative Brits....... quite inspiring to see civil disobedience is alive and well in the mother country!!

[sv-wolf]

As for the other item you mentioned - the transponder thingy, I have no idea what this might be or even what it might look like

If you think the permit tag is a bad idea, the transponder thingy would probably put you in (a) hospital--either for hypertension or unrelenting apoplexy. It would be more expensive to purchase and maintain, and they bill your credit card automatically when your account runs low. I think what would really send you over the edge is the fact that it also keeps record of every time you run through its scanner.

Fortunately, I don't much suffer from apoplexy of that kind, MZ, 'cos I'm protected by scepticism. ( ) I've no expectations that politicians are in any way interested in my welfare (or so-called liberties) so I am rarely surprised by anything they do. And that goes for the whole of the state apparatus too. Did you see the recent media reports of unprovoked police violence against protesters in London during the recent G20 summit? This is a joke. It happens all the time. It's just occasionally, like now, that reports leak out to the media and everyone thinks how terrible it is. But this kind of thing is only shocking if you believe that it is rare or that coercion (the use of force and violence) isn't an integral part of the system.

That doesn't mean of course that I'm indifferent to injustice or the limitations placed on personal freedoms, or that I'm content with the legal and police systems we live under. Speed cameras, CCTV, identity cards, SMART passports and the proposal to bug our registration plates all make life more stressful and confining for people- even for those of us who do little to bring ourselves to the attention of the criminal justice system. I don't plan on mugging anyone - but do I enjoy being under survelillance whenever I go into town? No I don't. Do I enjoy having my personal information recorded on government databases whenever I travel? No I don't. Do I trust governments to use this technology for entirely benign social purposes? You have to be kidding; right!

I used to find riding up to Leicestershire to see a friend, a fairly pleasant and relaxing business. Now it is punctuated by the necessity of remembering where all the speed cameras are en route, and then checking my speed to make sure I'm not drifting over the limit. I also have to constantly keep my eyes peeled for radar vans on the bridges or in lay-bys etc. This is a small thing, but it makes a big difference to the way I feel about the journey and how I relate to my political environment in general.

And I get quite cynical when I read that there is no unambiguous evidence to show that speed cameras do anything to lower the accident rate (and may even increase it in some instances) while on the other hand, there is plenty of evidence to show that speed cameras line the pockets very nicely of the police partnerships that used to run them. (I'm not sure who is responsible for running them any more.)

Tolling people electronically is one more way not just of taxing their road use but of tracking their movements as well.

I remember twenty years ago visiting Boris, a friend of mine in London. Boris is second generation Ukranian. Shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union his uncle arrived from Dnieperpetrovsk to come and live with the family. Boris told me that the first thing his uncle had asked on arrival was when and where he needed to go and register with the police. On being told that he didn't need to register and that he was at liberty to go anywhere he wanted, he was dumbfounded. Things have changed in the UK since then. You still don't need to register with the police, of course (so long as you arrive here legally) but there is now a different reason for this. These days they know more or less know where you are anyway - or will soon.

Reading through my own words, I realise that I sound uncomfortably paranoid about all this. In fact, I don't often give this sort of thing much thought. There are many more examples of the destructive consequences of power across the globe to worry too much about relatively minor things like speed cameras and transponders. In my world view, state surveillance is just one outgrowth of a highly divided and unequal society and there are much more fundamental issues than this at stake.

I guess, if you believe the state exists to look after the interests of the community as a whole, then you might have some reason for getting apoplectic over these things. As I don't, I just feel antagonised by them. And cynical. That in itself is a consequence of unfreedom.

[sv-wolf]

There's a site I was browsing earlier today, forgot to bookmark it, full of pictures of the things done for in dozens of ways by creative Brits....... quite inspiring to see civil disobedience is alive and well in the mother country!!

We have an illegal organisation here called MAD (Motorists Against Detection). They have a campaign of blowing up speed cameras or setting fire to them. Quite a lot of cameras have been 'rendered ineffective' in this way. You see their blackened stumps by the side of the road from time to time.

A more typically British way of handling the speed camera nuisance is to choose a camera, wait until it is dark and there is no-one about, then run a speeding motorcycle up the wrong side of the road towards it. In the meantime several 'protestors' line up in front of it and present their naked backsides waiting for it to flash.

We are creative like that. (Though I'm told a few beers generally helps)

[sv-wolf]

London Trip

On Easter Saturday afternoon I rode the Daytona down into Central London. I crossed the river by Waterloo Bridge and then trekked to Clapham where I was attending a conference. Later that evening, I set out again through the interminable South London sprawl, escaping at last into the Surrey countryside. After that, I headed on down to Dorking where I was visiting a friend.

Over time, I’ve gradually found riding in London less intimidating, but it has never become second nature to me. I don’t ride there often enough. I don’t often ride in big cities at all. I treat London as a challenge: something to shake me out of my routine. London riding is, of course, not so different from any other kind of riding. You need the same skills as you do anywhere else. It’s just that you need them more often and more intensively, and you have to be constantly alert. (I’ve been working on this alertness thing for nearly forty years.)

So, what was I saying…?

It's a sunny afternoon, and caning the bike down the A1(M) towards the city is a joy. It’s always a joy when the traffic is moving. The A1(M) is a six-lane highway, busy and fast at this time of day. But there is something about it I've never quite understood. Riding northwards up the A1(M) from Stevenage is a bore. Riding south has me instantly firing on all cylinders. Whatever it is, there’s a special buzz about this southern stretch as it drives relentlessly onwards towards the capital.

As I leave Stevenage, my mind is focused intently on the mobile world ahead. Heavy traffic weaves gently back and forth across the lanes. The Daytona’s engine and high-level sports can roar in my ears: the vibrations run familiarly up my spine. Hazily, I'm aware of the Hertfordshire countryside sliping by. It's bland and peaceful. Wide open fields and patches of woodland shift through my peripheral vision. It’s a cooling envelope tamping down the mental heat of committed riding. I nod automatically to other bikers, sharing the moment’s experience with them.

For ten miles out of Stevenage, the A1(M) runs straight ahead, cresting one tree-lined hill after another. My thoughts run straight ahead with the road. They have one trajectory and one target. And I feel the single-minded glee of unlimited forward motion. I ride the fast outer lane, hard, maintaining a subtle relationship with the car in front and with the car behind.

Beyond Welwyn the road begins to weave back and forth. The speed doesn’t slacken, but I become more aware of the bike, my single point of stillness and security in this world of speed and engine noise. My legs relax completely now and I hunker down over her, seeking that detached sensation of freedom. It's me and the Daytona. In close relation. In the here and now. Playing the road.

The A1(M) dips down into the echoing tin box of the Hatfield tunnel and I drop my speed. I get more sociable with the other vehicles but stay in the outer lane. Engine noise, reverberating off the walls, and the conveyor-belt-like movement of traffic in the tunnel amplify the sense of remorseless energy. The road emerges once more into daylight, zips along for several miles, crosses the M25 and then narrows suddenly as it makes its final approach to the city. The lanes narrow too. ‘End of Motorway’ signs appear and, in a few more yards, the A1(M) is stripped of its status. Now’ it’s the plain ol’ A1 again , the good ‘n’ homely Great North Road of former years, its route down into the capital unchanged for centuries.

I’m coming up to the Barnet roundabout, and start to look out for the first signs that all this unfettered riding is about to come to a sudden, awkward halt. The signs come swiftly: Speed camera – queue warning – congestion. Cars and vans jockey into position on the lanes ahead and I am on the brakes almost for the first time since leaving Stevenage. Traffic bunches and slows to a full stop.

Beyond the roundabout the road is still good; speed is still unrestricted, but the riding is subtly different. There's a tightness to the traffic, now. It’s more aggressive, less predictable. And there’s a new feeling of challenge, even threat. I’m quickly on the alert and begin automatically to second-guess what other road users will do. But I notice that the countryside has suddenly vanished and the concrete, steel and brick business of Greater London has begun. I use everything the bike has to make best use of the remaining unrestricted road.

True city riding doesn’t begin for another couple of miles – not until you turn left at Apex Corner roundabout. A thigh-high concrete wall siphons you off suddenly and insistently from the non-metropolitan traffic and with a shocking abruptness jams you into a knot of near stationary vehicles. It’s like stepping through C S Lewis’s wardrobe and finding yourself in Narnia. But whereas Narnia offered forgiveness and redemption, London traffic offers only noise, fumes, chaos and adrenalin. I change gear mentally and readjust to London ways and London manners. I prepare for London streets, London air, and of course, London busses.

I try to filter, but in traffic packed as tightly as this it's useless. In my attempt, I wobble and almost lose the bike. I nearly grind my bars into the bodywork of a neighbouring 4X4. Nearly! Sod that for a game of soldiers! I think. The thought seems oddly loud inside my helmet. I sit in the queue waiting to get onto the next roundabout, thinking fretfully of the road beyond which is moderately free. I'm moving again just as the first speed restriction sign appears: 50mph.

A few minutes later I'm positioning myself in the right-hand lane, ready for Fiveways Corner where the dirty, concrete M1 roars grimly overhead and the A1 reaches a decisive parting of ways. It’s bear left here into The City (the city of London), or right on the A41 into the West End (the city of Westminster). Neither route is particularly appealing, but the A41 is a bit less dreary and slightly faster for my present needs. Once I'm beyond the overpass the speed limit drops rapidly to 40 and then to 30 mph. Hendon slips past, then Cricklewood; traffic closes up; and finally I’m inching along in the universal urban crawl.

I’ve ridden into Central London many times, but this was to be the first occasion I had crossed the capital from side to side - that’s about 25 miles as the crow flies: 25 miles of defensive/aggressive stop-go tedium. This thought has simultaneously geared me up for a challenge and filled me with a sense of dismay. As it turns out, this is to be a surprisingly easy journey. Being Easter bank holiday weekend - four days of freedom – Londoners, it seems, had taken advantage of the good weather to bugger off elsewhere. Traffic is light – by local standards. I rattle past the endless lines of tall, red-brick, suburban houses that are North London’s special feature. I travel the urban hell of the Finchly Road in record time, fight my way round the dog leg at Swiss Cottage, filter down towards Lords cricket ground, and then play a safe game up the Marylebone and Euston Roads. Later, running down Woburn and Tavistock, I have an almost-encounter with a taxi; but a miss is a miss in London and nothing that anyone loses any sweat about.

Kingsway is a mite congested. The cold, imperial canyons of The Aldwych echo to the sound of honking horns as I try confusedly to find something resembling a lane amid a sea of traffic (making a right prat of myself in the process). But all in all, it is a pretty easy ride. By the time I turn down to the river at Somerset House, cross the bridge and hit the intractable ugliness of Waterloo I am positively enjoying myself. I even negotiate the Elephant and Castle with only the tiniest sense of mental dislocation. The ride down the long, long, utterly straight A3 to Clapham is only marred by a burning need to go for a pee.

I have to say something about The Elephant and Castle in all this. (This is a district of London, in case you were in any doubt.) If you can ride the Elephant and keep up your biker's grin, then you are a London pro, and no mistake! But I'm not, and it used to give me the jitters - seriously. The Elephant is a product of geography and unregulated free enterprise. A large loop in the river Thames funnels all southbound road and rail traffic from Westminster and The City into this confined space, creating a bottleneck of immense proportions. Four major railway lines out of Charing Cross, Waterloo, Cannon Street and Blackfriars stations force their way into it. Major road linkages from six separate bridge-crossings all converge onto the Elephant, like the spokes of a wheel. Right at the heart of this traffic 'system' lie two huge multi-laned roundabouts of Byzantine complexity. Buildings and concrete walls rise, one behind the other, upon their central reservations, so that you cannot see across them to the other side. Good signage, so desperately needed here, is as careless and perfunctory as anywhere else in these islands. The gyratory system conveys no sense of symmetry or order. It is surrounded by a chaotic jumble of high rise office and flat blocks, shopping malls, walls, road signs, ramps, crossings, railings, bike racks, bollards, hoardings, planters, traffic islands, cars and people. Side-roads come at you from every direction. Streets widen and contract abruptly for no apparent reason. The area defies any attempt to organise it into coherence. It’s a waking nightmare.

But most disorienting of all: the Elephant is pug ugly: a nineteen-sixties modernist hell grafted onto a Victorian commercial district surrounded by slums. Built originally in the Walworth marshes, the Elephant seems never to have taken well to being prettified. Generations of city planners have successively added and subtracted features in a vain effort to make it attractive. During the Blitz, German bombs continued the subtraction and speeded up the process of change and renewal. Now, even as I write, the borough authorities are drawing up plans once again to regenerate it. So far, they have succeeded only in creating a modern Babylon.

To a simple bloke from the Home Counties who can never quite remember where he’s going in London, which lane he should be in or which turning he should take, it’s all very incomprehensible and confusing. Long familiarity with the area, though, has quietened much of the anxiety I used to feel and replaced it with a kind of urban kamikaze confidence which gets me through, despite the muted screams from every instinct of self-preservation in my body.

On Easter Saturday, I set out hopefully onto the first of these roundabouts, and head for the middle lane. A car coming up from behind me disagrees with my choice of route and forces me to reconsider. I wobble to my left, then back again, hardly noticing the inconvenience. My adrenalin levels remain remarkably stable as I fail to recognise my turning and have to circumnavigate the whole damn thing again, most of the time stuck in the wrong lane thanks to the density and determination of other traffic. A nifty bit of lane hopping at the last moment saves me from having to give yet another repeat performance. The second roundabout is clear and I manage to negotiate it without major incident but am nevertheless grateful to find my way finally onto Newington Butts and the Kennington Road. From here on, my sole problem is the tedium of traffic lights which wink red at me every hundred yards - and the road manners of an extremely thuggish bus driver at Stockwell.

London is wholly untroubled by the orderly Renaissance spirit of many other European or American cities which are laid out on a grid system. London is a medieval morality tale of wiggly streets and lanes and alleys which bump into one another at drunken angles. Its ground plan is so dense that sometimes you can find yourself in deep shade even in the middle of the afternoon and on a still, warm summer’s day the air can smell like it has been breathed just one too many times. But don’t get me wrong. London is a fantastic place and I love it. Really! I just wouldn’t want to live there.

It's a whimisical city. Many of its grand scenes and elaborate vistas are marred by an awkward topography, a misproportioned spire or a kink in the road. But that is something I like about this city. It doesn’t quite overwhelm you. As hard as it aspires to imperial grandeur it it always forced to compromise with a dominant spirit of pragmatism and making-do. London is generally quite satisfied with being ‘good enough’. More than anywhere else, perhaps, it is imbued with a truly capitalistic spirit of private enterprise. Grand schemes to develop it have often foundered on the simple logic of private property. This means that the cold and pompous shows of power, so remorselessly elaborated in some other capital cities, have never quite spoiled London's quirkyness.

Because of this piecemeal, unplanned quality, you can never take London for granted. You never know what you are going to find round the next corner. The city constantly changes as you pass through it. Sometimes, if I get fed up with my direct route along the Euston Road, full of jazzy, glass buildings, din and traffic fumes, I turn off up a side road and find myself instantly in another world. The peace and silence of so many London streets, even those just yards from a major thoroughfare is astonishing.

On my last trip to the capital I had a particularly enjoyable ride. I’m following it in memory, now. I've just turned off the Euston Road near St Pancras town hall and I’m travelling down what could be a narrow village street. The only sign of life is a bloke wearing gardening gloves and pushing a wheelbarrow over the pavement slabs. I take a right turn, then a left and find myself in a quiet Georgian crescent with a public rose garden. There's a tennis court in the middle of it. The crescent is shaded with tall, old plane trees. Two teenagers are whacking a ball backwards and forwards across the net. No one else is around.

Forced left by traffic signs I now find myself riding through a lively little community. Pleasant mid-Victorian terraces surround an extraordinary and surprisingly successful 1960s development (the Brunswick Estate) that looks like a glass and concrete version of the hanging gardens of Babylon (Baby Lon/don as William Blake called it). Kids are playing happily on the wide walkways. Adults are lounging at pavement cafés. There are small bookshops and grocers shops, a newsagent and a community centre. All seems upbeat despite the economic downturn. Someone is looking at posters in front of the local arts cinema.

Round the next corner the noise hits me again. I’m suddenly back in tourist-land in the heart of Bloomsbury. Russell Square with its great central park looms suddenly ahead, overlooked by the gigantic and ornately decorated, Hotel Russell, a high-Victorian confection of carved brown stonework. I head west, skirting the square, with its fountains and plane trees - all grown magnificent with age. (‘London planes’ were the only trees hardy enough to withstand the city-centre pollution in the bad old days of pea-soupers.) I turn off into what I hope is a side street, but find myself riding beside the back entrance of the British Museum whose doorway is being fed with coachloads of tourists.

Over the years, I’ve found that there is no end to London’s surprises. There are more sunny, delicate or beautiful cities in the world no doubt but none, I'm sure, that can be more rewarding to explore. At any corner you might come across a sunken garden, a pretty Georgian mews, the dramatic weirdness of a Hawksmoor church, some gigantic gilded monument or you’ll suddenly have to deal with a chaotic intersection with six or seven streams of traffic all threatening to come at you at once.

And there are many Londons. The London the tourist sees is, of course, everywhere. All you need is plenty of cash - for there are an almost unlimited number of Londoners who will gladly relieve you of it. Cosmopolitan London lives in the faces of passers-by, in the restaurants and ethnic shops. You can hear it in the hundred-and-one languages being spoken in the streets and on the Underground. Local London is much harder to find for the casual visitor. It's hidden-away in back street pubs and betting offices. The centre is exciting for visitors, but for long-term residents it offers no peace of mind and they rarely come here. The square mile of The City is a ghost town outside office hours.

London has a much darker face as well, and one that tourists will catch only glimpses of. For all its great parks and open spaces, it can be a narrow, dirty city. It’s a lonely, uncaring place if you are unfortunate enough to be poor or homeless or to be at the mercy of its thoughtless ways. Even Londoners say it is a hard place to live. And Londoners are a notoriously hard lot. Life in London goes on behind closed doors. The streets are often unloved.

By night London has a dismal air. It is not like many 24-hour European and American cities. It closes down round about midnight, and rapidly becomes almost deserted. The only human warmth and light you'll see after that will be passing you by on the all-night busses. When I lived right in the city centre, I used to walk through the streets for hours with a friend, just watching and listening. These expeditions started one night when we had locked ourselves out of our flat, but it was such an intriguing experience that we began to do it a couple of times a month. Sometimes we would walk all night, often ending up listening to the barrow boys unloading at Borough Market at five in the morning. Now, if I let my thoughts run free over the city, they always return nocturnal images of stony, desolate streets; dark, wretched holes into which the homeless have crawled; and cold damp air.

The restlessness and agitation of the city get into me when I come down here on the bike. Filtering in London is not just convenient: it's compulsive, excessive. I’m driven to overtake lines of cars whenever and wherever possible – as does everyone else on a motorcyle. It becomes an addictive need and resistance is impossible. I stop only when forced to by obstructions like traffic islands, traffic lights or unco-operative vehicles. Filtering becomes a life and death battle with other motorists to get ahead, get to the front, take advantage, make progress. In most other places where I ride, even when filtering, I feel like I am part of the traffic flow. In London there is no traffic flow, just a spirit of competition.

I was getting tired as I reached the end of the first part of my journey that Easter Saturday afternoon. I felt relief as I dipped down under the railway bridge onto Clapham High Street, and rolled the last few hundred yards to my destination. I parked and chained the bike in the usual place next to a scooter that had toppled over and bashed into its neighbour.

I'd come down to Clapham as a delegate at a socialist conference. The agenda was pretty routine but I always enjoy the atmosphere and it is often a relief to be among people who speak the same political language as I do.

You have to be just a tiny bit eccentric to be a socialist at this moment in history. (I’m talking about proper socialism, not the pale-pink, weak-kneed reforms that go by that name in the US.) When the most radical thing British working people do these days is to dress up in black balaclavas and go out and set fire to speed cameras, a socialist philosophy doesn’t often win you a lot of brownie points. It can be quite lonely, at times. To be a socialist you have to be prepared to plod on regardless in the very uncertain belief that your efforts will some day be of use to someone.

So why do we do it? I think most socialists hold onto their convictions only because they realise that the sole alternative is to close their eyes, stop thinking and accept what is, for them, the unacceptable. Personally, I couldn’t do that. Well, to be honest, I have tried once or twice. There have been moments in my life when I’ve got fed up with plodding and tried to let myself slip into line with capitalism’s brain-rinsing ideological system, but it hasn’t worked. It has usually not been long before some new human debacle has come along and, from my point of view, shocked some sense back into me.

So, I was looking forward to a couple of days in the company of some eccentric and quite exceptional people and, as it turned out, I also had the pleasure of meeting Alice, the new delegate from the South-West regional branch whom I couldn’t take my eyes off for more than a few seconds at a time. Motions 35 to 42 passed me by completely...

And that’s where I’m going to leave it for now. As much as I enjoy writing up this stuff I’m pretty sure most people will have abandoned it long before they get to this point. I’d meant for this to be s short one and then got carried away. Oh well! I'll finish off later. Sorry Wrider (but somebody did ask for another account of a trip)

[Edit, OK, OK - to be continued ]

[Wrider]

Hey now, I like reading your blogs. You're truly an amazing writer, as I get sucked into seeing the imagery and feeling what you're feeling when I read these posts! Well, aside from when I have to go back and figure out what kinda language you're speaking and how it translates to English

[noodlenoggin]

Absolutely! Richard, you have to be one of the best writers in recent memory -- on par with any professional that I've read. You have the knack, sir.