Plinth Happy

I am SO going to spend an hour on that plinth
The cutest thing might be simply to sit there with a placard:

This. Is. Not. Art

Now, would that be a protest?
Well, it would certainly wasting a once in a lifetime opportunity to show-off...

Introducing The Extraordinary Spectacle of Botogol-On-The-Plinth

Timetable of Events
(to be displayed on a large placard on the edge of the plinth)

• 10:00 Arrival of Botogol
• 10:02 The setting up of video cameras for the purposes of YouTube
  
• 10:05 Impersonation: Nelson On His Column
• 10:10 Moonwalking Demonstration
• 10:15 The Best of Botogol - Selected Readings from Green Ideas
• 10:16 Impersation: A Lion at the base of a Column
  
• 10:20 Short Extract from Paradise Lost, Book One
• 10:25 If you look closely you can see his ears wiggling
• 10:30 Repeated Bellowing Of "It's no fun" to a bewildered Crowd
• 10:35 Juggling Display (I can you know)
• 10:40 Ventilation of the Arm-Pits
  
• 10:42 Recitation of Shakespeare's Sonnet 116
• 10:45 A sit down for a nice cup of tea and a biscuit
• 10:50 Q&A
• 10:58 Farewell and Last Words
• 10:59 Bows to Tumultuous Applause
• 11:00 Refusal to Dismount from the Plinth
• 11:02 A Confrontation with Security Guard with ensuing
  
• 11:04 Comedy Chase-round-and-round-the-edge-of-plinth
• 11:05 Dramatic Fall on to Safety-Net
• 11:10 Humiliating Rescue from Same
• 11:15 Autograph Signing and DVD Sales

What's not to enjoy? If you would enjoy seeing the Botogol show vote, vote for Antony Gormley

Gormley's idea is clearly streets ahead of the others. (Yesterday I actually heard people talking about in the lift and, well, meercats, really...) Sadly though, I don't think he will win for the idea is just too scarily democratic - "I mean they could do anything".

My prediction: they'll turn it down on fabricated health and safety grounds and go for the conventional, low risk (and seriously, seriously dull) anti-Iraq War option instead.

Mind you, if they are looking for a good car..

Autumn Heat

furnace by milomingo.

Lately in London it has been unseasonably warm; and I have mostly been running for trains.

It's also been September. September is the month that SouthWest trains turn off the air-conditioning and switch on the heating.

Consequently, I have been very hot; and my my suit doesn't even have ventilated armpit holes, either, so when I say "hot", your mental picture should be "looks like he was caught outdoors in a hurricane".

Wednesday was hottest. I was in a hurry; I forget why; and I emerged from the underground at Waterloo just 87 seconds before the train left, which in the madcap world inhabited by Southwest trains means 27 seconds before the gates shut. So reader, I ran.

Much later, as I stood in the crowded aisle wiping the sweat off my blackberry, I reflected on my mistake. And on my bad luck for not only was it the hottest, most humid, sweatiest Wednesday for 47 years (I blame Gordon Brown), it was also the 1-day test match at the Oval and at Vauxhall 3,141 fans boarded. Singing.

When I say 'caught outdoors in a hurricane', by the way, I do mean Katrina. Not George or Eric or some other inconsequential tropical storm. Oh no.

At Raynes Park a seat became vacant, right before me. The woman next to it was so alarmed at the prospect of my sitting there, she gathered her possessions and escaped to the next carriage.

I judged it best to remain standing.

When I left the train at Kingston, three girls giggled and pointed at me behind my back (at my back probably) and most rudely, I thought. I would have stopped and remonstrated with them, but I simply hadn't got time, and instead I sprinted for the excess fares collector, in the hot corner near the ticket barrier.

I didn't want to be even later for New Parents evening

Slip-Sliding Away

by Peggy Archer.

It's been a long time since I held hands with a grown man. At a guess 1973.

Until the weekend, that is, when I took a deep breath, shifted my weight on to my toes and held hands, quite tightly and more than once, with a young, tanned snow board instructor.

Reader, I even gazed into his eyes.

Until he told me: no, even though it was true, he had said to look straight ahead, perhaps I should rather look over his shoulder toward the crest of hill, and was I ready to let go now ?

I was at the artificial ski-slope at Sandown Park for private lesson. He was a lot better on a snowboard than I was, but on the whole I felt I was dressed more cooly: while he sported a bright red junior ski-klub sweatshirt and a baseball hat back to front. I was wearing my ultra-baggy (triathlon weight-loss) snow-boarder-cargo-pants and my sly hat.

Unfortunately, although I was cooler I was also indisputably hotter: it may be a miserable August in England but hopping up a steep slope wearing a hat and gloves and with a 10kg deadweight strapped to your ankle can certainly warm you up. Even when you have ventilated armpit holes.

When I took off my knee-pads, I had sweat patches on my knees.

Walking in the Rain

About fifteen cold, wet and very-muddy miles along the Cotswold Way we reached the precise spot where in 2006 our hosts (so they were telling us) had encountered a naked hiker. The children looked around eagerly, hoping for a repeat sighting, as if the walker were a permanent feature of that section of the Cotswold escarpment but, like a badger, he was nowhere to be seen, and to be fair it was hard to imagine weather less conducive to nude rambling.

The rain hardened, I drew my hood in around my face. My boots were heavy with red earth and sheep-poo, I had long-since zipped up my ventilated arm-pit holes, so I closed my eyes and imagined hot, sun-baked earth.....while I listened to the children's questions.

"So he was just walking along, naked? Did he say 'hello'?"
Silly question: of course he said hello. I'm not sure if it's a countryside thing, or a rambling thing, but everyone on the Cotswold Way says 'hello'. The first day I had naturally assumed that our local hosts actually knew all these people, before Mrs Botogol put me right '"No, stupid, they are just being friendly". I liked the sound of that and the second days I was like Crocodile Dundee I was that friendly. In fact, I reckon I'm a chameleon, the way I fit in: last week throwing thundery glances at a chic gay theatre in London, this week throwing cheery 'Good Mornings' at ramblers on a national trail. Only my lack of poles betrayed me.

"No he didn't, he just walked by quickly" (Aha..not a real rambler after all!)
"Could you see everything?"
"No he held his hands in front of him as he walked past"
"Did he have a ruck-sack?"
"I couldn't see what type of sack he had, the way he was holding his hands in front..."

Altogether we walked 25 miles. It rained for the entire first day, and most of the second. I only fell over once but when I did it hurt a lot and because of the rain, the blood didn't really clot. On the way we did 4 geocaches, and we bought 43 doughnuts, muffins, buns and mars bars in Broadway; but we didn't go to any pubs because we were were too wet, too muddy and too numerous.

In Stanway we saw the largest gravity-fed fountain in Europe and high, high up on the hills, at Belas Knapp we ate ginger cake over a 4,500 year burial chamber where excavators have found 38 skeletons over the years; all of them, according to the audio-guide - all of them hikers who attempted the long climb from Winchcombe in inclement weather while wearing inappropriate footwear.

There were only 23 of us; a mixture of old friends and mutual strangers, but because it is a very small world one of the strangers turned out to have been to school with Mrs Botogol. Of the 15 adults four have indescribable jobs, four work for the government, six work for themselves and one is retired. Only one had a second pair of walking boots - dry you see - to wear the second day. Another carried an umbrella all the way - and had a spare brolly in his rucksack - which he didn't share with anyone, not even when we stopped for lunch.


"I guess you'll blog about all this when you get home", opined our host, later that evening, curry eaten, red wine finished, the barrel of beer considerably emptier than it had been when we all arrived.
"I'm not really sure", I reflected, "that you'd all want to read about yourselves",
"You could disguise our identities", he said, "and jazz us up a bit? Steal our best jokes? Put words into our mouths?"

"Yes", I said, "Well, yes, I suppose I could"

All on the spectrum now

Last Monday I took some time out from the Triathlon Training that is increasingly dominating my days, my nights, my waking thoughts and - worst of all - my blog, to go to a lecture.

It was two hours, I calculated, lost for training. In that time I could have:

• swum 7 x 100m off 3 minutes, and
  
• run the 5.5km treadmill programme at level 4 (level 5 if they would only keep the bleeding gym at the 19° that they are supposed to) and
  
• had another attempt at the tantalising 1 hour barrier for the bike home (PB 1h05)

Ah well. The event was Autism Nation - a panel discussion on autism at the ICA. The star of the show was the clever, intellectual and urbane Simon Baron Cohen, but stealer of the show was the fierce, opinionated professional talker-of-down-to-earth-common-sense Dr Michael Fitzpatrick. Alt-views were provided by the intensively unautistic Marti Leimbach while the genuine real-life autist Kamran Nazeer loomed impassively from the edge, carefully refraining from eye contact with the rest of the panel who, quite naturally, ignored him.

The panel waxed lyrical all evening, and on my note pad I jotted down a page of their original thoughts; thinking back on it over the week since one thought in particular struck me - in terms of sociability and ability to communicate our tolerant, inclusive modern society has quite raised the bar in terms of what is considered normal: Nowadays children in quite ordinary schools are expected to participate in drama, hold and attend parties, talk about sex and sexuality in the classroom (talk in the classroom, I mean, of course, not talk about sex in the.... you know what I mean!) they are expected to be able to engage meaningfully with people of astonishly diverse backgrounds and avoid any scarily intensive hobbies, all in order to be considered normal. Behaviours that would have been considered quite usual in 1957 are, in 2007, plotted carefully on the all-embracing, all encompassing autistic spectrum.

What is autism? Simon Baron Cohen identified four traits
- difficulty socialising
- lack of empathy/interest in others
- intense interest in a narrow range subject
- repetition


It was an interesting evening, and exactly a week later I was still thinking on it as I splashed out my life-threatening 500m in the pool and pounded out a tedious 5km on the treadmill.

Between the two, I practised transition: I got out of the pool and took out my racing top [super-wicking, dry-quick, ultra light; no armpit holes £84.99] from my locker and laid it out carefully on the floor in front of me, flat and untangled, just as it will be in the race, with the back rolled up just a little bit. Then I stood up straight and stared at it for a moment, and visualised.

Water dripped slowly from my arms to the floor, I could quite distinctly hear the hum of the air conditioner and I could smell the sweat of the changing room and the chlorine on my skin.

Slowly and deliberately I counted to three and then - to the astonishment of my neighbours - I burst into life and hauled the top over my head and, writhing desperately, managed to haul the tightly rolled fabric down my damp back. Immediately it was on, I dropped on ground, toggled up my trainers, then leapt to my feet and put my cycling helmet on. And stoppped my watch.

A sudden hush had descended on the changing room.

"Blenheim Palace?"asked my neighbour?
"Thames Turbo, said I,
"Word of advice", he said, not unkindly, "Put an arm in first, before it goes over your head. Much faster that way"

The French Exchange

We have a French Exchange staying with us. She hasn't been to England before so she's a bit nervous and for some reason I think she finds us... unusual.

To tell the truth, I reckon I might have gotten off on the wrong foot right at the start, on Thursday evening, when I arrived home from work. I'd cycled home, it was late and I was very tired but, yes, I should have remembered the French Exchange would be there and, no, I shouldn't have come suddenly bursting in, crossly, through the french-windows, muddy-lycra-legged, in a hi-viz armpit-ventilated waistcoat and an oily face.

After she had calmed down, the French Exchange went straight to bed. Obviously she was tired after a long journey. We gave her 10 minutes to settle down and then my children remembered all the things that they had left in her room that they absolutely had to retrieve before the morning. What kind of things? Things that required my presence in her bedroom to shift the furniture to get at (don't ask). After a few minutes of whispered but still heated argument outside the French Exchange's bedroom door, the children banged and a delegation was sent in. She was very nice about it, considering.

She does have a name, of course, - in fact I'm pretty sure she told us what it was when she arrived - but we don't use it: when she's not listening we simply refer to her as "The French Exchange".

When she is listening we still call her "The French Exchange" but more rapidly (She doesn't understand rapid English, which is unfortunate because in our family that's the sort of English we speak) When we want to attract her attention we call her "Oi, tu".

She in turn doesn't call us anything at all; because she doesn't speak. I don't mean she doesn't speak English. I mean she doesn't speak: you see: she's fifteen. When she wants to attract our attention she uses her butter-knife like a spoon. Or pours the milk in afterwards. Or eats the cakes before the scones (she was exhibiting French sang-froid on Saturday, so we took her to afternoon tea at the Waldorf to humiliate her).

After the Waldorf we took her to St Paul's: ostensibly this was to climb the dome, experiment with the whispering gallery ("Oi! Tu!") and run out breathless on to the hair-raising viewing platform to point out where where we'd just walked "Et le bas: Le Pont de le Tour". Of course the real reason was to visit the tombs of the Duke of Wellington, vanquisher of the French in 1815, Lord Nelson, vanquisher of the French in 1805 and the memorial to Winston Churchill, rescuer of the French in 1944. The French Exchange was suitably impressed, I could tell. At one point she even took off her ipod.

She's with us for another two days. I reckon the entente-cordiale will just about last.

Old Woman Climbing

Hurrying along my road on Saturday morning, my sharp eyes were distracted by a pair of smartly-dressed, middle-aged burglars climbing over the side gate at No 42. I stopped dead in my tracks, un-holstered my phone and appraised the dangerous-looking pair

Ever since squatters moved into No. 3 last month, everyone in our road has enjoyed being vigilant. In the orange glow of the urban night, dark rumours have circulated from dinner party to book club, talk of shadowy goings on, mysterious comings and goings, the amount of litter that's built up in their garden, and should someone clear it up or do we just leave it.

Naturally, I was thrilled: thwarting a Broad-Daylight Burglary would give me something to brag about and something to blog about, all at the same time.

I flipped open my phone, thumbed the 9 button and silently rehearsed my call. Burglary In Progress. Suspects IC1, 1 male, 1 female. Beige Slacks, Beige Anorak, Grey Hair, Medium Height, Early 70s, ringleader is climbing gingerly and slowly over side door of #42 with door keys in hand....

....I smiled brightly and strode over "Are you all right? Can I help at all?"

And the boot was suddenly, firmly, unequivocally on the other foot. She didn't look like the look of me AT ALL. She was elderly. She was climbing over a rickety 5ft side door, down to a crumbling 3 foot wall. But she wasn't about to trust me.

There was, you see a problem: I was picturing myself as friendly neighbour, offering a helping hand both literal and metaphoric. Unfortunately I was wearing an England rugby shirt; It was an England match day and I live in Twickenham. To her I was one of 70,000 passers-by up in town for the game and on the lookout for an opportunistic bit of burgling before kick off. I know that now.

They were babysitting their grandchildren. The front door was stiff. Their arthritic fingers couldn't pull it open from the inside. They couldn't get out. They went out the back and round, but their son had freshly padlocked the side door because of the squatters.

I smiled harder. 'Really, you shouldn't climb, OK, but let me at least help you down....BE CAREFUL! .. look, put your foot here... no, HERE"

Reader, she climbed. I watched. She stumbled. I opened my ventilated armpit holes. She reached the ground. I left.

On the way past No 3, I walked on tip toes and craned my neck to try and see over the cardboard sellotaped to the inside of the bay window, and stubbed my toe on the new recycling bin that has appeared on the pavement.

So, what do you do?

I've noticed that this handy (if lazy) drinks-party conversation-stoker is rapidly becoming useless.

And I don't just mean when women are concerned (where merely to pose the question is to burden oneself with unwelcome value judgements), but with anyone at all: because nowadays the answer is increasingly likely to be impossible to understand.

One of my cycling friends (who doesn't know I have a blog and about whom, therefore, I can write with impunity) is a brand consultant.
"Ah, you mean like designing a logo"
"No, I would get a design firm to do that"
"but you'd be involved"
"well yes, but..."
"like Cayce Pollard ? Cool"
"There's rarely a new logo involved actually. It's normally more to do with establishing the company's brand values in a paradigm that makes sense for the shareholders, the staff and the customer"
"Is that a new wicking base layer I can see through your ventilated armpit holes?"


I'm only joking, of course: I know perfectly well what he does: He helps small companies establish their brand values into er, well, stuff like that. But what does that actually involve when he sits down at his desk in the morning? Apart from booking lunch, obviously. And working on tax returns, what with him being self-employed.

Last year I went to a reunion at my old college. In that environment S,WDYD isn't so much risky as positively dangerous. I know that. However, unable to invent suitable conversational alternatives in the intimidating atmosphere of the SCR, I allowed myself several times to be violently snubbed around the back of the head.
"Oh, I help companies leverage multi-functional pan-regional diversity policies"
"I'm basically a freelance quant, well more of a modeller really"
"I work in innovation"
"I no longer work in paid employment, I care for my children; do you have some kind of problem with that, you arsehole'

OK, I made up the second one; but you can understand the enthusiasm with which I embraced my neighbour at dinner when he turned out to be a vet. And also his surprise.


At this stage I should fess up: I too have a indescribable job. Consequently, I dread being asked what I do by well-meaning conversationalists. What can one say?

• "You wouldn't understand what I do" sadly, is probably the truth, but clearly too patronising to use in circumstances other than having just previously been called an arsehole.
• "Nobody can understand what I do" is probably equally close (and I don't exclude people who work in the same firm) but does makes me sound misleadingly like Stephen Hawking.
• "I don't understand what I do" is at least good for a laugh (but unwise, I have found, with people who work in the same firm) .

So I usually just mumble and change the subject.
Under close questioning I get hot and bothered and open my armpit ventilation holes


But my point (and I am coming to one) is this: I have started to notice that many people do just the same as me. No, not the unzipping silly - the embarrassed evasion. In other words : it's a not a topic that people talk about so much anymore.

I think this is going to have quite a big impact: we're heading for a paradoxical world where it is easier and easier to connect with like-minded people you don't know, but harder and harder to connect with the people we meet in 'real' life. If you can't picture what someone does all day, you can't know them.

And if we can no longer be defined by our jobs (because no one understands them) then how?
By our blogs?

As Homer Simpson once said "Marge, If I wasn't a safety thingummy then I don't know who I'd be"

Street Fashion

When you get to be the wrong side of forty, it can be hard to keep up with Street Fashion.

In Selfridges for some pre-Christmas shopping, imagine my delight in discovering that this prestigious department store actually has a Street Fashion Department. How easy is that?

It's upstairs next to Cycling - in fact, for quite some time I laboured under the extremely pleasing misapprehension that padded shorts, leather palmed gloves and lycra are, actually Street Fashion. Alas, not.

But the best thing about the Street Fashion Department was the way it allowed me to escape from all the other family recommendations as we passed from floor to floor, from section to section (I don't really like buying clothes).
- "This shirt is nice..." "Yes, but I think I'll check the Street Fashion section, before I buy anything".
- "This is very fashionable at the moment, and it would really suit you" "Hmm, I think if it were really fashionable, it would be in the Street Fashion section, wouldn't it?".

If we had ever actually found the Street Fashion department I might have been forced to buy something. However it was Christmas, no one could understand the store guide, it was extremely hot in Selfridges and of all the family only I had the ventilated arm-pit holes that the situation called for.

Suddenly it all became all too much and we escaped thankfully on to the cool street, - where there were some very weirdly-dressed people we were careful to avoid. We dived into the fundamentally dishonest Bond Street Underground Station (the signs indicate a Station, but take you to a another shopping mall) and headed for home.

I'll have to catch up with Street Fashion sometime in the New Year.

Wicking and other modern miracles

Back in the last century if I wanted to go out on my bike I'd put my anorak on (well, yes, all right, I'd put my Parka on). If I pedalled hard I became hot and sweaty. If I pedalled very hard I became very hot and very sweaty. In those days we didn't have wicking base layers, we took our jumpers off.

In the 21st Century, like everyone else I know, I have a special outfit for cycling and a quick ride on my bike necessitates going upstairs for a complete change of clothes.

I wear Tardis shorts (perfectly cut on the outside to conceal the middle-aged backside, a close inspection of the contents will reveal within an astonishingly sizeable, completely flexible, self-contained and separate padded layer) and I have choice of two tops: the one thin and short-sleeved, and too cold in the winter, the other thick and long-sleeved and too hot anywhere outside the arctic circle.

Until this Christmas that is! A fruitful piece of shopping yielded no presents at all for my loved ones, but for me: a brand-new, windproofed / shower-proof / low cut back / grey and black, zipped-rear-pocket cycling top. And best-of-all, with that sina-qua-non of sporting clothing, the cleverest invention of C21: zippable armpit-ventilation holes.

How we ever did without these miracles of modern clothing design, I don't know. I have made sure to have them in all clothes worn in situations where over-heating is in a remote danger (ski-jacket, walking jacket, cycling top, interview suit, pyjamas).

On Boxing Day my friend and I managed 16.5 wet and muddy miles along the Crane River and Grand Union Canal in 1 hour 31 mins, average speed 11mph. I wore my new top and, much to the envy of my comparatively ill-clad friend, whenever the going became harder or softer I was able to easily regulate my temperature simply by adjusting the armpit holes. We stopped every 200 metres or so.

My top was a dream: showers bothered me not; my lower back was snug and warm, the wind penetrated my jacket solely through the gaping armpit holes, the only moisture that failed to entirely wick away being the cold, smelly moisture of the River Crane sloshing around in my right shoe (following an, admittedly ill-advised, armpit-hole adjustment on the move. They should put something in the instructions about that). At least it wasn't the GUC.

My top cost just £485. The stretch-fitting (to tell the truth, I'm not totally sure about it) wicking base layer: £79.99. It's good job Mrs Botogol never reads my blog.