An older Times reader wrote to say that “transport policy is now being made by and for fit-ish, middle-aged men in Lycra”. Not everyone wants, or is physically able, to ride a bike, she added, yet cyclists’ needs are paramount.
I was torn. My husband does a daily 18 miles on his carbon fibre machine in full rig. I wish his journey was safer and that idiot drivers, like the one who opened his car door and knocked him off last week, were prosecuted.
But in London, cycling has ceased to be a mode of transport and become a religion. “Cyclist” — rather like “feminist” to some — is now a political identity whose absolute righteousness excuses every deed.
To the zealots, no car journey is justifiable and drivers must be erased from streets. And so, in my ’hood, the council has shut a triangle of residential roads to cars. No warning, no diversion signs, just concrete blocks in the road: deliveries, ambulances, police, tradespeople, funnelled on to choked main roads.
Businesses within the triangle are stranded; homeowners feel “kettled”. Huge, furious public meetings have been been held. And in frustration residents have moved aside some barriers — only to have cyclists
re-block the streets with paint-cans and rubbish bags.
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Why must every debate now be so angry and polarised? Many of us are, at various times, cyclists, pedestrians and drivers. Why can we not, with safety adaptations and mutual respect, share the streets? My correspondent may be interested in a Transport for London report that a cyclist is “typically white, under 40, male, with medium to high household income”. Boris with his super-highways is spending £1 billion on these guys.
House style
I often wonder what my fellow columnists wear when they write. Not colleagues who actually work in the glamorous Times office, with its Apprentice-style sweeping views of the London skyline. You’d need to dress up to match that. And I’ve seen them on my visits, in various states of Peston-ite smart-casual.
I mean the home-bound writers — like me — who sometimes don’t encounter a judging human eye from 8am to 8pm. How many bother to shower? Who sniffs a disgusting but cosy fleece and thinks: “Well, it’s warm, who cares?”
The BBC’s Justin Webb noted this week that “there is something about informal dress that relaxes everything, including the mind”. He may feel sharper wearing a jacket than a T-shirt to interview Chuka Umunna on the Today programme, but I’d bet his sartorial standards slide when writing his Times column in his man-shed.
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I have friends on both ends of the spectrum: one who can write with perfect clarity in a dalmatian-spotted onesie, another who sits at her spare-room desk each morning in a neat dress, make-up, earrings and heels. I’m somewhere between the two. These days I look around department stores thinking, “That’s lovely, but who will ever see it?” If I go running early, I wear my stinking kit all day. In occasional bouts of self-disgust I purge atrocities such as Uggs with a hole in each toe. But there is only one bottom line, as described by a novelist friend: “I can’t think if I’m not wearing a bra.”
Rock-bottom humour
In Doncaster taking my mother shopping, we stop at traffic lights behind a large, new family car. A sticker on the back window reads: “I’m speeding cos I need a poo”. There is a cartoon sketch of a man from behind, trousers at half-mast. As with many such “humorous” messages — and all tattoos — I reflect upon the moment someone thought: “Yes, this sentiment encapsulates me perfectly. That is how I wish to be known by the world.”
Unless the owner has an urgent bowel condition and the sticker is either a plea of mitigation or a warning to traffic police of what unpleasantness they might find.