The Guardian & Sexist Sports Pages

I had a quick look through the Sports pages and spotted just one paragraph ‘it was a fairly big one’, about two inches devoted to women’s horseracing.

There was a female sports journalist, and you guessed it, she was writing about men’s horse racing. Just like the woman in the Mail today writing about men’s football.

Well, it was better, but still a long way to go. That paragraph still felt like a ‘token’ though.

It did have men’s cycling – but no women cycling or even men’s/women’s mountainbiking. It certainly didn’t have any kilts in the paper either. Outrageous.

The Sun comes out the most PANTS newspaper for the diabolical ‘lack of women’s sports’.

The Streetview Trike

Google Streetview has ‘hit the rurals’, even where I came from on a farm. It is sooo weird. I get to see my bike commute to work and the train station but the roads were very quiet when in reality they are busy and noisy. Streetview was taken in the Spring and my daffs are out which is really nice. I think I am one of the lucky ones though some of my paint on the house is peeling. I better sort that out then!

There are no cars in front of my house and I made sure I put some anti-car stones in the front:-)

I am looking forward to ‘exploring Kent’ without being run over by 60mph+ motorists in a rush and ones that are not used to seeing cyclists on the road. I hope I will see some cyclists on Streetview since, in the rurals, they are few and far between unless they are cycling in the rush hour or on a Sunday morning. There was not a single cyclist in my lane at all. I don’t know where I was. I may have been at work or out shopping.

Someone on Twitter says he saw his sister pick up some dog poo.

Many of the provincial people I have spoken to have never even heard of Streetview, and they will go potty when they know what it is. Here, they like their privacy a lot. With Google Streetview it looks OVER hedges and fences, it could be fun:-)

I am looking forward to seeing horrible steep Kent hills, pretty countryside, farm animals and cr*p cycles lanes – maybe some lovers in fields – haha. It is just as well they do Streetview during the day time as it could be ‘rather dodgy at night in some of the infamous car parks’.

London Architecture Festival: Bicycle Architecture Tour

I went, for the first time, on a ‘bicycle architecture tour’ today. We all met in The Calthorpe Centre, which is a kind of funky youth eco project.  The ride was marshalled by Southwark Cyclists (though some failed to turn up and we got lost a bit!) and was organised by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios. Half seemed to be architects and the rest, ‘normal’ people, well, you know what I mean. (How can you be normal if you write about cycling all the time?)

The highlight was cycling (quite fast) to Anthony Gormley’s studios ’somewhere slightly beyond Kings Cross). I love his work, although was rather surprised when we got to the studio another person was doing it  but apparently that was ’the norm’ for some artists. Now what would Picasso or Michaelangelo say?

We also went to the Gagosian Gallery which I thought was  a ‘complete waste of time’ though ‘the leader’ kept going on and on about how wonderful it was for various exhibitions.

architecture.com/…/Winners2006/London/GagosianGalleryLondonWC1.aspx  (well, it looks great from the inside).

I thought the outside of the building looked horrendous, rather like a B & Q warehouse. At first, I thought was a joke that we had to stand in front of it and talk about it. I thought it should be knocked down but it was rather dangerous to say that, as everyone else seemed to  be admiring it, and many were architects. It was totally lost on the likes of me.

I think if this was the London ‘Carbuncle’ Bike tour, then it would be a  lot more fitting.

Then my contact lens gave me gyp as I seemed to get dust in it. So there endeth my journey. Saying that, I don’t think I missed too much ie The Young Vic and the Unicorn Theatre.

So instead, when my eyes got better and less  annoying and watery, I headed off to St Pancras Station and had a wander around there. Actually, I would have preferred to go there, than  that awful Gargoyle, sorry, Gagosian Gallery. 

St Pancras, was hellish (inside) but at least the outside of the station looked good.  St Pancras has millions of shops, awful pastel blue ironwork, and you had to walk for miles to get about,  and (yes! )there were queues to everything.

I mainly wanted to see the ‘naff sculpture’ Londoners have been talking about, however, I had enough of walking to and fro. The whole place is like a Bluewater Shopping Centre, with lots of the usual chains you see everywhere.

I didn’t even find the bike racks either. I asked about six people. I had to hike everywhere. I eventually found them, at the end of my trip in ‘Hell’s Station’, in a multi-story car park near the station. Now, who on earth would stick bikes racks in a multi-story car park? Bloomin’ quangos!

Then coincidently I met a lady in a Discovery Treks van at the station. They were about to collect a load of London to Paris cyclists. I had a chat with her as I did the one L to P last year. It brought home memories of coming back on the Eurostar.   She told me the weather in France was terrible for the cyclists and one person got hurt though.