I still can't believe it...

... but my lovely, seven-month young, Ride2Work scheme bike was stolen last weekend. Again. Or rather, that is the second bike that I have had stolen. I never cycle it anywhere other than between work and home, but ironically last Sunday evening, we took a ten minute ride down to Abbeville Road, to stock up on fine cheeses at Macfarlane's, which we had not done for months, and then met up for a drink with a colleague of K's who has just moved to the flat above the hairdresser's next door... We were a maximum of two hours, and when we got back to the hoop where we had locked up both our bikes, there was K's, and just an empty space where mine should have been. The lock was still there - they must have taken the saddle off to get it out...

You never quite believe it - you think for a moment you must actually have locked it up somewhere else, and I had a futile wander up and down the road just in case it happened to be leaning around somewhere else, but of course it was not. Some bastards saw an opportunity and went for it. Thing is, because I am paying it off in instalments, I will be paying for another six months for a bike I don't own any more!! Am waiting to hear from HR at work about what I should do now - was it perhaps covered by some Museum insurance, because technically (I guess) I do not own it until I have finished paying for it? Can I have another Ride2Work scheme bike on the go while I am still paying off the last one?

Sooooo annoying, as the weather has been beautiful this week - mild and autumnal - and I keep wistfully looking out of the window and wondering how lovely it would be to cycle home in... Also I have been feeling under a lot of pressure with work - again, as I suppose is becoming usual now, as we lose staff and don't have the money to replace them, so everyone is doing an insane amount of work... so it would have been great to have the cycle home to de-stress. Instead I have to battle with the tube - and the Victoria Line has been positively boiling with the unseasonally warm temperatures this week. I was at Green Park station during rush hour last week - coming back from attending the Oriental Ceramic Society council meeting, followed by a very fine tea with George in the Royal Academy café - and there must also have been some problem with defective trains, or defective tracks, or god knows what, because three tube trains came and went and there was no way that all the people on the platform, which was constantly filling up, could cram themselves into the already-full carriages. In the end, I changed platforms and went north to Warren Street, changed platforms again and went back south. It was the only way to get home!! (without losing too many of my marbles)

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I have started a new research project - for an encyclopaedia article I have to write by the end of January, on Almoravid religious spaces in Fes and Marrakesh. It's nice to start something new, and also to get back to research areas I want to expand into, rather than endlessly going over old ground, which is what it feels like with my Islamic Arts from Spain book, now that the third set of proofs is about to come in... I have been reading photocopied articles while I travel to and fro on the tube, most of which are in French, since it was mainly French scholars of the early 20th century who have worked on the architectural history of North Africa - and not much done since, due to an unfortunate hangover of European imperialist perspectives that the cultural achievements of Africa are not worthy of serious scholarly attention... Happily, that is changing now. And it's good for my French too.

But in between trying to get my research done on the tube, I have been enjoying having a free subscription to the London Review of Books. A colleague 'gave' me this subscription by putting my name forward - she got something out of it too, a book token or some such. But I am completely hooked and will certainly pay to renew the subscription when the time comes - very clever marketing on the part of the LRB. It is very satisfyingly left wing, and snobbishly makes me feel very intellectual, surrounded - as one usually is on the tube - by readers of the Metro. When I first moved back to London and started commuting to work (my own "year in Catford", as satirised - that very year! - by The Chap magazine, which is very sadly not available on their online archive...) I was taken aback by getting on the train in the morning and being met by a wall of everyone reading the very same newspaper. Talk about brainwashing. Since then we have had to endure the ridiculous street competition of the free evening rags - the London Lite, and the London Paper, which has already mercifully folded, excuse the pun. Hopefully the London Lite will go soon, now that the Evening Standard is back, and being given away for free!! (oh the politics of freebie London newspapers!)

BUT in the LRB, I have become completely addicted to the classifieds, or rather I should say the personals. This is a typical offering:

Small but perfectly formed ex-hack turned jurisprudential insurrectionist seeks proper gent/unicorn with wit, charm and optimistic approach to Bakhtinian dialogics. (F, 29)

A few months ago, there was one in Latin! I would have loved to see the responses - I hope they were in Latin too!

I also love the fact that I read about things I would not have read about otherwise ... but I suppose that is in the nature of magazine subscriptions.

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The clocks have gone back now, so it's dark when I leave work. My body clock is so adjusted to 'working till it gets dark', that I now think about leaving work a bit earlier, which is a good thing, but then I don't actually do it, which isn't. They went back last Sunday, which meant I spent the whole day experiencing that feeling of it being later than it was, because it was, and then the whole week feeling I was late for things. Why is it we do this again??

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Thought for the day: If you Twitter, are you a Twat?

A London cabbie's philosophy

There are major roadworks going on at both ends of my journey at the moment. I have lost track of what they are doing in Brixton - it started out with refurbishing the Victorian water mains, but whatever they are doing now, seems to have been going on for years. In South Kensington, they have just pedestrianised the area around the tube station, and rerouted all the traffic, which makes not only for major roadworks, but also utter confusion. The traffic is a complete nightmare around there at the moment, especially in the evenings.

Coming home this evening, I was as usual stuck in a line of traffic, behind cars pointing at stupid angles across lanes, having changed their mind at the last minute, waiting for the lights to change in order to inch forward. I managed to make it round the corner, where there was an utter logjam - a green light off in the distance, but absolutely no movement, and a car blocking the way of a black cab. The taxi driver had been standing out on the road shouting at the driver of the car blocking him, but got back in his car as I pulled up. But since there was absolutely no way round or through I just had to wait there with my bike. The cabbie could not resist including me in his (justified) frustation.

"You know what the problem is, don't you? Transport for London. They've just got too much money."

This is a frequent complaint, and one whose validity I am never quite sure about - leftover budgets needing to be spent before the round-up of the financiaI year, so let's blow it all on needless roadworks... (though actually when it's finished South Kensington will be much more pleasant)

And I am not sure I believe what a cabbie says about TfL - a company that exists to manage the city's public transport, and thereby to deny cab drivers an income. And I also wonder - if they have too much money, then why on earth are they talking about hiking the prices on the tube, again?

Autumnal musings...

Well, K completed his half-marathon in an amazing (I think!) 2 hours and 7 minutes!! I have uploaded some photos of the day to our Flickr photostream, but here are a couple of before and after shots, and a close-up of his well-earned eco-friendly medal, that he proudly sported for the rest of the day!

It was gorgeously autumnal - the temperature was cold, but just right for running (I am reliably informed). While he did the hard work of running, I wandered around the 'Food and Fitness festival', getting some breakfast (the marathon started at 9.30!) and picking up as many freebies for K as I could - Lucozade recovery drinks, and energy bars. I was amused that the members of the Welsh Guards band seemed to be making the most of this as well!


After reaching my tolerance level of browsing through marquees, I went to sit by the Serpentine and drink my thermos of coffee and read my book (Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel - a well-deserved winner of the Booker Prize recently! I'm loving it!) until it was time to wander down towards the finishing line to see if I could see K coming in... Eventually I did, though of course I was not quite ready in time with the camera, so only got a picture of his back disappearing into the distance... Because of the crush of people at the finish line - there were 10,000 runners taking part!! - we had agreed to meet at the Albert Memorial, where we sat for a while watching the stream of runners flowing past... I had to wonder to myself what on earth makes people put themselves through this! But trying to raise money for a worthy cause goes a long way to helping you towards the finish line...

Speaking of which, K has not quite reached his sponsorship target, so if you're reading this, please go to his JustGiving page and help him raise money for International Action for Iraqi Refugees - there are 4.5 million orphans in Iraq and about 1 million young widows, and even if each of us gave a small amount, together we can help them to survive and build themselves a future and a better life.

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We have just got back from a lovely weekend in Oxford, visiting wonderful friends Bob and Bev for dinner on Saturday night (after a full day spent in the British Library, so we felt very virtuous), and a lovely Sunday lunch in Woodstock today with Annie and Honey, whom I don't think we've seen since their wedding, nearly 3 years ago... shocking. It was great to catch up, and it felt so lovely to be 'out in the country' - and as always cosily nostalgic to be back in Oxford, wandering around old haunts, seeing what has closed down and what is new, and letting those old memories flood in - things you have not thought about for years....

It is well and truly autumn now. The trees are at that point where they have not yet shed all their leaves and they are turning all the colours of the autumn spectrum. It has been really beautiful cycling through the parks. Very cold though, with crisp autumn mornings, which turn into those lovely days where the sky is blue and sunny but there is a chill in the air. People are starting to burn logs on their fires, or make bonfires of fallen leaves, and there is a wonderful woodsmoke smell in the air, which I always associate with autumn. It is still that period before the clocks go back, when it is just dark all the time - when you travel to and from work in the dark - but at the moment it is lovely in the mornings, and gets gradually darker as I cycle home... Lights come on in houses, and as you glide past you can see glimpses of people's cosy interior worlds...

I had not been cycling regularly for a while and had found myself feeling really quite stressed out - one of the reasons for not cycling was the need to get to work promptly, then working really long stressed out days and just wanting to get home quickly and flop. I was feeling like I was not at all on top of my work and that it was all just too much. Plus, it coincided with a period when I had run out of Evening Primrose Oil - which is supposed to keep your hormonal levels nice and balanced, though I don't know whether any of that alternative medicine stuff is really true... But I decided that the exercise from cycling would help me cope with feeling stressed. Also, my plantar fasciitis had come back after - I don't know, maybe it's just over a year since I had it - and cycling seemed to help it last time. And indeed having cycled almost every day for the last two weeks (and got some new Evening Primrose...) I feel much much better and far less angsty about everything now - though I still have a sore heel. The first two days I decided to get back on the bike it rained - it has been very dry this year - but I was determined, and even though I was soaked by the time I got to work, I also found it fresh and invigorating!

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The other day, I was cycling along Hayter Road, having just set off for work, and one of these new bike-mounted traffic wardens was there writing someone a ticket and he called out to me as I went past, so I stopped and turned back to him expectantly - I didn't think I had done anything to inflate the ire of a traffic warden (or parking enforcement officer, or whatever we're supposed to call them these days...). He said, "Excuse me - what colour would you call this car?" I looked at it, and to me it seemed a kind of dark greyish silver, so I said, "Silver?", which seemed to be a word he had never heard before. He thanked me and I went on my way. But as I mused on this humorous encounter, I soon began to realise it was in fact a rather philosophical question he had asked me, because almost every car parked along that part of my journey was some or other shade of silver, and how would you differentiate between them?

I began to think that if I were Paul Auster or W.G.Sebald - which quite clearly I am not, and never could even begin to approach the brilliance of those literary geniuses who are my heroes - that this momentary encounter with the traffic warden could have been the inspiration for some brilliant piece of writing... Oh well, being me, this is what you get.

The new bed has landed!

We're very excited about this. This is the first proper bed we have ever owned! For the last 6 years we have been sleeping on a metal-framed futon sofa-bed which has been gradually giving way underneath us for the last couple of years ... the small of my back was gradually disappearing into a well created by the metal slats which kept falling off the bottom, and it has not been doing wonders for my lower back pain... So for a long while we have been trying to save up for a new bed, and not getting very far, since we're never very successful at trying to save up for anything. But an hour and a half's user-testing for the ridiculously well-endowed Golden Web Foundation earned me enough to buy a kingsize oak bed from the Futon Company, which arrived today! Being a boy, K likes taking things apart and putting things together, so he got straight down to the business of dismantling the old bed, and mantling the new one (as it were).

Out with the old!

In with the new! (which is somewhat bigger...)

Turns out the old futon mattress doesn't fit perfectly...

Clean sheets. There's something so scrummy and cosy about getting into bed when the sheets have just been changed. We have tried out the bed, which is perfectly flat and hard, and not a sag in sight... We rewarded ourselves by going down to Brixton Market for a celebratory pizza at the wonderful Franco Manca. And hopefully K will get an excellent night's sleep before his run tomorrow... Have you sponsored him yet?

Sponsor K's half-marathon!!!!

On Sunday 11th October, K is running the Royal Parks Half Marathon - 13.1 miles through four royal parks: Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Green Park and St James's Park!

He is raising money for a charity run by some friends of ours - International Action for Iraqi Refugees: a non-profit organisation that exists to help Iraqi refugees and displaced. Their work aims at assisting Iraqis in need as a result of the war, by providing sustenance, health support, education support, and information services.

It's an extremely good cause, and please show your support for K by visiting his JustGiving page and sponsoring him! Modestly he is looking for 50 people to sponsor him £1 a mile (i.e. £13), but I am sure your generosity and support can beat that target!