I recently attempted the South Downs Way Randonnee – a mountain bike ride organised by the British Heart Foundation. It went rather badly. In the hope that you might learn from my failure, here is how and why I failed to complete the ride. First failure I think my first mistake was to start late. [...]
I’ve been a keen cyclist ever since I was a child. I started with a little red BMX, then went on to a GT Interceptor that I thrashed around the neighbourhood on – skidding the tyres to ribbons and slipping across frozen rivers (this was somewhere in Kansas), until it was stolen from outside Truesdell [...]
Having a baby has done something funny to me. Fatherhood has made me regress – all I can think about is providing. I’m the hunter-gatherer. I’m driven to provide, able to think of little else. And I used to be so enlightened.
The press seem to be going through a phase of moral panic. For some reason, ever since Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand left rude messages on a celebrity’s answering machine, the media has frolicked in a bath of controversy – neck-deep in shock, horror and outrage. Somehow, at some point, ‘newspapers’ like the Sun, the [...]
So, it’s nearly the end of the year – a time to look back, recycle news and make lists. But all I can think is: “Why are so many people so remarkably, consistently stupid?” Why do stupid people thrive? Why is stupidity rewarded? Will the world end, not in a superheated toxic slush, but in [...]
“In the animal kingdom, they call it presenting” – so sang the Beastie Boys. They’re referring to this kind of thing: “A female initiates mating by presenting her swollen rump to the male. But ‘presenting’ can also be used as a submissive gesture and is observed in males as well.” Unfortunately the Beastie Boys have [...]
On a recent trip to Paris, I was touched by this scene of tenderness and cooperation: A hoary, malodorous hobo bumbled into an upmarket perfumery in St Germaine. A haughty sales assistant marched toward him- presumably to turf him out. But rather than nudging the homeless man out the door, the lady plucked a perfume [...]
I keep seeing articles like this which all suggest that having children adds to the stress we’re putting on the planet. So if a couple has more than two children they can officially be blamed for destroying the planet (not really). I’ve often wondered about people who go to great lengths to lessen their carbon [...]