Fashion crime

On By AlexIn Other stuff7 Comments

Stereotypes are terrible things – intellectually lazy, socially derivative and the last refuge of anyone who believes anything they read in the Daily Mail. But as a heterosexual bloke of over 40, I cannot be alone in caring absolutely nothing for fashion. “Oh Yes Indeedy” I hear from anyone who’s every seen me clothed* – if I wear anything costing over about twenty quid, it looks like I’ve nicked it. Coat hangers are more debonair than I when presented in a suit.

But this is normally not a problem because after thirty five years of dressing myself, it’s not exactly difficult to effect presentability at work and wantonly slobby at home. Outside of suits for the office, the remainder of – what I’ll charitably refer to as – my wardrobe is generally accessorised with edgy oil stains, custom rips, emulsion paint flashes and unidentified stains which would worry a toxicology lab.

My clothes tend to follow a well worn path from briefly pristine, through a period of uncared for use, before ascending to their true purpose of bike rags. The idea of chucking something away before it has broken down to original threads is diametrically opposed to my approach to upgrading shiny bits for my mountain bikes.

So all is good if not stylish until I was forced to embrace the fashion foolishness that is ‘Business Casual’. Stereotypes again – let me hear a “What the FUCK?” from anyone with a sense of what’s important. My approach was to go with jeans and wing it but Carol refused to send me out of the house in any of the motley collection of chain-ring scarred troons. So with her acting as personal shopper and me acting like a five year old, we embarked on a voyage of fashion discovery.

It soon became apparent that I am not able to pull off a fashionable pair of trousers. The problem begins when I can’t even pull on a pair of said trousers. Being configured for a difficult hybrid of dwarf and cyclist from the hips down, my thighs are too fat, my arse is to big and my legs too short to carry off anything not declaring themselves comfort fit.

Although you’d have to bloody well furtively carry them off under the gloom of night rather than actually presenting them for payment. Firstly because they look bloody ridiculous and secondly because they represent a wad of beer vouchers even I’d consider reasonably significant. Not that I’d ever get that far because I am the Howard Hughes of shopping for clothes.

Put me in a room of my peers and you have to dart me with a tranquilizer to shut me up. But I can get properly self conscious next to a pot plant when interacting with those who are fully trained in the art of pantaloon salesmanship. “Can I help you sir?” is instantly babelfished** into “H’mm 40, poor posture, leg length of similar dimensions to man stood in deep ditch, no real belly but what is going on with those thighs? It’s an experiment gone horribly wrong where some psycho generic engineer has grafted two milk bottles*** onto his arse. Still quite a decent sized unit to work with back there“

So while they gently guide me away from the glitzy marketing of pulling trousers, and on beyond the dusty shelves of slacks, 80’s chinos and dreadful trouseroons apparently hand woven from hemp, I can still hear the shushed hysteria of the other assistants whispering “Have you seen that old bloke? Where are his legs?“

Right here and striding from the shop clutching nothing other than a few remaining shards of dignity. Is it beyond the comprehension of the oh-so-cool designers than a normal bloke requires nothing more from a pair of trousers than to prevent him mooning in the street? He does not require tailoring which prevents circulation and stay presses his knob for all to see. Nor a crutch that hangs low enough to suggest a third leg or a colostomy bag. And at no point do studs, rips, patches, oddly located pockets or buttons ever enter his orbit of needs.

He just wants to feel appropriately and comfortably trousered without resorting to those pants so vaunted by our elderly American cousins. You know the ones which fasten just under the breastbone and speak of golf and upcoming death.

In desperation, I asked my personal shopper at what age beach shorts and mountain bike t-shirts become a bit combed-back ponytail embarrassing. The answer is 11 and apparently they also fail to pass muster in terms of suitability for the problem of business casual. The second point was firmly made before I even asked the question.

This argument went on for some time.

However you will – I’m sure – be relieved to hear I have secured sufficient trouserage collateral to spend the best part of next week in Barcelona. I fully intend to sneak in a pair of shorts and proudly display my stumpy legs to an entire convention of IT geeks. Let’s face it, most of them still looked like they have been dressed by their mum so I’m going to be a vision of sartorial elegance.

Probably.

* There are a few who – having seen me rather more naked – would suggest you can count yourself bloody lucky.

** What do you mean you’ve never read HHGTTG. Stop wasting your time with this drivel and get over there this instant. And no, watching the film doesn’t count. Not even a little bit.

*** this joke only works if you’ve seen proper old glass bottles. Anyone in the prime of their life will know exactly what I’m talking about.

It doesn’t add up.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense1 Comment

Politics and Hedgehog sit together as comfortably as a sadistic cat* and a feisty hamster, as ably proven by my previous bluster on politicians and their arrogance. And yet after a mere five minute immersion into the 24 hours news pool, I find myself again arguing passionately for a benevolent dictatorship.

The problem I have with yet more indirect taxation is that it comes with a smug veneer of social policy attached. And by doing so, perpetuates the myth that by taxing great swathes of the population, actual changes are going to be made in the way people live their lives.

And that is total bollocks.

It isn’t going to stop people drinking or smoking. It’s not going to fix the health problem of the middle class trudging home – after the longest working hours in europe – and downing a bottle of supermarket wine. Granted, it may divert the tiny disposable income of those in very low paid families away from useful stuff like food. But it won’t stop anyone who can afford eighty grand of sports car driving it away because there is an additional£1000 of tax, and yet it may keep older, more polluting cars on the road while the rest of us baulk at the ever increasing tax burden of buying new.

This kind of indirect taxation is nothing short of licensed theft. And it’s not fair because when it’s imposed on stuff 45 million people consume, it is almost completely biased against those on lower incomes. It doesn’t achieve anything except to shore up a level of financial incompetence, that could better manage the public finances by stuffing the tax receipts in a sock.

So I have an idea – let’s assume that these latest increases price most of us out of the market. So now we do exactly what the government is promoting – we abandon our nicatine habit, we drink water instead of beer, we make our own wine from nettles or shuttle cheap booze from French supermarkets. We don’t drive anywhere, everyone rides a bike or a donkey and we bloody well break the link between pious populism and actual economics.

Wouldn’t it be great to see the blood drain from the faces of those stuffed shirts when we actually do what they tell us? Then they’d be faced with the very real prospect of having to stop fighting other people’s wars, abandon fattening up their bloated departments with policies no one cars about, and get back to distributing wealth from the rich to the poor, and making the bloody trains run on time.

I’ve given myself dislexia by proxy irritation writing this**. Therefore all I can suggest is we allow this wave of impotant anger to wash over us and remain clam.

* How that failed to trigger the tautology filter I do no know.

** I have also turned into my Dad apparently.

I’m back and I’m s’lad*

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography2 Comments
Rotorua (Blue Lake), originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

I can only assume that this weather is some kind of cosmic joke. A meteorological slap down to my electronic worship of ceaseless blue sky images plastered all over the flickr homepage. We reluctantly left Auckland under sunny skies clothed only in shorts and sun cream, arriving back at Heathrow similarly dressed, but much colder.

A brief prod of the soft news underbelly – poked by a refreshing fast and free Internet connection – revealed that England is still rubbish and sport but that hardly mattered since the entire island was about to be carted off to the North Pole by a bastard winter storm.

Such is the insanity of long haul that a mere 30 hours separates the lingering end of a long, hot summer and having your face ripped off by icy rain. My first response to all this sudden weather was to layer myself in ever more fleecy clothes, my second was to start peeling which just shows the human body is clearly fooled by aeroplanes.

In more ways than one. My jetlag is on the irritating side of properly funny with bipolar perambulations between madly wide awake at 4am and falling asleep at my desk just after lunch. To be honest, no one noticed much difference other than I Was harder to wake. The rest of the family seem to have conveniently ignored that it’s 4am in the morning most of the time, except for little Random who is suffering a few head/food interfaces.

Most of the last week – before returning to the Devil’s weather experiments – was spent idly watching the sun climb over a wave-capped pacific from the vantage point of around 100 yards. The limit of my ambition were frequent visits to the double height beer fridge and watching the kids being dragged under by the rip tides.

To say this was mildly relaxing is a little like wondering if setting your trousers on fire would be slightly distracting. The whole Beach/Bach house thing would not work well in – say – Cleethorpes, but it is failure proof in a land of deserted beaches, jaw dropping scenery, cooling sea breezes and an endless array of beer and cake.

But while the weather has been busy, my solicitor has not. At this rate of progress, we will move in just before the kids leave home or this jetlag has finally worn off. It is, however, providing an excuse to put back my fitness kick for another couple of days as CLIC-24 hurtles ever closer.

21 days with 2 riding bikes and 20 quaffing calories in many interesting and varied ways added only 3lbs** to the svelteness of Al. But I appear to have grown breasts, so it’s tea instead of beer and the drudgery of sorting a 1000 photos assuming I can stay awake that long.

Oh, and to any of you kind hearted sods that sent me one of a thousand emails, I accidentally deleted the whole lot ten minutes ago. You know where to find me, I’ll still be asleep at my desk.

* Salad you see. Refer to last paragraph for more. I’ve always found jokes are so much better appreciated if you need to explain them.

** I refuse to go metric. I was born before 1971 and therefore exempt.

Of lice and van.*

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography2 Comments

Rock Colours, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

Hello from Auckland and goodbye to the funky bus. It’s been a faithful servant for 2,500 kilometres – over innumerable mountain passes, through hundreds of one horse towns**, and abandoned at every more raffish pavement angles. We’re going to miss it like an amusing but hyperactive relative. Two weeks cooped up with a similar amount of children in eighteen feet of mobile home has been a fantastic experience. But we’re ready to give it back before localised parental volcanic action will mirror that of these great islands.

Living with the motorhome is, – of course – living in it, and for all the positive experiences, there are a number of issues worth sharing. It’s only when you’ve been dispatched alone on some emergency shopping expedition that it becomes apparent how bloody big it is. Driving it is fine, reversing it less so without a willing helper or a man with a red flag.

But let us turn the eye of critique to the interior. For example take the ladder which acts as the gateway to Lucifer’a portal – or the over cab bedroom as labelled by traditionalists. It is a triumph of isolationist design working perfectly to shuttle children up and down into the roof space, while blocking off access to the indoor bog.

Well if you are more than about 6 inches wide which- ahem – at least one of us is. The resultant gap is, in fact, the exact width of my body minus the much loved wedding vegetables. So any attempted night-time entry is rewarded with an eye watering scrotal injury from the razor sharp door fittings.

However, the gas fired hob was always functional if a little slow. In fact, it would be quicker to travel back in time to pre-history and discover fire, rather than waiting for the kettle to boil in real time. The grill bucked this trend by carbonising toast in the nanosecond between the states of virgin bread and on fire***.

And the fly-screen lacks a certain winged bitey blocking efficacy. In truth the gap between door and van was such that anything in the bird family from a pterodactyl down would fly in unobstructed on a well known trade route to my tender parts****. At night, many of these blood bloated parasites would get trapped under the duvet and attempt to tunnel out through my ankle.

Joining up the multitude of throbbing bites in a dot to dot style would spell “scratch me now”and boy did we want to. Eventually this urge became too strong to ignore, generally during a dull spell of distance driving. Which was slightly perturbing as your spouse would suddenly disappear from view, except for a nonchalant finger resting lightly on the steering wheel.

The rest of her would be under the dashboard desperately scratching at the never ending itch. And that’s generally fine due to the total lack of traffic but occasionally a orgasmic ahhhhh would be firmly interrupted with a shriek of “CLIFF AHEAD” from the passenger seat.

Talking of gaps as we are, the floor to ceiling distance between Cab and Slab is around 5 feet. I am 6 feet, or at least I was. I am gradually being whittled down through attritional smacks round the back of the head. Over the last two weeks, my retreating summit has been glacially eroded to 5ft 7, and all my hair is falling out. Although the latter has been going on for some time, based on some recent and disturbing photo evidence.

As observed in an earlier post, there are certain mechanical traits which smack of genius including an electrical system which operates on both 12v and 240v without exploding during the transition between the two, and a complex two tank water system which somehow fails to irrigate the road in your direction of travel. But some quick work with a calculator establishes that three tons of ventilated brick – driven mostly on full throttle – manages nearly 23 miles to the gallon. That’s not genius, that’s bloody magic.

Tomorrow we’re trading in the bus for a normal family sized car. This strange and small vehicle will transport us to the Coromandel where most of the family will spend in different rooms adjusting to a non motorised house. Except for this one who’ll be substituting “lying on a beachâ” with “ragging round a mountain bike trail”

Less than a week left. Tell me the UK has magically become warm, clean, inviting and deficient of about fifty million people.

* Random had transported some illegal hair termites into the country. Which means someone in her class has some explaining to do.

** Although in most cases, the horse had died of boredom.

*** This is known in academic circles as Schroedinger’s Crumpet

**** This did solve the nocturnal problem with needing a wee. I’m sure you can work it out.

Vans, tans and plans

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography3 Comments
Milford Sound, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

The hedgehog truck has finally reached the East coast on our last full day in the South Island. We’ve just spent a couple of hours being taught how to swim by friendly seals. Although since a fur seal spends 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of it’s life sunbathing, fighting and shagging, there was also much comedy bobbing about in buoyant wetsuits waiting for them to go seaborne.

And because I am sure you really aren’t interested in what we did on our holidays, I am instead going to talk about the hierarchy of camper vans. But before that, it is worth explaining that Carol and I are just about mountain’d out. As we crested yet another spectacular mountain pass sheltering fathoms of perfectly formed azure lakes, glances were exchanged and a quiet nod confirmed that’d just about do, thanks.

On the way back to ChristchurchWanaka lake

Because when the superlative barrel is well and truly scraped and a million electrons slaved to capture the picture perfect*, a certain blase replaces the ground state of awe and wide mouthed pointing. When we’re stuck in traffic on a shitty late winter’s day back in the UK, we;ll laugh about that. Probably.

Anyway, Vans. On the South Island, every third vehicle is a truck** which- as they perambulate wildly at almost no speed – must really piss off the locals. About three companies corner a hugely profitable market with the rest forced to scrap it out with beaten up cheap vans or niche offerings.

The Love BusFalls

I must admit to a spot of motor-home envy during the trip, a worthwhile discourse to be properly covered in a later post. Our happy bus is a big diesel Merc with the standard slabby body kit bolted on. The engine is well into its’ third century of kilometres and the interior design is only a couple of woodchip walls away from the whole seventies experience.

Continue reading “Vans, tans and plans” →

Do you want to go Mountain Biking?

On By PhotoIn Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff, Photography3 Comments
Gimboid, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

After calling the Vatican to confirm the Pope was still a Catholic, I hot-footed down to the bike hire store at Hanmer Springs and hired an “executive” MTB. For my extra $10, disc brakes accesorised a suspension fork that excelled at holding the front end up. It didn’t appear to offer any other damping functions other than emitting a howling click on encountering even the smallest bump.

On the upside, it was attached to a mountain bike and a morning of virgin, dustry trails – baked hard under a perfect blue sky – awaited my desperate-to-ride persona. For the next four hours, I was essentially lost – signage in NZ is generally fantastic due mainly to the fact there are only about 10 roads but the $1 map lacked a certain accuracy when measured against scale and terrain.

But the trails were mine alone and after some false starts, mappage faffage and a blatent “sorry, I’m a tourist” approach to some walking only routes, improvement was rapid. A couple of sketchy descents on commuter pedals only lightly gripped by knackered VANs, it became clear that stacking here would result in a slow lingering death by hungry sandfly.

So proceeding carefully in the manner of a man lacking both riding skills and spacial awareness, I was amazed to divine a dusty trail that smelt of woody singletrack. And for the next 7 kilometres it rolled out a bonaza of sculptered corners, rooty drops, a smattering of ohfuckme North Shore and limitless hand crafted berms.

Hero LineBeer

The local MTB group has clearly put a huge amount of work in, so it seemed a bit mean to only ride it once. I pushed half way back up, scared myself a couple more times before having to choose between another attempt at full speed or a beer.

Well, OBVIOUSLY, I went for beer.

Some people may brand my posting an MTB blog while on holiday a bit obsessive. So for the purposes of balance, here are some pictures of lakes and glaciers encountered on a moist walk to the Franz Joseph Glacier.

Franz Joseph GlacierPeters Pool

Anyway I’m off to take the local spring waters follwed closely by taking rather more of the local hop waters. Tomorrow we’re off to swim with seals although Random insists we’ll be in the water with eels. She is not – as I sort of remember from what feels like far away corporate speak – with the programme 😉

PS. Sorry for piss poor spelling. Running out of internet time and $10 buys two beers!

Kia Ora!

On By PhotoIn Other stuff, Photography1 Comment

Lake Pukaki, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

As the famous beverage advert almost goes. A week has already passed in a blur of stunning scenery, epic mountain passes and a thousand comedy moments in the big sleeping truck. Somewhere between high speed jetboating, more relaxed boat trips through fiords, glow worm caves and innumerable photo stops we’ve covered a thousand kilometres on the South Island.

Now we’re going to kick back a bit as it has become obvious that three weeks doesn’t even scratch the surface of this fantastic country. We’d like to spend less time on the tourist trail and a little more time exploring. Our biggest regret so far is not pushing on one night to stay at the side of Lake Gunn on the road to Milford Sound.

The whole camper van experience has been great fun. It works fantastically well with kids and while the big camp sites are cheap, clean and convenient, being totally self sufficient provides the perfect opportunity to just park up in a DoC rural site and enjoy the solitude. Except for the kids of course who seem to have embraced the whole experience with the kind of cheery noncholance that we could all do with a bit more of.

We’ve less than a week left on the South Island and have started to cull our list of things to do. And that leaves plenty of time to head out to the Franz Josef Glacier, dive into the hot springs at Hamner and wallow around with dolphins in the sea at Kaikora.

Heading over to the North Island, I’m really looking forward to the Te Papa Mauri museam in Wellington. The kids are looking forward to it as well, as I’ve promised them they can return to splashing and giggling in return for looking intelligent and interested in some history for an hour or so.

There are so many things we’re not going to have time to do, it seems I’ll need to find a grandmother to sell or rent out hides for “cabbage watching” so we can come back. Right now, with the warmth of the summer and the New Zealand people, this seems like the best place in the world to be 🙂

I had a dream

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

But not in a Martin Luther King way. I spent most of last night dreaming of violent plane crashes and motorhomes plunging down steep sided cliffs.

I’ve decided not to share this with Carol as she is clearly already a women on the edge. After ten years of marriage, I recognise the signs – manic house cleaning, packing and repacking the bags, screaming “Don’t MAKE ME GET ON THE PLANE“, that kind of thing. I like to think that empathy is one of my strong suits so I’ve restricted myself to the odd helpful grunt.

And not mentioning the entire family dying in a flaming pyre of wreckage.

We seem to have packed few clothes but many electronic devices which could be the wrong way round, but this would be a bad time to question the logistical planning of my long suffering wife. My contribution was counting camera batteries and googling “Nicest beer in New Zealand”

What’s that I hear? Yes. yes, alright we’re definitely going now 🙂

If the Devil designed websites…

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site Stuff3 Comments

He would look approvingly on the labyrinth of hell that is American Express Internet presence and declare his work done. After nearly converting the laptop into a discus, I’ve come to the conclusion this is a cunning ploy to ensnare you in a web of vaguely related sites until you’re forced to call the premium phone line. Never have I seen anything so under performing, so badly laid out, so bereft of any usefulness and so insanely hard to navigate. Well, except maybe for Belgium.

Old Lucifer could then turn his horns onto Valentines day which is a real triumph of marketing. Dapper gentlemen with speech impediments machine gunning each other in 1920’s America were magically converted into a multi billion pound love industry. So mainlining that grumpy vain, I decided to send Carol my Valentines wishes by email. That’s almost as good isn’t it? It wasn’t as if I actually forgot*. I mean she’s not going to think I didn’t try is she?**

Work is basically flipping between “ARRRRGHHHH” and “GRRRRRRRR“. All I will say is if you are not prepared to accept the answer, don’t ask the sodding question. It is fine timing that we are going on holiday, otherwise my frustration may lead to mugging innocent members of staff as I angrily vibrate down the corridors of cower***

Are we ready to go on holiday? In a word, no. In a few more words “has anyone invented a time machine?”. Carol is rigorously enforcing the luggage limit by ruthlessly returning what the kids demand are mandatory items. In Random’s case, this includes the house. She’s not totally grasped the concept of a motorhome and seems to think we’ll be sleeping under bridges. Which considering my Valentine faux pas, I may well be. Or with the fishes, if we’re going back to the original concept of the day.

My packing involves hiding money for beer, and unearthing cleanish shorts, sunnies and a novelty hat. And finding a way to decouple the part of my brain that is suffering from PMT ****. And between now and actually arriving in a place where email doesn’t, there are days of travel hell which represent a similar amount of pleasure as passing a hedgehog shaped poo. I expect the pain to last almost as long as well.

And on that happy note, I shall begone to warmer climbs. There is the slimmest chance of some outside broadcast hedgehog should the twin planets of sobriety and Internet access align themselves in my personal geography. Failing that, enjoy the rest of your winter and expect photographs and lies when I’m back.

Which is on March 10th. I cannot tell you how good it feels to write that 🙂

* Okay I did

** She is

*** Like power only with more terror.

**** Post Management Trauma.

Chicks digs scars.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff11 Comments

I’m sorry to disappoint all you cultivating bloodied puncture wounds, but this statement is a a bit of a porker. Oozing with unpleasant substances, bad for your health and about as sexually attractive as venereal disease. So here’s the truth – chain rings dig scars as graphically demonstrated by the grizzly tattoo on my calf. In fact, the whole leg appears to have gone ten rounds with a lunatic armed with an industrial staple gun.

This was one of the only two downsides of a weekend ride under sunny skies on mostly dry trails. Obviously now we’re off to summer at the other side of the world, I care not if it buckets with hail and snow for the next three weeks. On thinking such pernicious thoughts, a brief glance at the Internet proxied weather tea leaves informed of pissing rain in New Zealand. This is either a meteorological blip during their otherwise fantastic summer, or the start of the monsoon season.

The second downside was more a downsize. Of a chain which mistook an innocent shift to the granny ring to instead somehow escape the front mech ,and wedge itself firmly betwixt crankset and chainstay. After some scratching of heads, dismantlement of the majority of the bike and some keen action on the chain tool, my 27 geared steed was reduced to a somewhat more humble 5.

I’m blaming a combination of Gimp-on-board(tm) cackhandness, rushed builds and bad karma from silently mocking my friends’ singlespeed a few minutes earlier. “Hah when it gets hilly, I shall unleash my vast array of easy pedalling ratios” I carelessly gloated.

But this loss of cogs hardly ruined the ride – the Cove is fantastic everywhere; light and quick uphill, terrifyingly competent in the twisties and nonchalantly banzai when heading downhill. My efforts to fall off were easily dealt with until a log based endo saw the spinning chainrings of doom harvest a few inches of skin.

A spot of beer focussed research selected the easy option of throwing some money at the problem. That’s fixing the thuggery of the chainset rather than the bleeding of the leg. Although you could hear the “Cry of the Lesser Haired Wuss” for many miles when bloodied stump hit hot bathwater.

It’s a keeper this one* and I really think the selection of rather lovely bicycles may be complete for some time to come**. This may be for the rather practical reason that our offer on “Cabbage-Land” has been accepted. I’ve no idea what this means, except that I am now funding the Devil’s lawyer and financier to complete the transaction.

This calls for a beer to reflect on what an interesting year it has been already, and to wonder of the experience that decamping to a county where only out of towners have 10 digit hands.

Well not really, I just fancy a beer 😉

* I can hear you laughing. And I’m ignoring you. But taking names come the revolution.

** And don’t chortle. It’s unbecoming.