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Update: 2026
Somehow, and I’m taking absolutely no responsibility, this blog has limped into its 20th year. Ah how I cherish the energy, creativity and a spleen in a permanent state of venting representing those early years.
Now it’s not so much remember what I meant to write, but the repeatedly startling fact I have a blog ready for what passes as human generated content in this age of AI. I like to think of that as “Al Intelligence” but frankly, it’s not caught on in the way I had hoped.
The original page from 2006 remains preserved below. I may miss the impulsive random scribbles bookending a never knowingly competent train service, but I certainly don’t miss the actual experience of commuting to London.
Not wishing to be prescriptive but having read this section, you may escape back out into the real world without being exposed to the accumulated drivel of the rest of the site.
Well I pity you poor reader.
Like electronic driftwood dashed against this rock of imbecility, you find yourself abandoned and ignored with only my incoherent ramblings for company. And what ramblings they are – pointless nuggets gushing forth from the small angry volcano, which I’m laughingly referring to as my mind.
Why bother you may ask? Who else – other than your mum – is going to read it? But mired as we are in the culture of “a thousand channels but nothing on“, my defence is simply that in a sea of mediocrity who the hell cares? While this blog is unlikely to soar above the waves like a cavorting dolphin, it shall neither rest on the sea bed bottom feeding. Well that’s the hope anyway and there’s good money to be had for positive comments.
So rather than why? More why now? Like many misguided souls on the cusp of another year, sometimes I feel obliged to at least have a stab at a resolution. These traditionally follow the cycle of unrealistic commitments rapidly being watered down to mere guidelines before – a few days in – being lobbed in the bin of absolution and abandoned.
So this year, I’ve decided than rather than compound my own misery by giving up some guilty pleasures, instead I’d spam anyone with more time than taste through use of the blog. Misery loves company after all.
Vanity alone would not normally be enough to test my fragile self-esteem against a bunch of people who may have already critiqued the blog-sphere and found themselves strangely engrossed by the activities of nude herring throwers. No, it has been the triple whammy of turning 38, commuting to London in a bike-train-bike sandwich and exercising my microscopic tolerance gland which has finally driven me to it.
If your boredom threshold knows no limits and you read beyond this page, it’ll become immediately apparent that I’ve crossed the line between a hobby and a mental illness. And that illness is mountain bikes. Writing about them, buying them, selling them, breaking them, fixing them, getting someone else to fix them and very occasionally riding them.
Wild accusations backed up by conspiracy theories and poorly researched observations on many and varied subjects of which I know nothing at all shall be the norm. Anything errudite, well argued or even slightly compelling is likely to be evidence of a security breach and site hack.
So now you know what you’ve not been missing, I’d like to say thanks for stopping by.