shed mouse has got some nerve. first eating our Brexit spaghetti. and now it’s taken to eating the caps off bike chain lube (that’s two bottles lost to it now) and the straps of every single piece of bike luggage I own. humane or kill trap? both make me feel sick, but then, so does the rage I have for shed mouse, so.
I was pretty dismayed by the comments on Gary Younge’s excellent piece in the FT (paywall, but the key sentence is probably: “The racism we are dealing with isn’t a question of a few bad apples but a contaminated barrel. It’s a systemic problem and will require a systemic solution.”). a lot of ‘all lives matter’, so there’s an example of people who are presumably reasonably well educated having not learned…anything at all, in the past six weeks. good to see how far uphill we have to go! black trans lives matter, btw. I’m doing my best to be braver at work and saying things that maybe previously I would’ve kept to myself. I don’t expect any medals for it; should’ve done it a long time ago.
for some reason, despite never having worked in the cycling industry, my activism lies mostly in cycling infrastructure policy. maybe because it’s, well, intersectional: safer infrastructure for getting around cities on a bike can benefit pretty much everyone. often it’s people on lower incomes who don’t have cars, and the roads are already safe for people in Range Rovers. and it’s not right that the image of cycling in London is a middle-aged man in lycra (known as a MAMIL). from TfL’s 2016 report on cycling potential: “more than half of all trips made by residents using motorised modes could be cycled.” “The most significant barrier to realising this potential is that most cyclable trips are made by people that do not cycle at all.” “According to 2016 figures from TfL, Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) groups account for 15 per cent of current cycle trips, but 38 per cent of potentially cyclable trips.”
a qualitative insight into Black women cycling in London is Jools’ book ’Back in the Frame’ - Jools gave up cycling as a teenager, and refound it as an adult, and the book is really about that. part of this is being a teenage girl (I stopped cycling between about 11 and 21, too), but heck it’s way harder to go back into doing something when you don’t see others who look like you doing it as well.
not going to go on and on, mostly because it’s bedtime, but access to safe cycling is an intersectional political issue and yes I have been writing to my elected representatives about this.
C got offered a fully funded PhD position by UCL. I’m very proud. our main response was to stick the flat on the market and start looking at larger places near the sea, because 5 days a week in an office (or hospital, in C’s case) ain’t happening for either of us now for the foreseeable and if we’re both going to work from home, we’re going to need a bigger boat I mean place to live. made an offer on somewhere yesterday, so fingers crossed.. owned by (based on the photos up on the walls) a lesbian couple, so maybe there’ll be some pride solidarity in our favour?!
hi, sellers, if you googled me. sorry for creeping on your pictures, we like your house and would like to live there!