A word to cities considering bikeshare schemes

1. Congratulations for having such a great idea. Not only will it cut down on traffic and maybe even persuade your denizens to drop a few pounds, but it will help shut people up about transport strikes, high gas prices, and how you're doing fuck-all about environmental issues only regional and national governments are in a position to do anything about

2. Sadly, bikes are not enough. You need to sink a bit of money to the infrastructure for them at the same time, as has been done in Paris with the Velib scheme, and has not been done here with the Villo scheme, and has not been done in Amsterdam because they don't need to.

3. But most of all - and this is what I really came here to say - and it's bugging the hell out of me, because I can't find the Dutch site - don't go the Velib and Villo route, and set up your city with ten-speed monsters with squeeze brakes. Go the Amsterdam route and get the simplest possible city bikes - no speeds, and backpedal brakes. They'll be cheaper to buy, cheaper to maintain, and less annoying for the users overall. And it will be less expensive and provocative when brainless young trogladytes push them into the canals/traffic/rivers/up their own useless asses.

Three rotten things happened last night

1. The Chaser's War on Everything ended forever. Australians apparently have the same habit of axing television programmes before they run out of ideas and turn into painful, undead farce (seasons 5-7 of the Sopranos, anyone?) that the British have. And that's one of the few things I admire about the British. But as a North American, that's foreign to me (every season following the first of Sex and the City, anyone?) and so I'm still so sad they're gone. They say they'll be back with something else, but who, oh who, will embarass themselves with Australian politicians in the meantime, giving me an indirect study of that country's political firmament?

Two fave moments - one from the first season, one from the last:






Sigh.

2. I finished Adam Bede. There's no more, it's over. Heartbreaking. But I'm still chuffed that I've got four more Eliot monsters to wade into, and after finishing the book I opened it again at random and all the words were still there, thankfully. It will be a good re-read, and a frequent one. Being a stoner I love re-reading books. On the second read, after a few pipes, it's like a fucking private cinema in my brain. And any cinema featuring my new crush Adam is going to be hot.

3. Lexie fell off some boxes. I think her leg is broken. Unutterably distressing, but she doesn't seem to be in distress, she's putting some weight on it, and I'll take her to the vet this afternoon. If she needs some focussed attention I'll have to put off my departure for Lisbon until Monday, and that will be on the fucking overnight coach - there are either no planes left, or they're prohibitively expensive. Oh well. I won't care if she'll be okay. I was absolutely distraught until she started purring, and I realized cats aren't horses, and we won't have to shoot her if it actually is busted. So all will be well, I hope.

In which I get a better hero

Almost done Adam Bede. I fear Eliot jumped the shark in part six, but Adam Bede has officially become my new literary wank-fantasy. What a man. Much better than that leering shitheel Rochester, or that conversationally-challenged Wentworth in Persuasion. In my brain, Adam Bede is like a guy in a less-murderous Bad Seeds song. Like celebrity wank-fantasy Nick Cave with a chin and muscles and no heroin - and instead of music, carpentry. Hehhehheh. Wood. Sweet.

Do I make sense? No, but I bet the Adam Bede miniseries currently playing in my brain is more amusing than the 1991 minseries, when Patsy Fucking Kensit, of all people, played Hetty. Yeah, that's it, get a fucking chiselled albino to play a blooming, round young brunette. Stupid fucking BBC.

Big wah

Working from home today. Sniffly, coughy, and fucking frightened of getting sick before going to Portugal. Mind you I was coughy and sniffly before going to Croatia, and the minute I stepped off the plane there everything seemed to clear up. Sometimes I wonder if the flu actually exists as a virus rather than our bodies demonstrating their misery at us making them live in a Neanderthal climate. And once in awhile it turns into a pandemic and a kajillion of us die. We're not Neanderthals, for fuck's sake, we're fucking savannah monkeys. What are we doing up here? What the fuck are we doing up here?

In other news, the sun is out for now, so at least I can write about the disintegration of western capitalism on my balcony. Yayyyy! Also last night we started watching Coast, and it's adorable. In a deeply public school way, though . . . had some discussions with Rodelina about that - about people from public schools in Britain, and people who are invisible, or football players, or people fucking football players. Sometimes I wonder why anybody stays in that country - why be sidelined like that?

In which the biking, kayaking, fishing and boating goes some way to undoing all the smoke damage

Amsterdam has a bit of a reputation of being a tourist hole and I understand that on that basis some people have been disenchanted with it, as in fact I remember being after my first couple of stop'n'smoke visits. But the thing that never stops being so remarkable for me is how the deeper you dig, the more you uncover layers of charm and organization.

We spent the weekend doing stuff, and very little of it in downtown Amsterdam. Well. Hours of it in downtown Amsterdam, but not really, because the San Franciscas have bought a boat, and we tooled around on that for an afternoon, the F-word getting the opportunity to steer - wow. It was a beautiful way to see the city, and really cut down on the number of high Americans we had to listen say beastly things, like 'yeah, we can just walk on the street, you're allowed to do that in Amsterdam' or, worse, 'I feel so dirty'. It was awesome.

And then we went out to where they live, in Amstelveen, and went fishing, and biking, and kayaking - much of it in the Amsterdam Bos, which I've enthused about before. And I've enthused about the sheer Dutch genius for spacial organization, so I won't go on about that too much either. But I was amazed - flabbergasted, if flabbergaster fits in with a deep sense of peace and enjoyment - about how we could spend a couple of hours paddling through the park next to such a huge, densely populated capital on a rare sunny, warm day and feel x1000 times more alone and in the wild than the Lesse River in September . . . and I must also say that, as we cycled back to the San Francisca's home after the day in the park, I had to keep asking "are we still in the park?" because the entire suburb was green and quiet and full of birds. Lovely.

Of course, it helped that it was sunny. Amsterdam in the sun is, I verily believe, the loveliest place on earth. Even without the sun . . . wow. Good on you, Dutchies, that's some fucking good urban planning. Aside from that, read about half of Adam Bede on the slow train and whilst too twitchy to fall asleep Saturday. I've been dancing around George Eliot for as long as I can remember, and Silas Marner really made me decide I'd have to go for her wholesale, but this is my first big bite and it's yummy and plummy. She puts a suspicious number of similes in the mouths of her characters, but I'm getting over that because from memory northerners do have a certain facility of metaphor which their more repressed cousins in the south lack. Anyways, more when I'm done.