Drip

Soooooooo hot today and I wore completely the wrong clothes - all-encompassing shoes, socks, long-sleeved top and jeans. Rubbish. Luckily, work has strong air-conditioning and I was fine there, but when I met Fred at lunch and after work, I suffered. We went to "Tales from the Saddle" at Stanfords bookshop. Four cyclists spoke to us in the sweltering heat about their travels in Britain and abroad, cycle lanes, lobbying to change laws and reading between the lines in the guide books. For example, John Grimshaw, founder of Sustrans suggested that the phrase "make your way across" may possibly mean "attempt to cycle across", but of course he can't say "cycle across" in print because it usually refers to areas where cyclists don't have any indication of whether they can cycle in an area or not, such as across pedestrianised town centres and some farm tracks. Cyclists can try, though, as long as there's no danger to anyone, of course.

Other speakers were the Hungry Cyclist, a member of the CTC, and someone from the London Cycling Campaign. Cycling seems to be stepping up. Fred cycled past Boris yesterday on Clapham Common launching his bicycle superhighway scheme. The hire bikes will be active in two weeks - I'm trying my best not to be skeptical and I have all my fingers crossed that they won't appear at the bottom of the Thames or smuggled out of the city.

Once the speakers at Stanfords had finished and we were about the faint with the heat, we were revived by ice-cold beers. Now that's what I call a most civilized book event. Beer did the trick.

I saw this drip on the wall of Waterloo station on the way home.