By Swindon, what a fantastic place?!

One of the reason that we don't like Swindon much is it doesn't have much character or history or culture. Or so we thought!

We were eating out the other night and ended up - for what reason I can't remember - looking up Swindon on Wikipaedia. Turns out it has some quite impressive claims as a town!

Swindon has a few "firsts":

• Of course the Magic Roundabout was the first and, as far as I know, still is the only "multi-mini" roundabout!
• The first recorded railway refreshment rooms
• The UK's first lending library

It holds some records:

• More people have joined the Hare Krishna movement in Swindon than in any other English town.
• In May 2007 Swindon had the highest percentage of households with broadband internet access.

And it has some claims on being the perfect town:

• The health system set up at the railway works was used as a blueprint for the NHS.
• Apparently The Times recently listed Swindon as one of the top 20 places to buy a property in Britain.
• "Swindon is considered to be an almost exact microcosm of the whole United Kingdom in its demographic make-up"
• In 2007 an insurance company reported Swindon to be the second safest place to live in the UK!

However, despite all those amazing things, our feelings about the town are summed up in this little factoid:

The father of The Nice Family (a caricature of a strictly disciplined, dull family) in Channel 4's "Absolutely" exclaims "By Swindon, this is an inspiring tale!" during a particularly boring presentation by a travelling salesman.

"By Swindon!" - now there's an exclamation that I might have to adopt!!

Rats, Backs and not cycling.

It's been a bit of a hectic time of late so I have another backlog of posts to write. Watch this space for some back-dated things that I didn't have time to write about properly when they popped into my head.

Rats

So, our house now smells, quite pungently, of dead rat. At least we think it's dead rat. It stinks a bit, but we're kinda used to it now. They ate all the pest-controller's poison and he came back and re-baited the place, and they haven't eaten any more since that second visit. Which suggests that they haven't eaten anything. Which suggests that they're dead! We've not heard them for a while either so it's all looking good rat-wise.

We've also been outside and plugged up the holes where we think they were getting in. So hopefully that'll be the last vermin we have to deal with for a while.

Backs

I mentioned in passing the other week that I had a bad back again. This all started a couple of days after my post-Christmas "good ride". It started in my middle back, faded after a couple of days, and then came back with a vengeance in my lower back. Crazy country dancing at the wedding the other week didn't help of course.

I've seen the physio twice and all he seems to be able to do is move the pain around, rather than fix it. Looks like everything from my hamstrings to my hip flexors is screwed up and tight.

I've tried doing a bit of cycling with it (as you will read about elsewhere) and that, oddly, seems to help. But it's not going away and it's causing me more pain and frustration. I had a really low evening mid-week where it all got to me, but I've picked myself up again and have been feeling a bit more myself in the last couple of days.

The real improvement seems to have come by doing nothing - no stretching, no cycling, just sitting or lying still for as long as possible each day. I think all the muscles need to just relax themselves. I'm learning AGAIN not to throw myself into things too much and that sometimes I just need to stop.

Not Cycling

NOT cycling is an odd thing for me to be writing about. But I am not-cycling at the moment because of my back. Which means I'm driving to work. Which is, itself, depressing and frustrating.

Most people in Swindon can't live more than a few miles from where they work, yet they insist on sitting in queues of traffic for hours on end looking miserable and angry. It really bothers me. Perhaps they've never considered that cycling or walking is an option? I'd much rather be moving on two wheels than sat doing nothing in a big box on 4. Plus, the globe is warming and petrol prices are going sky-high (104.9 at Sainsbury's!). Why drive? Once I'm 100% well again I'm definitely doing as much not-driving as possible!

I wonder what we can do to get people out of there cars more. It strikes me that if we can't do it in a small town with excellent cycle routes like Swindon then where CAN we do it?

Song 3: Del Amitri's 'Nothing Ever Happens' - Update

MOSTLY learnt all of the words and the chords were pretty simple. It's been a busy week and this will roll on to next week now. Looks like I'm only make 51 songs. :-(

Oh well - at least I haven't bailed out completely yet!

Transformations!

So, when we moved into our house the front room looked kinda like this:

It should be pointed out that the red stripe was NOT our idea. The general mess and clutter was.

Now, Sally has put a LOT of work into the painting. Her approach is very much little bits here and there whenever time permits. Whereas mine is to book some serious time out and do a load in one big go. And so, with great glee, we have taken a weekend off and finished off (mostly) the front room's facelift:

I think you'll agree is looks substantially more charming, sophisticated, pretty, homely, warm, open and a whole load of other things. We appreciate that it won't be to everyone's taste, but we like it a LOT!


In fact, I'm VERY surprised at how different it looks and I feel quite inspired to get on and make the rest of our house "ours".

First few days on the new Bike

So...now it's dry I've been able to have a few days commuting on the Felt (which Sally has suggested be called "Fuzzy"...Fuzzy Felt...geddit?). What's it like?

Well.

IT'S AWESOME. It's so comfortable that it seems to be helping my bad back get better. It's so light. It's so quick.

Actually, it doesn't seem to have a higher top-gear than the Raleigh, but the acceleration is so fast and smooth you arrive at top speed very quickly and can much more easily maintain it.

I have had some more learning to do. I was a bit tentative after my fall on Saturday, but in the dry it does corner OK. I've yet to push it hard and fast round a corner though and the bike does very much want to go in a straight line. I'm wondering if I turned the handlebars too much on Saturday rather than leaning?

The dropped bars are great for the variety of hand positions, but it's sometimes a bit shaky getting between them - especially the one time I actually went down to the drops. How are you supposed to do this? One hand at a time knocks your steering off.

I've also had problems with riding through town. Braking, changing down and indicating at the same time is much harder on this bike, especially while I'm nervously preparing to corner too. The trick with indicating from the brake hoods definitely seems to be to grip tight with the hand on the bars while you do the one-handed thing.

In addition to my little scratches from the weekend I now also have a bit of surface rust (see picture). I don't THINK this is a big deal and I'm hoping it will disappear just with wear. But proof that you should definitely dry the chain off properly after a wet ride.

In general then, I'm very glad I invested in a road bike. It WAS worth it after all, and I'm looking forward for some more dry weather to really take it on a decent run.