Sports desk with Neasden Postlethwaite
Apr. 3rd, 2008 10:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hirezTop tip: On your ride home, do not try to keep up with the cyclo-cross enthusiast on the Ti road bike when it is your first day back in the saddle after a month of lung-bugs and you are riding the hybrid with the panniers and the BFO U-lock.
Still, all good fun and gosh but doesn't the world smell nice? Damp earth, wild garlic, diesel, creosote, organophosphates, rusty steel... Hurrah for Sustrans and the Bristol-Bath cycle path.
Anyway. A random sort of conversation with mater (as if there were any other sort) brought to mind road accidents. When I was tiny, we used to live about equidistant from Winchcombe and Andoversford. Andoversford had a cattle market, a couple of pubs and Victory Mechanics, who were the local (Ford/New Holland) agricultural engineers. As a result, we'd go there fairly regularly.
You'll note from the Google link above that the section of A40 there is a dual carriageway. That's relatively recent. This is a pre-Beeching picture of the place.
Anyway, when the post-Beeching bypass was instantiated, there were no traffic lights on the A40/A436 junction, or indeed a haven for cars turning right off the A40 in either direction.
There were A Lot of messy road-accidents. Since this was before proper seatbelts, safety cells, decent brakes and paramedics, I suspect all the fire brigade could do would be collect the body parts, hose the blood off the road and then tow the twisted wreckage to the forecourt to Tubb's Garage. (bottom left in the second picture) Which as a small child I would goggle at from the Land-Rover, Renault 16 or Ford Corsair window. I don't remember what I thought about them. More than likely I would try to identify what the mangled heaps of tinwork had been. Were I more of a lying bastard than I already am, I'd claim some Ballardian coincidence and make out that I was trying to work out the relative trajectories of the vehicles involved. However I was five or six, indeed probably even younger.
I don't know where I'm going with this.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ladymoonray jogged something related in the back of my head the other week, and I'm not even sure I'd thought about that other thing properly before then.
Strange business, life.
Still, all good fun and gosh but doesn't the world smell nice? Damp earth, wild garlic, diesel, creosote, organophosphates, rusty steel... Hurrah for Sustrans and the Bristol-Bath cycle path.
Anyway. A random sort of conversation with mater (as if there were any other sort) brought to mind road accidents. When I was tiny, we used to live about equidistant from Winchcombe and Andoversford. Andoversford had a cattle market, a couple of pubs and Victory Mechanics, who were the local (Ford/New Holland) agricultural engineers. As a result, we'd go there fairly regularly.
You'll note from the Google link above that the section of A40 there is a dual carriageway. That's relatively recent. This is a pre-Beeching picture of the place.
Anyway, when the post-Beeching bypass was instantiated, there were no traffic lights on the A40/A436 junction, or indeed a haven for cars turning right off the A40 in either direction.
There were A Lot of messy road-accidents. Since this was before proper seatbelts, safety cells, decent brakes and paramedics, I suspect all the fire brigade could do would be collect the body parts, hose the blood off the road and then tow the twisted wreckage to the forecourt to Tubb's Garage. (bottom left in the second picture) Which as a small child I would goggle at from the Land-Rover, Renault 16 or Ford Corsair window. I don't remember what I thought about them. More than likely I would try to identify what the mangled heaps of tinwork had been. Were I more of a lying bastard than I already am, I'd claim some Ballardian coincidence and make out that I was trying to work out the relative trajectories of the vehicles involved. However I was five or six, indeed probably even younger.
I don't know where I'm going with this.
ladymoonray jogged something related in the back of my head the other week, and I'm not even sure I'd thought about that other thing properly before then. Strange business, life.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 11:30 am (UTC)My folks had a Renault 16, which they sold for one of the first Audi 100s in the country in about 1973. I recall looking into a mangled MG Midget in a garage on the A47 to Wisbech which had obviously hit something a lot bigger. I remember seeing a solitary shoe in the footwell and lots of blood. And yeah, I did try to identify mangled stuff...
no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 12:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-04 01:41 pm (UTC)Given I am one of the lycra-clad most of the time (It's a lot more comfortable and copes better with changing weather than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt), annoying the golf-club[1] types should be relatively easy. I need to get fit enough for the sportive in a couple of months. Everything else is a side benefit.
[1] If you recall the golf catalogues Lying about your house, they're the sort of people who'll buy monogrammed unobtanium putters that have been tested in a wind-tunnel 'because it'll help their game'. Ignoring the fact that most golfers are beyond help anyway, getting the physical bits right is going to be more use than a carbon-fibre bottle holder.