Cyclocross: All of the faff

It’s the National Championships at the weekend, and time to reflect as the season approaches its finale.

Cyclocross is a strange sport. It breeds and harbours obsessives. For a discipline that involves belting around muddy fields, there is an inordinate amount of fine-tuning, preparation and finesse… from the meticulously exact tyre pressures for the conditions in the correct tubulars with the correct tread, to the perfecting of the right line on the course recce at 8am in -2°C. The right clothes, the right food, just enough sleep, the right warm-up… the training, the bike fettling, and even the Dirt Bags to make sure we clean off properly after a play in the mud.

This short road movie is about all of the faff of cyclocross for team mate Alan Dorrington and I as we covered the northern half of England in the final three rounds of British Cycling’s National Trophy series.

Yeah, we raced, too. But that was just for a few minutes every fortnight.

Easter Holiday on Arran

Holiday on Arran

Been too long since our last family trip to Scotland just over 2 years ago and we were all very excited to get a holiday booked on the Isle of Arran this Easter. It has all the necessary aspects of a good family holiday venue for us Haygarths. More outdoors stuff than you can shake a stick of driftwood at, wildlife, mountains, beaches… just great. Continue reading “Easter Holiday on Arran”

A midwinter p-p-p-pick-me up

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It was Lily’s school Christmas Concert on Tuesday and she and some of her friends danced a delightful penguin dance. Sorry for the rubbish mobile phone quality of the fillum you’re about to watch. (Lily’s the one on the far left at the start and finish)

What’s the music called? It’s so familiar and on loads of things but I don’t know what it’s called and who it’s by. I Googled it: Perez Prado – “Guaglione”.

Oh, and on the subject of fish, which we almost were (it’s something on most penguins’ minds):
Two fish swim into a concrete wall. The one turns to the other and says, “Dam!”

Video of our brief Suffolk holiday

It seems ages ago now and it’s hard to think it’s just a couple of weeks since we had a great few days in some brilliant weather on the East Anglian coast. Just got round to editing together the video last night. It’s almost exclusively beach stuff but that’s pretty much what we did in the daylight.

In praise of the rockafeller skank.

This doesn’t come easy. I’m not a mainstream person. Well, I am, really – that’s what all this is about, but I don’t occupy the middle ground that easily still. I’m 38 and it’s getting so much easier. My love of the Carpenters and Doris Day will be confessed openly soon (and if you think I’m joking, Stop, wait a minute Mr Postman and Move Over Darling).

I was sorting out the overcrowded and badly tagged iPod this evening for the first time … ever. The pleasure that a clean brak has given me is possibly a bit anal but I’m happy to admit that a tidy home is a happy home.

One thing that’s never been on there is FGat Boy Slim’s “You’ve Come a Long Way Baby” album from 1998. I never got round to burning it as Katie and I (and th near neighbours of our house in Gloucester Road, Cheltenham) had played it seemingly to death in 1998.

However, a bit of an audio audit has rekindled the flame that played it to death in the first place. Despite being a mainstream radio staple, The Rockafeller Skank is just a plain old killer and summarises the era. Chapeau, Quentin.

>The Rockafeller Skank