Over the Hills and Far Away

Sorry, I haven’t blogged for ages. I’ve had very little to say, so I’ve said it, at length, on Twitter.

One of the things I’ve been doing is sewing. Grandma left me her sewing machine in her will, “to keep or dispose of as I saw fit.”

So I kept it. It’s lovely. Not pretty to look at, but it’s bombproof.

It had previously been living at my parents’ in Hampshire, which seemed sensible while I was first learning how to use it, but once I had cleared out the Cupboard of Doom by the front door so I had somewhere to keep it and the associated paraphernalia, I brought it up to London.

Have you ever tried taking a metal cased (and therefore heavy and awkward to carry) sewing machine anywhere by public transport? It’s do-able, but you will find a wheeled tote bag extremely handy.

I live in sure and certain hope that we will have a summer this year and so have been making floaty skirts in Liberty lawn.

I think I was cutting out a pattern when the news broke of the factory collapse in Dhaka, and it started me thinking. Vague, fumbling thinking. I’m not sure where it’s going, but we’ll see.

I know the work that goes into a skirt. This one took me most of a day.

It’s sort of middling complexity, as skirts go. It’s lined, has six panels, a waistband facing, and a zip. It would have been quicker if I hadn’t lined it, but lined skirts drape better and Liberty lawn is so fine that it either needs lining or you end up with the national collection of nude-coloured underskirts, which are disastrously unattractive garments, invariably just the wrong length.

I know that industrial garment production is not the same as domestic sewing. That if you’re chained to a sewing machine in Dhaka, you get provided with pre-cut pieces, and your job is to turn those pre-cut pieces into a garment. That you will make the same thing day after day after day, and the more you make of anything, the faster you get (the last of the aprons that every toddler of my acquaintance got for Christmas took me an hour and a half from pinning out the fabric to stitching on the neck strap. The first one took me about three hours). If you’re paid piece-rates, you won’t stop to unpick mistakes or carefully press seams.

But still. There is work involved in a skirt.

The things I do. I set foot in Primark without benefit of ear defenders, gin, or a sharp stick, looking for something comparable. Other cheap clothing stores are available, but I was on my lunch break and I only had an hour.

You can buy a long skirt for £12, a tailored pencil skirt for £7, tailored trousers for £5, a t-shirt for £4, and a dress for £20.

I don’t think that’s right.

I know, wages are lower in Dhaka, and economies of scale mean that industrial quantities of fabric are cheaper than my waltzing into Liberty’s and handing over £24 a metre for cotton lawn (and, furthermore, that I can buy Liberty lawn elsewhere for cheaper than £24).

But if I can buy a skirt for £12, and a t-shirt for £4, and that £16 covers a proportion of Oxford Street rent and rates, utilities, staff wages, shipping, and the costs of manufacturing, such that Primark and everyone involved in the chain makes a profit, there is a little voice at the back of my mind saying “someone, somewhere, is being shafted.” Corners are being cut. Wages are inadequate. Safety inspectors are being bribed to ignore cracks in factory walls. Fire doors are chained shut. Buildings collapse and people die or are trapped in rubble and have limbs amputated without anaesthetic so that I can buy a t-shirt for four quid.

There is blood on our cheap clothes.

I can hear the shouts of “check your privilege!” from the back, so I’ll try and address those.

I work full time, and I earn a decent wage. I have the money to buy expensive fabric, woven in Italy and printed in Lancashire, which I then have the time, the patience, the knowledge, the equipment, and the interest to turn into clothes.

I have internet access so I can go looking for cheaper fabric than Liberty lawn, or fairly-traded fabric, or fabric which is woven and dyed in the EU, with its more stringent workers’ rights and safety requirements. I can have that fabric delivered to work, so I don’t have to troll down to the parcel office on the bus to pick it up. I am not scrambling to make ends meet, working two jobs, with children to look after.

I am not saying that everyone should make their own clothes. Apart from anything else, if everyone could do it, I wouldn’t get the massive ego boost from all the “oh, you are clever,” comments I get, but it would add seven pence per garment to fix the buildings in the Dhaka garment district.

Seven pence.

I know it’s complicated. Is it better to be campaigning for change from the inside, being able to write to the chairman of Primark as “a loyal customer who has shopped in your stores for the last X years, spending £yyy in the process, I am appalled that…”, or am I enjoying the view from up here on the moral (ish) high ground too much?

I don’t know.

But this I know.

Depriving the labourer of his wages is a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance. Presumably depriving the labourer of her limbs is likewise.

The “it’s better they’re paid something,” argument is rubbish. It leads to a race for the bottom where that “something,” gets smaller and smaller every year because “there are plenty of other people who want your job.”

A £4 t-shirt, which falls apart on the second wash and goes to landfill, is clearly more disposable than something which I have spent time and effort in making. Clothes which I make will be taken up and taken in and altered and worn until they collapse in shreds around my ankles.

It’s a subset of Sam Vimes’ “boots” theory of socioeconomic injustice. When we meet Vimes, in Men at Arms, he earned thirty-eight dollars a month as a Captain of the Watch, plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots, the sort that would last years and years, cost fifty dollars. This was beyond his pocket and the most he could hope for was an affordable pair of boots costing ten dollars, which might with luck last a year or so before he would need to resort to makeshift cardboard insoles so as to prolong the moment of shelling out another ten dollars. Therefore over a period of ten years, he might have paid out a hundred dollars on boots, twice as much as the man who could afford fifty dollars up front ten years before. And he would still have wet feet.

I can spend £4 on a t-shirt, which is so cheaply manufactured that it falls apart within the month and doesn’t fit for the month that you get to wear it, so I then have to keep spending £4 on t-shirts. Or I can spend £26 on two metres of organic, fairly traded cotton jersey plus another few quid for thread and a pattern, and make two t-shirts well and sturdily, which will last two or three years. In three years, I’ll have spent £144 on £4 Primark t-shirts, or (including the cost of my time) about £60 on making my own. This leaves £84 to spend on gin and frivolity, and I won’t have had to go to Primark, which I have a sneaking suspicion is not a shop at all, but a portal to Hell.

I’m not perfect – I don’t think anyone can be this side of the Parousia – but I’m working towards doing the best I can. I’m sure that if anyone went through my wardrobe and my food cupboards the list of things which would show me up as a raging hypocrite would be a mile long.

I haven’t been dressmaking for long enough to have a wardrobe full of hand-made clothes. I bought my last duvet set in Debenhams. But I find that I am more thoughtful about the clothes that I buy now, as I am aware of the work that goes into them, and the price that I should be paying. I am also thoughtful about the things that I make – it is a thing which concentrates the mind wonderfully, handing over a small fortune for fabric which you still have to take home and do something with.

Costings for approximate equivalent hand-made items to the Primark items mentioned above:

This will never be a fair comparison – as several people pointed out to me, I’m too much of a perfectionist to make things badly and out of horrible materials, so the fabrics were organic and/or fair trade where possible. The fabric for the pencil skirt and trousers is a wool/polyester blend. The £92.72 for the long skirt includes the £7.60 for the lining. Notions are things like thread, interfacing, and buttons (this cost is very much a guess. There is always thread left over, which you use up the next time). Patterns are a one-off cost. I have deemed my time to be worth £10 an hour (don’t tell my boss, I don’t need a pay cut), but, realistically, I don’t include my time in the cost of making things – it’s something I enjoy doing and I don’t count the cost of going to a museum, either.

So, some fumbling thoughts. I think all I can do is buy (or make) the best I can afford. I am lucky enough that I can afford better than Primark, or similar “pile it high and flog it cheap” vendors of highly seasonal fashion. I am also lucky enough that I am not interested in the whims of seasonality, and so I will wear things I like regardless of whether they are in fashion or not, and until they fall apart.

Dear Mr Shelbrooke

I am writing to you with feedback with regard to your proposed cash card system for benefits. I will be open with you, I have a number of problems with your proposal, which seems to define the term “nanny state,” and which I believe is deeply un-Conservative. However, leaving that particular issue aside, my problems are:

My local market is cheaper for staples (meat, vegetables, toilet paper, tinned goods), than the local supermarkets. None of the stallholders take cards.

The local supermarkets are mostly of the Tesco Express and Sainsbury’s Local variety, which sell a smaller range of goods at higher prices, so people who currently shop at the market would have to pay more for a smaller range of food, with obvious nutritional disadvantages. People on benefits are already living on a tight budget, this would make their budget even tighter.

By forcing people to shop in certain places, this would skew local economics. It would unfairly deprive local traders of sales, possibly driving them out of business, and increase the profits of large multinationals, one of which already gets approximately 1 in every £8 spent on the high street. The administration of this scheme would presumably also be handed over (for a price) to Visa or Mastercard.

This doesn’t seem right to me.

Even in this electronic age, there are still some transactions which need cash. As an example, many large supermarkets are not easy to get to on foot, and are a bus ride away. My highly scientific survey (a question asked on Twitter at 7:20pm), reveals that there are many places where cash is the only way to pay for occasional bus trips, meaning that a cheaper shop which takes cards becomes inaccessible when people have no cash to pay for the bus.

This also has implications for people who are unemployed and looking for work. If they need cash to pay for their bus fare to the job interview, how can they get to their interview if all their benefits are paid onto a card which they cannot use for bus fares?

I can easily see a “black market” situation arising, where benefit claimants who need cash (to pay for school trips for their children, or the bus to job interviews), buy “approved” groceries for people in exchange for cash, the “exchange rate” to be determined by the person with the cash.

I am also concerned by the definition of “luxury,” and “essential,” purchases. Who gets to decide if a foodstuff is a luxury and not allowed, or an essential and permitted? How finely-grained will it be? What about low-alcohol wine? A diet of white bread and chips and limited vegetables due to restricted access to shops, is probably worse for you than the odd glass of wine on a Friday night – will the card monitor this? Are books and toys for children luxuries or essentials?

You said yourself in your speech that this is a measure aimed at “alter[ing] the spending habits of a minority who for far too long have taken advantage of the system,” and that “strivers and low-paid workers most need a supportive society where they are given the respect most deserve in trying to make work pay.” However, by putting all benefits onto this cash card, you will be penalising the low-paid recipients of benefits by removing from them the ability to chose where to spend their money, and stigmatising them as scroungers who cannot be trusted to spend their money without the dead hand of the State controlling them.

[I didn't send this next paragraph to Mr Shelbrooke. I thought it might be too emotive and not helpful].

Someone smuggled a large crate of red lipsticks into the convoys carrying aid to the survivors of Auschwitz. When the military and Red Cross discovered this, they were angry that the cargo space needed for food and medical supplies had been taken up with something so ridiculous as lipstick. Starving, terrified women who had been living under sentence of death immediately began to paint their lips, which was a first step towards feeling human again. It is the “luxuries” which acknowledge our humanity. By saying to people that they do not have the “right” to buy lipstick or a packet of cigarettes, you are denying a part of their humanity.

In response to this letter.

23rd February 2012

Dear [rosamundi]

Thank you for contacting me recently regarding road safety for cyclists and the related Times “Cities Fit for Cycling” campaign.

I appreciate the importance of encouraging more people to cycle and to cycle safely and I agree that the Government and local authorities should consider ways to help improve cycle use and safety.

I welcome The Times’ “Cities fit for cycling” campaign which has been very effective in highlighting the importance of improving road safety for cyclists and I hope that MPs have an opportunity to debate the issue and The Times’ eight point manifesto in the House of Commons.

The previous Labour Government also looked very carefully at this issue and introduced a range of measures to improve cycle safety and cycle use including a national cycle strategy, the introduction of local cycling plans and dedicated funding and resources for cycle training and safety, especially among children. Indeed, in the last decade casualties have reduced by 17% while cycle use grew by 20%.

I agree, however, that more needs to be done to further improve safety for cyclists and I am concerned that this may be hindered by the Government’s decision to cut local authority funding by 27% over the next four years, as local authorities play a particularly important role in ensuring local road safety.

I welcome the “Cities Fit for Cycling” campaign and I can assure you that I will continue to press the Government to improve cycle safety and use.

I have therefore written to the Transport Minister Mike Penning MP to raise your concerns and to ask for further information on the Government’s plans in this area.

Thank you again for taking the time to write to me with your concerns. If you have any further concerns about this or any other matter, please do not hesitate to contact me again.

Yours sincerely

[proper signature in pen]

Lyn Brown
Member of Parliament for West Ham

Alarm went off at oh my word it’s early o’clock this morning, and I stumbled to the kitchen for coffee, morning prayer, and chocolate porridge, it being too cold for my usual breakfast of a fruit/milk/oats/banana smoothie. (Chocolate porridge is normal porridge with slightly too much Waitrose seriously chocolatey chocolate spread stirred in at the end, if you were wondering).

Porridge consumed, Sub tuum praesidium prayed, I heaved the bike out of the shed. I was riding Felicity, the nearly-sensible mountain bike hybrid with 21 gears, since I had booked it in for a service at my friendly local bike shop this evening.

This turned out to be fortunate.

I made it safely through Bow Interchange and onto Mile End Road, bimbling along, full of porridge and early-morning goodwill to all mankind.

This didn’t last.

I was waiting in an advanced stop box on a red light when a van pulled up next to me, on my right. A fairly common occurrence, this, so I checked to see if he was doing any of the things that would indicate a left turn at the junction, such as using indicators, position of hands on wheel, looking left, looking at his sat nav. All the indications were that he was going straight on.

The lights changed, we set off, and he immediately did a left turn directly across my path.

That wasn’t very nice of him.

He hit the bike’s front wheel, and the laws of physics being unbending when you don’t have a Large Hadron Collider about your person, I promptly fell off and landed on my bum in the road with a slightly-mangled bike on top of me.

Fortunately it was early in the morning and there was nothing behind us, so I didn’t have to worry about being hit by the car behind, and since we were both pulling away from the lights we were moving quite slowly.

I was picked up off the road and dusted down by another cyclist, who walked me to my friendly local bike shop, who took me in, made appropriate cooing noises, gave me a cup of tea and a sit down and took the bike downstairs for its service.

And then I stood up and very, very nearly screamed out loud.

“Hmm,” I thought. “Perhaps a trip to casualty would be advisable after all? It’s not far, I’ll walk.”

Yes, I am an idiot.

Off I staggered to A&E, I narrowly escaped being strapped to a backboard, was told sternly to put my phone away and not tweet, and they nearly took my eReader off me as well until I persuaded them that it wasn’t a wireless one.

I was thoroughly poked, prodded and X-rayed, told that I hadn’t broken my neck or my head or my hip or anything, that I was just bruised and had sprained my wrist, and next time I’m knocked off just down the road would I mind awfully calling an ambulance instead of wandering into the NHS walk-in centre two hours later going “err, got knocked off my bike, can you tell me where casualty is please?” because it’s a lot less hassle that way?

So, the bike needs a new front wheel, I need to buy a week’s season ticket for the Tube and a new cycle helmet, just to be on the safe side. Could have been worse. The moleskin skirt took the brunt of the road, which is a bit rough on the moles, but less rough on my legs, my gloves are wrecked (but my hands aren’t), and I was riding the mountain bike hybrid with the cheap and easy to replace front wheel, rather than the Pashley with the awkward and expensive to replace one.

I’ve reported it to the police as a failure to stop at the scene of an accident, I await developments.

While you’re here, do you mind signing The Times’ Cities fit for Cycling petition and the London Cycling Campaign’s Love London, Go Dutch one? Thank you.

The Times Newspaper has today launched its Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, calling for our streets to be made safer for all road users. I don’t agree with some of their points, and I think some don’t go far enough (yes, I know, my middle names are Ungrateful and Never-Satisfied), but it’s a start. The campaign is outside The Times’ firewall. I urge you to go and read it and sign up.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to my MP Lyn Brown today. Bow Interchange marks the western boundary of her constituency, which is partly why I keep banging on about it. Also I have to cycle through it twice a day and it scares me witless.

As a constituent who commutes by bike from Stratford to Green Park most days, I urge you to support The Times newspaper’s Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, and to urge the Mayor of London and the Minister for Roads to take notice of the deaths and serious injuries taking place on roads they control.

There is nothing that would make me feel safer on London’s roads than properly thought-out, segregated cycling infrastructure. Blue paint costing between two and four million pounds per mile, four times as much as New York’s recent (and much better) scheme, does nothing to reduce accidents; and has made road safety worse at Bow Interchange.

Only investment in real infrastructure will make a difference. The changes happening on this city’s roads may well “smooth traffic flow”, but they are both objectively and subjectively dangerous for vulnerable road users, and relegate cyclists and pedestrians to a poor second and third place behind cars and lorries.

It is not right that the Mayor of London is deliberately endangering your constituents by this policy, which is shortening pedestrian crossing times, removing pedestrian crossings altogether, and refusing to put them in at Bow Interchange despite consultants’ reports saying they were necessary, because it would “introduce significant delays to traffic.” That junction is so dangerous that vulnerable road users, such as the elderly, those with small children, and the disabled, take the bus one stop to avoid having to negotiate sixteen lanes of speeding traffic on foot.

Sadly, this is not really an option for cyclists, which is why two people were killed at Bow in the space of three weeks in the latter part of last year.

Having vulnerable road users deliberately placed in a position of danger as they share the road with vehicles weighing many tonnes is a recipe for disaster. All it takes is a moment of inattention from a lorry driver and the cyclist suffers catastrophic injuries which, if not immediately fatal, are devastating and life-changing, leading to months in hospital and permanent disability.

The Times’ eight-point manifesto is:

1. Trucks entering a city centre should be required by law to fit sensors, audible truck-turning alarms, extra mirrors and safety bars to stop cyclists being thrown under the wheels.

2. The 500 most dangerous road junctions must be identified, redesigned or fitted with priority traffic lights for cyclists and Trixi mirrors that allow lorry drivers to see cyclists on their near-side.

3. A national audit of cycling to find out how many people cycle in Britain and how cyclists are killed or injured should be held to underpin effective cycle safety.

4. Two per cent of the Highways Agency budget should be earmarked for next generation cycle routes, providing £100 million a year towards world-class cycling infrastructure. Each year cities should be graded on the quality of cycling provision.

5. The training of cyclists and drivers must improve and cycle safety should become a core part of the driving test.

6. 20mph should become the default speed limit in residential areas where there are no cycle lanes.

7. Businesses should be invited to sponsor cycleways and cycling super-highways, mirroring the Barclays-backed bicycle hire scheme in London.

8. Every city, even those without an elected mayor, should appoint a cycling commissioner to push home reforms.

The Emirates Cable Car. Originally intended to be a pedestrian and cyclist bridge, this is now a cable car. Every time I turn around, TfL are looking at their feet in a furtive manner and saying “erm, it’s going to cost a bit more than we thought.” Originally supposed to cost £25million, entirely paid for out of private sponsorship, the cost is now an estimated £60million, with Emirates airlines paying £35million of that cost over 10 years in exchange for the two stations bearing their name and their corporate red adorning the Tube map. The remaining £25million is coming out of Transport for London’s rail budget.

The cable car will be integrated into the Oyster network. So, instead of a pedestrian and cyclist bridge which would cost a lot less than £60million and would be free at the point of use, east London is getting a cable car which is costing nearly two and a half times more than the initial estimate and will cost money to use. There is a charity in London whose aims and objectives are specifically to build and maintain bridges across the Thames. This crossing could have been built at almost no cost to London’s taxpayers and transport users.

I’m not entirely sure that it will have the regenerative effect on the area that it’s hoped. I suspect it will end up being a tourists’ plaything, rather than a useful addition to the transport options of Londoners, and I can’t see the rail service taking a £25million hit to its budget and coming out unscathed on the other side.

It also runs through London City Airport’s Public Safety Zone (“Crash Zone”) so there’s no danger of anything going wrong there at all, is there?

Cycle Superhighways. According to Cyclists in the City, these:

…routes have cost between £10-20 million each. The four routes are, respectively, 2.7, 5.1, 5.7 and 7.2 miles long. At a rough average of 5 miles each then, London’s cycle super highways cost between £2 – 4 million per mile. And they are either pieces of infrastructure that were already there five years ago or, just when you actually need them to keep you safe, nothing more than blue paint…

That’s some expensive blue paint, right there. Oh, yes, there’s a few Trixie mirrors (that are only any use when the lorry driver is in exactly the right position at the junction, and remembers to look in them), and a few Sheffield stands. Forgive me, please, if I don’t leave my beloved Pashley locked up in the open outside Mile End tube station all day. I suspect the odds are not high that when I came back she would still be in the condition I left her in, or, indeed, still there at all.

Skyrides. 50,000 people, all liberally festooned in bright yellow hi-viz covered in sponsors’ logos, cycling round a prescribed route of closed roads on one day a year. This is not the same as, for example, providing safe cycle infrastructure to be used on a daily basis by people using bikes to get to work and the shops and to take their kids to school.

This is all the politics of the grand gesture. Let’s not think about how to actually make transportation better for people who live and work in London, but let’s throw eye-watering sums of money at something which doesn’t solve the problem but masks what the problem is.

The problem is that crossing the river east of Tower Bridge is remarkably difficult. The obvious solution would be a bridge. But bridges aren’t sexy, and you can’t easily get a corporate sponsor for a project which isn’t sexy. I know, let’s build a cable car instead. It costs loads more but it looks cool.

The problem is that London’s Tube network is screaming at the seams. The solution is to get more people cycling instead, but cycling in London is both subjectively dangerous and objectively dangerous. So you propose to build “safer, faster, and more direct” cycle routes into the city, but that conflicts with Transport for London’s aim of “smoothing traffic flow.”

As an example, putting toucan crossings in at Bow Interchange, which is the easiest way of providing safe pedestrian and cyclist crossings at that junction, would “ push the junction over capacity and introduce significant delays to traffic.” Taking road space away from cars in order to create segregated cycle infrastructure would also cause unnaceptable delays to traffic, and so the cylists are thrown a sop in the form of a few gallons of bright blue paint which don’t improve safety at all and for some unfathomable reason cost £2-4 million per mile. The one piece of segregated infrastructure on the superhighway network that I know of is along Cable Street, and was already there. All Transport for London did was paint it blue.

The Skyrides, and, I presume, by extension, the cycling festival that is being proposed for next year, have the stated aim of encouraging more people to see London as a safe, fun place to cycle, and encourage them to do more of it. Only they don’t. To get to the central London Skyride, people still have to cycle along streets crammed with cars and buses, and when you get there you’re practically forced to wear a high-viz vest and are marshalled along a prescribed route with people being jolly at you through megaphones. I loathe hi-viz and forced jollity makes me even more of a curmudgeonly old bat than I usually am. The route’s nice enough, but it’s not useful. The only places you can stop are at the appointed areas, where there is more enforced jollity and various places for you to be relieved of cash and personal data. You can’t actually use the route as a traffic-free way of getting to places because it’s all fenced off with crash barriers.

And as for the high-viz vest? It reinforces the impression that cycling is a dangerous activity which must only be undertaken in specialised clothing in a variety of lurid colours. The Skyride is on a route which is closed to traffic and your biggest danger is being hit from behind by a three year old on a glittery pink trike who’s not watching where she’s going because she’s too busy asking her dad for a bell “just like that lady’s bicycle please.” Why, exactly, do we need to dress up in more hi-viz than a parking attendants’ convention?

Close some of the roads to traffic for one day a year, and say “look, we had 50,000 come on the Skyride.” How many of those 50,000 people were (1) already cycling in London (2) start cycling in London and keep it up past their first punishment pass or encounter with Aldgate Gyratory?

The vehicular cyclists, those people who, like our Mayor, are happy to take their place in traffic and cycle round Elephant and Castle roundabout “with their wits about them,” are mostly already cycling. The grand gestures don’t affect them.

The people who want to cycle but are put off by the prospect of jousting with buses down the Mile End Road are affected by the grand gestures, because they take one look at the cycle Superdeathways and think “I’m not cycling in that, it’s not safe.”

£2million per mile of blue paint completely wasted because it doesn’t make its users either subjectively or objectively safer. At one end, Cycle Superdeathway 2 abandons you before the Aldgate Gyratory instead of leading you safely round it, and at the other it leads you into the most dangerous spot at the roundabout and then disappears with a metaphorical cry of “sorry mate, you’re on your own.”

I’m sick of my money being wasted on grand gestures. I’ve joined Londoners on Bikes and I will be asking pointed questions about what the mayoral candidates will be doing in order to make cycling in London objectively safer in 2012 and beyond. I will also be asking Sir Robin Wales, the Mayor of Newham, why I should bother voting for him when his hatred of cyclists means that Cycle Superdeathway 2 comes to a crashing halt at the borders of his borough, leaving cyclists to negotiate a three-lane urban motorway without so much as a token advisory cycle lane.

I was away at the weekend. I went down to my parents on the south coast, and, since the place is so car-centric that some form of wheeled transport is almost essential, I took my new bike (which is, I have to say, much easier to get on and off trains than Zephirine, if slightly less characterful and not as comfy a ride).

The weekend was fine. I finished a sewing project. Dad’s a lot better than he was at Christmas. I loaded the bike up, cycled to the station, slung her on the train (that sign says “space for three bicycles,” not “space for your ridiculously-oversized suitcases,” so don’t get sniffy with me when I move them), and headed home from Waterloo to Rosamundi Towers via the South Bank, walking over the Millennium Bridge and round St Paul’s. CycleStreets suggested I use Blackfriars, but the redesign has given me the fear and figuring out a strange junction in the dark when I’m tired didn’t strike me as the best idea I’ve ever had.

I made it home, and the following is a copy of the text message exchange I had with J:

“And I’m home. Only the two punishment passes and the one obscene suggestion from a stranger, so we’ll class that as ‘home safely.’”

“What’s a punishment pass?”

“If a cyclist is riding to prevent you overtaking, because it’s not safe, when you can overtake you drive as close as you can whilst shouting abuse.”

“How do you put up with it?”

“I have no idea.”

The two punishment passes were because I was riding out of the door zone past a line of parked cars. The first instance was because the mini cab firms along the Mile End Road think that a cycle lane on a red route is the perfect place to park their cars on a Sunday evening. The second instance was because one of the new build blocks of flats near Bow Interchange was built with inadequate car parking so everyone parks on the street in the cycle lane. Quite what was stopping the first car moving into the empty second lane and overtaking from there, I do not know. Another driver seemed to think that “having cars parked in it,” is no excuse for me to be out of the cycle lane, but he just contented himself with hooting and shouting something unintelligible as he passed.

The obscene suggestion just made me giggle because after cycling from Waterloo to Stepney, I can’t imagine I’d have been the most fragrant of companions. Still, takes all sorts.

So, yes, good question. How do I put up with it? And, possibly more to the point, why do I put up with it?

It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

Why do I put up with cycle infrastructure which is trumpeted as an improvement, but which has, in fact, made it worse for cyclists?

My choice of transport genuinely worries people. Dad did a proper dad panic when he read about the female cyclist killed at Bow. She was my age, she wasn’t named in any of the reports, and because I was on the Tour du Danger when he read about it, he couldn’t get hold of me all day. Some people on Twitter are quietly relieved when I check in of an evening.

Why do I put up with it?

If you said “wanna ride me instead?” to me in the pub, I would feel perfectly justified in smacking you into the middle of next week, so why, just because I have the nerve to commit the terrible crime of being female and on a bike on my own, do people think this sort of behaviour is acceptable? Maybe it’s alcohol-fuelled bravado, although I’m not sure that explains the times it’s happened on my morning ride or at 5:30 in the evening or on my way back from the shops on a Saturday lunch time, or…

Why do I put up with it?

Yes, I’m saving £100 a month in tube fares and about £30 a month in gym membership that I’d never use. Even with the costs of servicing, and buying decent-quality kit so I’m not tempted to take the tube on days when the weather is being spiteful, I’m over £1,000 ahead in a year. I can carry more shopping on a bike than I can on foot.

Most days, I enjoy my riding my bike. The miles rolling away under the bike’s wheels to the steady rhythm of the pedals. Knowing that I can change my route if I want to. The freedom to visit places which are not on sensible public transport routes, and not being dependent on the goodwill of others in areas which are not well served by public transport.

But the actions of others do make it less pleasant than it needs to be.

Dangerous close passes by drivers and other illegal manoeuvres that put me at needless risk.

Cycle infrastructure that could have been so much better than it is.

Deciding that “no, I’ll not use that route today,” because I have to make the choice between dangerous-but-well-lit and quieter-but-too-dark-to-be-safe.

Having to assess every group of males for possible menace.

Taking flak for every cyclist that runs red lights or goes the wrong way down one way streets or rides in the dark without lights on, no matter how much I protest that I don’t do those things.

Every time that happens, I think, “Is it worth it? Is it still worth it? Is this the week that I stop? Shall I fill out the season ticket loan application form this month?”

Currently, the answer is “Yes, it’s still worth it. No. I’ll not fill out the loan application.” Will the next testosterone-fuelled comment, the next carelessly disposed of cigarette that is flung at me from the pavement or a car window, the next “all cyclists are hooligans,” the next punishment pass be the last straw?

I know that if I stop, there will be one less female cyclist on the streets of London. We are already under-represented. The percentage of people who cycle in London is already low, and whilst 50% of the population is female, only 25% of cyclists are female. Is my presence encouraging others to make that step? Do I add to the “safety in numbers,” that might be the tipping point to get more people cycling?

Am I prepared to put up with all this for much longer pour encourager les autres?

I don’t know. Watch this space.

And it gave me the rage, it really did.

• Be aware of blind spots all around large vehicles. It’s often safer to hang back

Then explain to me why a cycle lane and Advanced Stop Lane are almost identical in size and shape to a lorry’s blind spot?

Explain to me why lorries and cars ignore advance stop boxes, up to and including manoeuvring themselves illegally so that although you weren’t in their blind spot when you arrived at the lights, you suddenly are?

 • Make eye contact with drivers to make sure they have seen you

So when they run over your head they know what it looked like before it had a close encounter with your wheels? I have made eye contact with drivers, and they turned left directly in front of me anyway. They did a close overtake and then cut in front of me anyway.

• Not ride through red traffic lights. It’s dangerous and you can be fined £30

OK, I’ll give you that one. I despise cyclists who think that the rules of the road don’t apply to them. I also think pedestrians who step out without looking are idiots, and words cannot express my contempt for people who use the baby in the buggy as the road-crossing equivalent of the canary in the mineshaft (if the baby is hit by a speeding car, find somewhere else to cross, this clearly isn’t safe).

But equally, I see car drivers running red lights all the time. I see them accelerating up to traffic lights and skimming through on “dark amber.” I see them encroaching on Advanced Stop Lanes which are supposed to be for cyclists only. I see and hear them revving their engines at zebra crossings. I see them on their mobiles, applying makeup (I hope you poke yourself in the eye with your mascara wand), picking their nose, singing along to the radio, having a row with their passenger, squinting at their satnav. Distractions whist driving a car are far more dangerous to vulnerable road users.

 • Allow space between you and parked vehicles. Doors may be opened suddenly

Then please explain to me why every single cycle lane I’ve ever used in London places cyclists firmly in the door zone? And if I cycle outside of the cycle lane, in order to avoid being doored, I get hooted at and sworn at by drivers who are outraged that I dare to hold them up.

From the wording of the e-mail, they are also writing to drivers. I’d be interested to see that e-mail, I really would.

update

Thank you to everyone who sent me the text of the letter to drivers. Here it is:

It’s a bit, um, weaselly, isn’t it?

We are reminding drivers to give space to cyclists when overtaking and at junctions.

But hey, if you forget, never mind, eh? Accidents happen.

Please remember to look out for cyclists when turning left or right

Please. Pretty please. Pretty please with cherries on top, or we’ll cry.

and check before you open your door as they can be hard to spot.

Those pesky cyclists, eh. They’re hard to spot, so if you hit one, it’s got to be their fault for being invisible in a public place.

We are also writing to cyclists to remind them to be visible,

Yes “make eye contact with drivers.” Because that works so well when they’re fiddling with their radio or squinting at their satnav or putting their makeup on or picking their nose, or doing anything apart from paying attention to the road ahead. Have you ever tried making eye contact with a driver who’s looking everywhere but at you?

ensure they follow the Highway Code when cycling.

Well, actually, we’re just telling them not to run through red lights.

There is nothing in this letter about being a careful and considerate road user. Nothing about paying attention to the road, keeping out of Advance Stop Lanes, or not picking your nose at the traffic lights (seriously, please stop doing that, it’s unspeakable). There’s a dollop of victim blaming, a vague request to look out for cyclists, and an implication that the only people who need to obey the Highway Code are cyclists, not car drivers.

Sending out two separate e-mails smacks of divide-and-rule, us-and-them. No sense of us all being road users together, that if we try and get on then everyone’s journey will be pleasanter.

There is a little girl who lives on the estate. She’s, dunno, five? Something like that. She has a bike. It’s pink, and has streamers on the handlebars, and a little basket on the front. I quite often see her bimbling about the place, doll in basket.

However, I may have to have Words with her dad. I’m sure he’s a very nice bloke, but…

She and I have had variations on this conversation several times, the latest being this evening.

I was down by the shed, doing a very minor bit of fiddling with Felicity, my other bike, the one with dérailleur gears and a foam saddle, that I bought as a slightly more sensible alternative to doing the Nightrider on Zephirine.

It only came fitted with front and rear reflectors, not lights, so I have been meaning to replace the rear reflector with a bracket and a light since, oooh, September.

Anything to put off writing my essay about the Chartists, I trotted off to the shed with spanner and light bracket, and set to work.

Little girl appeared.

“Why don’t you get your daddy to do that?”

“Because my daddy lives a hundred miles away, and anyway, he’s stuck on the sofa with a broken leg.”

“Why don’t you get your husband to do it?”

“Don’t have one.”

“Brother?”

“He’d laugh at me. Girls need to know how to do this stuff too, you know.”

A look of utter shock crossed her face.

“But that’s what daddies are for!”

[Choking noise, mostly directed at bike's back wheel].

Clearly, I have a defective daddy, who bought me a toolkit and what I persist in calling “The Bumper Book of DIY for Girls,” instead of arranging his life so he is constantly on standby to do up a couple of bolts on his daughter’s bike.

Now, I’m not saying that a five-year-old should be able to strip down and reassemble a hub gear, or even know how to fix a puncture, but she won’t be five for ever, and, please God, Transport for London will one day pull its finger out and fix the roads in London.

She will, hopefully, then discover that there is a world out there that is a lot more accessible on a bike, and so she won’t be within the reach of her dad/brother/husband/second-cousin-twice-removed to fix her punctures.

So don’t teach your girls (or your boys, for that matter), that daddy will always be around to fix a puncture or change a light bracket or fix a slack gear cable, because what is she going to do when daddy, packing for his ski trip, falls down the stairs and breaks his leg in three places?

The fact that I was doing this minor bit of fettling in knee-high boots with three-inch heels, a dress, and a pink fleece jacket is entirely irrelevant.