Merry Christmas!

I'll disarm those who carry guns, and neutralise their caustic tongues

Been neglecting the blog for a bit. Here's a couple of pictures from the Thames Festival and one of our Matty on Walberswick beach last Sunday. I currently have Orange Juice and Ken Campbell reading Lewis Carroll on very heavy rotation. Sublime!

The West Country

Escaped from London for 10 days in Cornwall, Devon and Somerset, walking on the beaches, frequenting some brilliant pubs - the Tucker's Grave in Faulkland being a case in point, and visiting Siegried Sassoon's last resting place in Mells, a most quintessentially English village. Bloody marvellous.

Thumb War

Nearly sliced off the top of my left thumb with a vegetable knife. Anyone sending me a text message in the next couple of weeks may need to be extra patient in waiting for a response.

Soup's up!

Seizure

This afternoon Mariella and I visited Roger Hiorns' Seizure: a council flat whose interior is almost entirely coated in crystalised copper sulphate, just round the corner from my doctor's surgery. Apparently they poured in hot copper sulphate solution, sealed the rooms and left them for three weeks to cool and crystalise. It looks amazing. Think I might do the same for our bathroom.

Dunwich Dynamo 2009

Better late than never - here's my Dunwich Dynamo report for 2009. A depleted Team Badger consisting of just Spratticus and myself made it to this year's ride. We'd both done a lot less training than last year though I was at least buoyed up by the prospect of putting my new bike through its paces. After a mid week pep-talk on the phone we were starting to feel a bit more gung ho and having loaded up on pasta and watched a bit of the prologue at Beho,we set off into the sunny late afternoon for London Fields, feeling positively up for it. In the park we hooked up with fellow Resonancer DJ Original Bear and his team, Clare and Jodie. They were all Dynamo debutants but had put Team Badger to shame by clocking up an impressive amount of miles in training for the ride.

The customary pint of Adnams and last minute fiddling with the bikes attended to, we set off. The increase in numbers on the last couple of years was evident from the get-go and at times the ride out of London had a distinctly Critical Mass atmosphere. As usual this year's ride was a very broad cycling church - a mix of road bikes, hybrids, cyclo crossers (including me!), bromptons, single speeders, tandems, recumbents and a few tricycles, which I don't recall having seen on the ride before. There was even a penny farthing, which I believe should more properly be called an 'ordinary'.

First half of the ride went fairly well and without any major incidents. The sheer number of riders meant that there was never a point at which you couldn't see another bike - it was like a continuous line of cyclists stretching from Hackney to Dunwich. Pretty amazing. As usual we resisted the temptation to stop off at any of the Essex pubs en route but it was interesting to note the increasingly inebriated condition of the locals walking the street in each town we rode through as the night wore on. It must have been about 1.30 when we reached Sudbury and saw a bloke walking though the streets without his trousers on. He was carrying the pantaloons in question in his hands and I imagine that there must have been a point when he thought 'Oh dear, my trousers appear to have come off and I fear I am now too drunk to put them back on. Never mind, it's 1.30am so there's unlikely to be anyone else around so I'll just walk home without them on'. Little did he suspect that he was about to be met by a hundred or so cyclists pedalling down the street. I wonder if he remembered any of it the next morning.

Anyhoo, we reached the feeding station at Great Waldingfield, where the queues for food were stretching out of the village hall. Thankfully, we'd come prepared with our own provisions and spent a very amusing half hour or so discussing the art of the sandwich made from one piece of bread, or the 'bendover' as it is officially known. Then, on into the darkest hour, just before dawn, or the 'suicide hour', as it is apparently also known. This bit of the ride wasn't as bad as I remembered it from previous years, perhaps because it was already getting light - being early July seemed to make that much more difference. Mind you, the knees were starting to ache and the relatively mild hills were beginning to feel decidedly steep. The real misery came in the last couple of hours when the rain set in. It's not so bad when you're riding in it but we were all dreading the prospect of arriving at a rainswept Dunwich with no chance of getting in a cafe packed with earlier arrivals and no other shelter. It looked like I would have to make a call to my Mum and ask her to put the kettle on and some newspaper down in expectation of 5 muddy cyclists turning up on her doorstep first thing on a Sunday morning.

As luck would have it, though, the rain stopped just as we hit Dunwich and I ended up getting sunburnt after falling asleep on the beach. After the customary pint in the Ship, the rest of the newly christened Team Bendover headed off for London by coach and I pedalled back to the ancestral seat up the road for food, a bath, sleep, more food, watching the darts and then more sleep. Bloody marvellous. Woke up fully refreshed the next day and cycled back to Ipswich to get the train for London.

Another great Dynamo, despite the soggy last couple of hours. Brilliant company once again - can't wait for next year's ride.

Farewell Seething Wells

I saw Steven Wells in his ranting punk poet days as Seething Wells in the early 80's. He went on to become one of the finest writers at the NME, at a time when said publication was actually worth reading, then The Guardian. I was shocked and saddened to learn of his death and moved to tears by his farewell column for the Philadelphia Weekly.

Snappy Snaps Passport Photo Advice

Just had confirmation that M's first passport is on its way. This came as something of a relief after several failed attempts to produce an acceptable photo, coupled with a fair amount of uncertainty regarding Mrs Badger's place of birth.

The Badger is back

Inspired by Dailytitlow's recent model aircraft posting, I took my five month old daughter to the Imperial War Museum. In other news, Adam's 40th birthday celebrations featured cakes with his face on them. I wonder if I can get my face printed on some oatcakes for my next birthday?

SE1

A Soldier Playing a Guitar

Shelly was working at the National Portrait Gallery today, so me and M went to check out the Constable portraits exhibition, which I liked a lot. Most of the pictures in the exhibition are of people Constable knew well, so it's a bit like a Georgian photo album. The soldier in this drawing, from 1806, is thought to be Constable's cousin, James Gubbins, who was killed nine years later at Waterloo.

White Riot

Yesterday I had to cycle through the city twice on minor capitalist errands. In the morning this gave me the chance to join a very subdued Stop the City cavalcade of bikes. I suspect that 10am is a tad too early for proper rioters - especially those who have to commute in from the suburbs. The afternoon was a quite different picture. I only hovered around the edges, where the police were very restrained and looked quite bored with the minor skirmishes they had to deal with, but you could feel the tension building up from inside the 'kettling' zone. I was interested to read that city workers were leaning out of their windows attempting to goad protestors by waving £10 notes. £10 notes? Hardly Loadsamoney is it?

S I G N S

Took M for her first trip out of London to see the grandparents in the old country, which is being menaced by escaped tarantulas if notices in the post office window are to be believed.

Badingham 1972

This photo, which at first glance appears to be some sort of Hitler youth rally, was in fact taken at a 1972 Christmas party at Badingham Village Hall, Suffolk, and recently appeared in the East Anglian Daily Times. There are three Dyes here, including yours truly. Can you spot us?