I rode across France, and all I got was this lousy obsession with cycle infrastructure. — Latterly, I was annoyed about a bollard. I’ll admit to it being personal. At a particular junction where I live there is a tight turn from an A-road into a bike lane. It is a pandemic addition, and a good one, except that a fast cyclist can find the first…

Lewisham begins with the Saxons. Like so many other English settlements, its location is owed to water. Some people believe it was founded by a pagan who settled in Ladywell, near what is now St Mary’s Church. He burned his boat where the ground was drier. When I Lewisham’s past…

Lost Kit #6. It’s an especially bad year to admit it, but I’ve never been hugely invested in Christmas. If you are, please let me say up front that it’s not you — it’s me. Don’t get me wrong: I like the lights and the carols; I even do a…

A proposal for a PE kit revolution. Fundamentally, I believe there are two approaches to choosing sports clothes. Happily, I apply one of them to each of the two sports I do in public right now.¹ For cycling, I insist on matching Lycra and the right height socks — because road cyclists are sort of like that…

I hurt my knee and discovered I’m a huge dumb dog. Something I am very fond of is games which divide people into two categories. You know the sort: everyone is a cat or a dog; a blonde or a brunette; a round or a pointy. A very good example…

Or, how to win at being on Strava. Although I had terrible hair and was very lonely, and although I would not go back to that age now if you paid me, when I was 21, two fortuitous things happened to me. The first was that I was awarded a…

I was going to write to you about sports bras this week. Specifically, I was going to tell you how much I hate them, and how the issues so many people encounter when shopping for them — limited size ranges; deranged fits — are symptomatic of a wider problem when…

In which I sort of compare myself to world champion road cyclist Greg LeMond. People always assumed I’d be good at PE. 5’ 9” by 14, I looked like someone who should be able to shoot a netball or lap my classmates on the running track. One naïve teacher even…

I wrote this as an undergraduate who had left the city for university in Penryn. It is very silly, very romantic, and mentions very few of the things that actually matter in Cornwall, which is a beautiful county ill-treated and underestimated by both London and its second-home, fair-weather guests. Nevertheless…