Eileen Sheridan’s Wonder Wheels is one of my favourite books on cycling, originally published in 1956 when she was thirty-two. She’d turned professional a three years earlier with sponsorship from Hercules. In that time, she’d broken all of the twenty-one records kept by the Women’s Road Records Association. She still holds five of them. Now… Continue reading Wonder Wheels by Eileen Sheridan
Category: Blog
Blog posts
Personal Best by Beryl Burton
When I was in London I picked up a copy of The Independent with this article on the ‘unknown’ cycling legend Beryl Burton. Unknown is probably the wrong word. Within a particular subculture of British club cycling, Burton’s legend is on par with Eddy Merckx. The two are certainly quite comparable in that both won… Continue reading Personal Best by Beryl Burton
Fear, Loathing and Community Engagement
On the plane from Paris back to Kuala Lumpur, I read Jacques Ranciere’s response to Gorgias, On The Shores of Politics. He raises a wonderful question: “…perhaps philosophy’s most intimate business: how to deal with hate and fear.” It reminded me of one of my favourite books, Graeme Gibson’s Beyond Fear and Loathing: Local Politics… Continue reading Fear, Loathing and Community Engagement
A Book Review: Gorgias, by Plato, Penguin Classics, 2004.
Travelling by airliner is deeply emblematic of the modern age. All that steel and heat inexplicably hurtling through the atmosphere would be unthinkable in any age other than our own. Naturally, I find it a pretty gruelling affair. For the first few hours, I’m thrilled at the idea. Then I realise I’m stuck in a… Continue reading A Book Review: Gorgias, by Plato, Penguin Classics, 2004.
The Tour in Ypres
The Tour de France is now over, so I’ve been reminiscing about my one, glorious day in Ypres, where I saw the start of Stage Five. This was the stage Froome dropped out and I guess things went a bit down hill from there. Still, I had a great time. Here’s a couple of pictures… Continue reading The Tour in Ypres
Estates: An Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley
Whilst in London, I stayed in James Hammet House, designed by Skinner, Bailey & Lubetkin in the early Fifties as one of the wave of post-war, social housing projects. It was actually quite pleasant, but looked exactly like you’d expect a terrifying British Estate to look on The Bill: Brutalist architecture, lots of concrete and… Continue reading Estates: An Intimate History by Lynsey Hanley
Untitled
I’ve just returned from glamorous Paris, France. Oddly, I saw very little of the Tour de France whilst I was there. Moreover, the two stages I went to see were not in France at all; the Stage Three finish in London, and the Stage Five start in Ypres. After years of watching cycling late at… Continue reading Untitled
Twenty-One Nights
I’ve been bouncing the final edits of Twenty-One Nights in July back and forth with John from Hunter Publishers all week. It’s now less than a fortnight away from being released, which will mark the end to a process far lengthier than the book’s merits may suggest. When I wrote the very first version of… Continue reading Twenty-One Nights
TILT Speech
A while back I got asked to talk at the Australian Institute for Music’s ‘Tomorrow’s Ideas Leading Today’. They’ve kindly put the speech up online. So here’s some footage of me talking about music. Thanks to the guy who came up to me at the Carriageworks record fair and said he liked it. It’s always… Continue reading TILT Speech