Crimperman.org

I’ve been commuting for more years than I care to remember and since 2005 this has been by motorbike. I work in London and travel around 135 miles per week on London’s roads. Recently there have been far too many accidents not involving me but involving cyclists. Some of them have been quite horrific to consider and in almost all the ones I heard of the “fault” could be laid at the feet of the vehicle driver. However cyclists are not innocent and could do more to look after themselves. How do I know this? Because I see them every day taking risks that quite frankly seem reckless to me. Most commuting cyclists will know the safety advice stuff so I’m not going to go over it here. What I will do though is point out some observations I think that many cyclists either don’t consider or think are low risk. Remember I’m not trying to have a go here, I’m genuinely trying to stop so many of you getting hurt.

Red lights

Yeah yeah I know the reasons you jump red lights and understand it (up to a point). Once you’ve got a head of steam up the last thing you want to do is stop and start all over again. That said: please take the opportunity to look for other cyclists jumping the lights the other way. Also think about pedestrians. I’ve seen a few cycle-on-cycle smashes where both flew across the lights without looking. Yes the law says you must stop and yes some of you won’t but if you are not going to stop then at least look and be prepared to slow down or take evasive action.

Two hands on the handlebars

Okay so you use one hand when signalling (you do signal don’t you?) but sometimes it seems like many of you are flapping rather than signalling. Practise riding with one hand – seriously. A car/van/whatever will happily pull to close alongside your right flank and if you wobble while signalling it’s your life and their paintwork. Aside from this there are some – what seem – obvious things not to do while cycling on a busy road:

• Texting, or browsing on your phone
• Holding an umbrella (no really I’ve seen it)
• Opening a packet of sweets/cigarettes
  and my particular favourite
• Pulling a wedgie out the crack in your bum

I’ve seen all of these more than once and most times the cyclist is all over the place while doing it.

Visibility

Which of these three did you see first? Photo by tejvanhotos CC:By

Yeah I know it looks awful but hi-vis gear will save your life. Look at the photo and tell me which one you saw first. For car drivers that’s the one you focus on. I’ve seen near misses where a car has pulled round a hi-vis cyclist and “not seen” the low-vis one beside them. Yes the car driver should look but let’s be honest in traffic they don’t look so you have to make yourself obvious. While we’re at it you know those flashing lights you have? Use them. In the day time too. Any kind of flashing light immediately grabs your attention. Most modern motorbikes have their lights always on regardless of time of day for the same reason. Again I’ve often seen a flashing light way before I see the bike behind it – particularly in mirrors.

Pedestrians

You know what they’ll do, you know they’ll do it without looking. They are you without wheels. Most of ‘em have music playing, many will be texting while they walk and will therefore miss the fact that the pavement is about to run out. Last week I saw a pedestrian step off a curb into a passing cyclist who swerved and was narrowly missed by a car overtaking him. Use your bell/horn/mouth/whatever and let them know you are there.

Indicators and blindspots

You know about not undertaking lorries but honestly the same danger exists if you overtake a lorry when he’s turning right. Actually every motor vehicle has blindspots and you are pretty tiny. In the past two weeks I have had near misses with cyclists who thought they could whip the inside of me while I was turning left (indicator going). Scared the crap out of me to be frank and I don’t thinkl they enjoyed it either. One of them even had the cheek to tell me my indicator was on (5ft from a corner, why do you think it was on?). Look no matter how much right of way you have, bigger vehicles don’t look as much as they should (particularly on the nearside). Motorcyclists don’t either but they do look more than cars (it’s our lives too) and in my experience cyclists rarely look. If you see a hand or an indicator please don’t try to beat the corner. Better to stop than get hurt.

Ride defensively

I know this all sounds like I’m some perfect rider who hates cars and bicycles but honestly: I just want to see less blood on the road and I am sure that car and van drivers would sooner not hit you. The point I’m making is that years of motorcycle commuting has taught me that people make mistakes. Sometimes they forget to look or they do something rash because they’re in a hurry or stressed or whatever. It doesn’t matter why or even that I may have right of way: if they hit me I’m dead. Maybe not dead but every accident has that possibility. My old biking instructor once said that riding defensively was “letting the other guy win because in a few minutes he’ll be stuck in a queue and you’ll sail past him. Last thing you need is an angry person behind a wheel”. Seems to make sense to me. I also wear a lot of protective gear, more than cyclists. So for you guys it’s even more dangerous, unless you look out for yourselves a bit more. I know it’s a drag at times but safe and defensive riding will keep you alive and hoepfully I won’t be arriving at work with yet another tale of how a cyclist almost (or actually) bought it.

Thought I’d start the new year with a cautionary tale.

Somebody once said “There’s no such thing as a normal day”. That is true but there are definitely abnormal days. Days that really could only happen once. At least there had better be or else the day described here could happen again. Before I go any further I want to say this is all absolutely true (except the Bon Jovi bit which I can’t prove) and occurred in mid 2008. At the time, I submitted it as an article for an internal magazine where I was then working but never got around to putting it on here.

Update 19 March 2010: Recently this page has been coming to the top of Google searches for “My child has put cat poo in their mouth”. If you’ve come here looking for what to do I’m afraid I don’t have the answer. The NHS website does say that “Animal faeces (poo) are not ‘poisonous’ but may cause infections and if you are concerned you should call NHS Direct.” Here’s the link to that page (helpfully called “poisoning”) if it helps.

If your child hasn’t been tucking into the cat litter you can read on. Oh and wouldn’t read this while eating if I were you.

Rude awakenings

It all started when my left leg decided it was time to re-introduce me to the idea of cramp. Now I’ve had my fair share of cramp and perhaps it was the fact that I was in the middle of an unusually deep sleep but I don’t recall cramp ever feeling like this! This was man-cramp. My leg felt like it had a shark attached and I went from snore to roar in under a second. I did what any normal human would do and screamed. Actually I didn’t – I was about to when I remembered my loving wife (Claire) sound asleep beside me and being a caring husband (and a complete coward) I thought it best not to wake her at 5:30 in the morning.

So I slid out of bed (the only way I could actually move at the time) and tried to get rid of the cramp by stretching my leg – which of course hurt even more. So now I wanted to scream even more. Time to leave the room and scream elsewhere. They don’t call it cramp for nothing though and my first step resulted in a half lunge and me falling towards the bed. After a clever mid-fall twist which would have made Tom Daley proud I avoided the bed and landed on the floor – right on top of the leg with cramp. So I crawled to the bathroom, stuffed a flannel in my mouth and stretched my leg. After about ten minutes the pain (and the screaming) reduced enough for me to limp back to bed where my – ever so concerned – wife was probably dreaming about Jon Bon-Jovi but was definitely not awake. Phew. The venture was a success in one aspect at least.

I went from roar to snore in under a second. This was man-cramp!

And so back to sleep for all of around 10 minutes when my son (four at the time) started shouting “help!” from his bedroom. Despite some well placed elbows, Bon-Jovi was still holding my wife’s avid attention. So up I got and hobbled into the kids’ room to find him sitting up in the top bunk. He calmly explained that he’d had a nightmare and had “forgotten” to wake up in the middle of it to go to the toilet. The bed was soaked. His sister (three) was as out of it as my wife (but hopefully not dreaming about Jon Bon-Jovi) in the lower bunk. The manager in me took over and I decided that eighties musicians would have to move aside. I, gently, woke my wife and assigned her the task of dealing with our son while I dealt with the bed. Standing on the edge of the lower bunk (with my daughter still asleep in it) I stripped the top one and cleaned up. Eventually the bedding was all piled up and Catnip (his favourite toy) was sitting atop the pile like a wee-covered Guy Fawkes. I decided I’d take them down “in the morning”. By this time my son was clean and in dry jammies and clambered back into bed. I limped back to mine. My wife was already heading back to the eighties and my cramp was dying down so it seemed some sleep was on the cards.

Enter the cat

At this point the cat realised she had not played a big enough part in my morning. She also decided – what with all the moving around – that it must be time for her breakfast. Tempting as it was to help her out of the upstairs window, I hobbled downstairs and fed her with all the grace I could muster. Believe me, she was lucky I didn’t put a funnel in her mouth and pour it down! So after all that it was back to bed and what was left of my sleep.

Believe me at this point the cat was lucky I didn’t open her mouth and pour the food down for her!

But wait! There’s more. Apparently during my cramp-induced gymnastics I managed to knock my alarm clock off the bedside and turned it off. So half an hour after I was supposed to wake up, my son appeared beside my bed and gently shook me. “Ah bless” I thought ,“He probably wants some breakfast”. He probably did, but the reason he was waking me up was to say “Daddy, Pebbles has done a poo in my room”. Pebbles if you haven’t guessed is the afore-mentioned cat. Taking in this glorious news I just knew it would be on the rug and not on the – easy to clean – laminate flooring. “Where abouts?” I asked, anxiously. “On the bottom bunk” came the reply swiftly followed by – a very dead-pan – “and it’s all squishy”. This was enough to drag my wife back from her own personal Ashes-to-Ashes and she went to rescue our daughter from the cat’s new litter tray. After she returned while I limped towards my own personal Life On Mars to clean another bed. Meanwhile Mummy went through the checking-a-child-for-cat-poo-whilst-avoiding-getting-it-on-yourself-and-anything-else procedure (patent pending).

When I arrived there were indeed some “parcels of fun” from Pebbles the cat on the end of the bed and they were indeed, squishy. Not that my daughter had noticed. Apparently she had remained completely asleep while the cat did it’s business and – even with the squishy poo on her bed – I confess I was envious. The cat must have seen my face and decided this was not the time to ask for more food and she sat quietly by the back door waiting for me to open it. If she was smart she’d stay out there all day. I know my cat. She’s not that smart.

A twist in the tale

You’d think this story would end now wouldn’t you but, like an M. Night Shyamalan film, there’s one final plot twist. As I went out to deposit Pebbles’ – er – pebbles ( now in a bag ) into the dustbin I re-discovered that the day before my Father-in-Law ( who to be fair was just trying to be helpful ) had put the kitchen bin liner and put it next to our dustbin. I had “meant” to do something about that before going to bed because, bless him, he didn’t know the reason we have dustbins with lids where I live. They are called foxes and overnight a couple of the little beggars had ripped that bin bag to shreds and spread the contents – offering like – before my front door. They were obviously looking for waste food. Ha! Waste food in our house – nice one.

So there I stood, tired, in bare feet, only one of which I could stand on, holding a bag of poo, before a sea of kitchen waste. Hey, at least the sun was shining. Right in my eyes! So I mopped up the sea, deposited the bag o’ poo and glanced at the clock. Arrghhh – 7:45 – I was supposed to leave at 7:30!

So while “this is the day that the Lord has made” would seem ironic at that moment. “We will rejoice and be glad in it” was a particular struggle. I really hope that was an abnormal day. Because if it wasn’t, there’s a risk that it could happen again and I’m not sure I could survive two days like that.

I know for a fact that my cat won’t!

P.S. My wife has asked me to point out that the bit about Bon Jovi is entirely without evidence or factual basis and is simply a pre-supposition on my part. Glad to get the legal part over but I would like to say that she was very excited when I later gave her tickets to a Bon-Jovi concert

Some time (scarily it was nine years) ago I wrote a piece on here entitled “Touching a heart“. A few years later I followed that up with a piece called “Further lessons from a child“.

Both those pieces centered on lessons I had learned by observing my niece and I often find myself reflecting on the things I have (and haven’t) learned as a result of those experiences. Nowadays I have children of my own and just a few weeks back my son (who at the time was two and a half) taught me something about faith.

We’ve all been there, you wake up in the middle of the night and your throat is a dry as sandpaper. The trouble for my son this time was that we hadn’t left a drink next to his bed for him. So he did what toddlers do in the middle of the night and cried out for one of us to go in. My wife went and discovered the ongoing thirst issue. Actually the words my son used were “How about a nice cool drink mum?”. Mum said she would bring one and left to go downstairs.

So what did my son do during the wait? He sat on his bed quietly waiting for his Mum to return. You see he had no doubt that she would come back or that she would have the water in her hand when she did. He trusted her, implicitly and, to him, the fact that she had said she would do something was enough. No more tears, no going to the top of the stairs, no watching the door, no worrying just patience and – when she returned – thanks. In short my son has faith in his mother – and rightfully so.

So let me ask you the question this triggered me to ask myself. How often do you wait patiently for God? How much do you trust that He will do what He has said? How much faith do you have in Him?

Always handy having kids around when you need a few lessons don’t you think?