you say bark, I say bite....

I cycled to work today for the first time ever.

I've sort of been meaning to do this for years and have never quite got round to it.  According to my new Garmin (thank you Running Club), from door to door, it's a mere 4.24 miles from home to office, and almost all of that is on dedicated cycle paths.  So why have I never cycled before now?  Well, because I take lots of other exercise and didn't think that this fitted in very well; because I car-shared with a friend and oddly felt like I didn't want to let him down.  It was actually my friend deciding to change jobs that was the final push to make the change.  Well, that and the Cycle to Work scheme that my office have just started participating in that means I was able to get a 42% discount on a new bike through a salary sacrifice thing that I don't really understand.

my new bike - minus sexy luggage rack and panniers.  Hmm.  Practical.

So the evidence of my advancing old age is piling up: last week I joined the National Trust, and this week I picked up a sensible new bicycle with a luggage rack and some panniers.  On Wednesday night, I carefully folded up a shirt and a pair of work trousers so that I didn't look like a scarecrow in the office, and carefully checked to make sure that I didn't forget anything obvious, like shoes or a pair of pants or something.   Then this morning, the whole thing took me a shade over twenty minutes.  Easy.  With all the road closures in Nottingham at the moment, that's probably not much slower than driving.  Plus my worthiness credentials are enormously advanced.

The trip wasn't entirely without incident, mind: I had a minor moment of embarrassment in the undercroft where I can securely park my bike.  I arrived a little after 8am, so there was plenty of space, but as I fiddled with my new D-lock, I dropped it on the floor and then had 30 seconds of trying to work out how to put it back together again.... all the while hoping that none of the more hardcore cyclists arriving would either:
a) notice what I was doing
or
b) scorn me for my stupidity.

I think I just about got away with it.

After work, I cycled from work straight to the gym for a swim.  Again, this is significantly easier than driving because the route is 3.79 miles (thanks again, Garmin) along a canal towpath instead of a hack directly through the centre of town.  After my swim (50 lengths), it was a mere 1.96 miles back home.

So, 9.99 miles of biking today.  Apparently that's an extra 579 calories burned.  Plus the swim and the leg exercises in the gym.  As if what I really needed to do was burn *more* calories.  I'd feel more virtuous, but I had fish and chips for my tea, followed by a treacle pudding with some clotted cream, so.....

let me stand next to your fire...

The first time that I looked around our house, after we had arranged our intial "viewing" with the estate agents, the very first thing that I noticed was the gas fire in the dining room. Obviously we'd be getting rid of that at the first opportunity, I thought. As is the way of these things, I did not do a damn thing about it until about three years later, when I finally got a gas engineer round to take it out and cap off the gas supply. It turned out that the old back boiler was still in there too, so that had to be taken out as well, leaving a gaping great big hole. Initially the hole was home to a church candle, but when we got the cat last year, we found it a pretty convenient slot for the pet carrier, having the dual benefit of being just the right shape to store it and at the same time preventing the cat from having a pee on the newspaper that lined the floor at the base of the chimney (as she occasionally did when she was a kitten). Well, it might have been a lurid shade of purple, but it was behind the dining room table anyway, so I didn't even really have to look at it, so....

There was a similar, albeit slightly smaller hole in the living room too. A poorly capped gas outlet revealed that there had once been a gas fire here too, but it had been removed at some point but never replaced with anything much. There was a nice polished slate mantlepiece here and some Victorian-style tiles around the fireplace, but there was no grate and the chimney was blocked rather crudely by a pillow that had been shoved up there at some point to cut out the drafts. We put some candles here too, and I stacked my old newspapers here in a pile before taking them out to the recycling bin.

Today, some five or six years after we originally moved into the place, we've finally had them sorted: both gaping holes have had grates added and, by the time I get home, should have been converted into proper, honest-to-goodness, fully functioning fireplaces. The gas-fire related metal caps on the chimney pots and metal linings in the chimneys have been removed, and should be all ship-shape and ready to lay a roaring blaze (using smokeless fuel, obviously. We're very much in a smokeless zone around ours, and all the better for it, I'm sure).

It's just about perfect timing, really. We're still technically in British Summer Time, but the sun, if it can be seen at all, is sitting very low in the sky, the nights are drawing in and it's been generally pretty miserable and cold for several weeks now. Yesterday we switched the central heating back onto timer for the first time in six months. All in all, I'm very much looking forward to curling up with a good book in front of a real fire. There is nothing quite so soothing to the soul as a cosy fire after another hard and pointless day in the office, don't you think?

Mind you, I'm fairly cold blooded and my metabolism is stoked up so high that I am perpetually cold even though my body is usually producing enough heat to boil a kettle. We had a new boiler installed the other day [WQ counters take note: A-Rated and 90-odd percent efficient, no less] and we are now the proud owners of a thermostat. As such, I am fully expecting that every day of winter will be a battle of wills with my wife as I turn the temperature right up every time I walk past, and likewise C will turn it back down when she passes by. If it was up to me, I'd have the heating on almost all year if I thought I could get away with it, and frequently have to wrap myself up in a fleece on the mildest of evenings. I've got a cupboard full of thermal base layers, and I run in them all through the summer, no matter what the temperature is outside. I was so cold on Monday evening I even dug out the beautiful wool djellaba that I picked up in Morrocco and wandered about the house with the pointy hood pulled up, looking for all the world like some kind of suburban jedi knight going about his domestic business.

So the thought of coming home to a nice fire??

Heavenly.

.....assuming any of the heat gets out into the room past the cat, that is.

---

[* actually, and rather disappointingly, it turns out that we can't have a fire tonight after all. A quick chat with the fireplace people and apparently they've measured the grate wrong and haven't finished with the chimney pots yet, so we'll have to wait until next week. I might have to get my djellaba out tonight again after all....so if you're passing my street tonight, do look out for the sight of a mainly kitchen based Obi Wan Kenobi-alike preparing pasta with roasted vegetables and chorizo*]

sealed with a kiss....

I've been invited to go to a family wedding in a couple of weeks. It's on a Friday and in Bath, so it's more than a touch inconvenient, which is a bit annoying. Especially so given that I'm not close to any of the people involved, but when the invitations arrived, my father issued a three line whip and let it be known that my presence would be required.

My father doesn't have much family. He was an only child, and the only family connection of any sort that he still has is with his cousin - his mother's sister's daughter. I think I've mentioned this woman here before. How do I put this? In the nicest way possible, she's awful. The best example of this is when my dad decided to send her kids something different for Christmas. For years and years, with their christmas cards, my dad had sent each of his cousin's three kids a cheque for a few quid... nothing much, just a token fiver or tenner to show that he was thinking of them at Christmas. Now that the youngest of these kids was a strapping 25 year old, he decided that this was a bit daft, and decided instead to give them one of those charity gifts: he donated some cash to Oxfam and he gave them all "a latrine in Africa". Good idea, I thought, but apparently his cousin thought differently. She rang up on Christmas Day and she lectured my dad on how he was effectively taking the food from her children's mouths by giving them something as insulting as a gift to charity on their behalf. I couldn't quite believe my ears and still struggle to understand how she had the sheer brass to complain about something that she had absolutely no right to expect. She won though, because the following year my dad reverted to giving her kids a cheque instead. I would have given the ungrateful sods nothing, but my dad feels obligated to his cousin as pretty much her only surviving relative: her parents are both dead, her husband died a few years ago, and he feels a responsibility towards them that actually speaks highly of him and is far more than they deserve.

And so it is that my dad put his foot down and said that I was going to have to take a day off work and give up my time to go to this wedding in Bath. It's a family occasion and he expects me to be there. I can't help but think there's a subtext here, as I steadfastly did not invite any of them to my wedding last year. The seeds of this were sown back at my elder brother's wedding in 2004. I bumped into my dad's cousin when she and her mother were chatting to C. No sooner had I arrived, than she made a huge and completely pointless song and dance about how I hadn't formally introduced them to my lovely partner. Now, I always go out of my way to be polite to my relatives, no matter how tenuous the familial connection, just as I try to be polite to everyone...but I'm sorry, sending me a plastic belt for Christmas and a polyester tie for my birthday does not buy you the right to expect anything else from me at all. You have no say over how I run my life and you certainly not get to hector and chastise me over some pathetic imagined slight at an otherwise happy family occasion. It was no coincidence at all that when C and I got married last year, we only invited friends and immediate family: people who we wanted to be there to share our day with us. We did not issue obligation invitations to distant relatives who I otherwise had no connection or contact with. Getting married abroad probably helped, but I think that most people understood this....not everyone, I'm sure... but I think most people are capable and mature enough to understand that, first and foremost, a wedding is about the bride and groom and what they want. So we didn't invite by dad's cousin, we didn't invite her mother, and we didn't invite any of her children. They'd been invited (and attended) the weddings of both of my brothers, but I was damned if they were going to come to mine.

And so now I've been invited to the wedding of one of my second cousins, and I can't help imagine that the invitation is somehow a pointed one, as though they are demonstrating how magnanimous they are in overlooking my appalling snub of them from last year. This is doubtless my imagination, but my father does seem very keen that all of his side of the family make the effort to attend. Actually, I'm sure it won't be the end of the world. We've taken the time off and will attend the wedding and the reception on Friday, and we've also booked a nice hotel in the centre of Bath to make a weekend of it in what is, after all, a lovely town. If it makes my dad happy for me to be there, then ultimately I'll smile and put up with it.

Is it wrong of me to get all snobby about the wedding list though?

I don't know the exact history of the tradition, but I've always thought that wedding lists were originally a way of helping a young couple set up their first home together.... and they originated at a time when getting married meant that you would be leaving home for the first time. In that kind of context, you're going to need all the plates and gravy boats and things that you can lay your hands on, and gifts like that were probably most welcome. When C. and I got married last year, we'd already been a couple for the best part of 8 years, lived together for the best part of 7 years and we both had good jobs and earned a decent wage. We didn't really need anything. Yes, I suppose we could have wandered around John Lewis and put together a list of stuff we wanted, but we decided that we were simply more interested in having our friends share our day. If anyone really wanted to buy us a gift, then they could make a donation to a charity or "buy" some terribly worthy gifts from Oxfam - school books, fertiliser, goats, donkeys... that kind of thing (see how I avoid the use of the Oxfam's made-up word "funusual" in describing these gifts. My worthiness only goes so far).

In the event, we raised over £3000 for charity, which I was really very pleased about. Now, I don't expect everyone to have as high a WQ as we do, and I've got nothing in principle against couples having a wedding list - hell, it's a sensible way of making sure that you don't get 15 toasters from well meaning relatives - but looking down the bride and groom's wedding list for their big day, I couldn't help but shake my head in amazement. It was hosted by Debenhams for a start, which I know I shouldn't get all snooty about, but if I was going to have a wedding list held with someone, it wouldn't be with them... it also seemed to feature an awful lot of Vera Wang crockery. Well, perhaps they need a lot of crockery. Who am I to judge? I was a bit late to the list, so there wasn't a massive amount left on it, and perhaps all the really sensible stuff had already been snapped up, but one thing caught my eye immediately. To me, it was the kind of item that summed up the whole ridiculous and conspicuous expenditure associated with the modern wedding; it was the kind of item that can only ever be sold when couples are wandering around a big department store wondering what else they can add to their wedding list. I refuse to believe that any of these are sold to any other people for non-commercial use at any other time.

It was a Spiked Meat Dish.



It was £25, but I had to have it.

In the card that will accompany this gift, I have written that I hope they enjoy many happy roast dinners together, but if they use it more than once in their entire lives, then I will be astonished.

Perhaps it's something that they've always wanted, but I'm betting that it's far more likely that they only added it to their list because they were wandering around the store with a little handheld device wondering what else they could add to their list, and they scanned it on without really thinking about it, and probably without even considering that someone might buy it for them.

...Which, of course, is exactly why I did buy it for them.

Ridiculous.

Although, to be fair, it is fully dishwasher safe and comes "complete with protective covers for spikes", so it's really very practical.

In fact, perhaps I should get one for myself....?

heal the world....

If IQ is an attempt to produce a standardised measure of intelligence, and EQ is an attempt to produce a standard measure of emotional intelligence, then I would like to introduce to the world the concept of WQ - an attempt to produce a standardised measure of your worthiness.

We live in a post-"Inconvenient Truth" world now, my friends, where even a simple visit to the humblest of tradesmen will test the limits of your worthiness as the shop-keeper accusingly asks you if you will need a bag with that. As you shake your head in shame and guiltily stow your purchase away in a small plastic bag, you will feel the eyes of the world holding you and your immortal soul personally accountable for the death of a small, but no doubt incredibly beautiful and precious, part of the world's delicately balanced eco-system. And all because you failed to produce an organic cotton bag from your jacket pocket.

Your worthiness has been compromised, but fear not! the game isn't over yet, and if you are able to walk out of the shop and hop onto your bicycle for the journey home when the other worthys with their linen bags get into their cars, then your eco-karma has been partially restored and you can go about the rest of your day with renewed vigour and optimism.

Every day of your life is a battleground of good and evil, between light and dark and between locally sourced, hand reared organic produce and Tescos pork pies. Every choice you make has consequences... not least on your ability to walk around metaphorically wearing a white robe and sandals, bathed in a halo of purest light. Saving the world is merely a by-product to that wonderful feeling of superiority over the seething masses of humanity engendered by your selfless worthiness. That delicious, local organic cheese from the posh deli down the road? You ate that to save the world. YOU ARE BRILLIANT. AL GORE AND DAVID ATTENBOROUGH SHOULD THANK YOU PERSONALLY.

But how can we know where we stand in this struggle unless we have some way of keeping score? How can we know how heavily we are imprinting our footprint onto the planet unless we find a way of keeping count. What good is being good without a league table?

Ladies and gentlemen. I give you the Worthiness Quotient (WQ).

It's very much at a conceptual stage at the moment, and I'm going to need some help formulating the points system, but the idea is that we will soon be able to issue a handy, wallet-sized guide to every decision you make so that you can keep a running tally of how you are affecting the future of the world on a day-by-day basis. A bit like counting points for weightwatchers, I suppose, although unlikely to have the same effect on your waistline.

Here's how it works: every time you make a decision, you will be awarded points. If your decision is likely to have a positive impact upon the environment, then that score will be positive. On the flip side, if that your choice is likely to have a detrimental effect, then you get minus points. It's as simple as that.

Every plastic bag you take in a shop: -1 point
Every bag you reuse: +1 point

If you can produce an organic linen bag with a flourish and pointedly use it in front of all the other customers in the shop: +1 bonus worthy point.

Supermarket? -1 point
Farmer's market? +1 point

Drive to work? -2 points each day (depending on the car. If you drive a 4x4, then I reckon you're screwed)

Walk/Cycle/use public transport? +2 points every day

Short haul flight? -50 points
long haul flight? -100 points

If you carbon neutralise some of your airmiles, then I reckon you can claw some points back... but not all of them. Not unless you've been to see the trees you've paid to plant, anyway. With that in mind, you might want to give some thought about the forest you choose. It's a lot easier to cycle to Sherwood Forest to have a look than it is to get to that remote peninsular in Norway....

You get the general idea.

Then perhaps we can all be like latter day Bridget Joneses, totting up our WQ rating for the day:

"Tuesday: +3 points. vg. Drove back from London, but offset that by cycling to the farm shop and buiyng an organic beef steak taken from a cow called Nigel. Served with filtered (not bottled) water. Pissed and alone on a school night, but it was organic wine from Stoke, so that's okay....If only I could find some free range fags"

We should all be aiming for a positive score every single day, and the bigger the score the more you can polish your halo.... but like an alcoholic climbing back onto the wagon, perhaps we should be realistic enough to accept that we're never going to stop taking those cheap flights for that essential city break in Paris, and should simply use the guide as a way of helping us to break even.

Clearly, it's not in the least bit scientific, and to be honest, saving the planet may even be a secondary concern to the whole system. Personally, I plan on using my WQ as a way of ensuring that my worthiness levels are sufficiently high to swan around polishing my metaphorical halo and casting pitying glances at the lesser mortals I encounter along the way.

It's my dream - and perhaps it's a foolish dream - that we might all turn our energies towards out-worthying each other. It's the game of keeping-up-with-the-neighbours that will help save the polar bears!

Yay!

The scoring system needs some work though.... so let's be hearing your suggestions. How worthy is it to be picking dog shit in a little bag? Probably more if it's not even your dog, I should think. Should we worry that the bags are always made of plastic? Is paper too unreliable? Or is it extra points for trying, especially in the rain?

How worthy is having your own water butt? Or a brick in your toilet cistern? or does that depend on how many flushes it takes to clear and the type of toilet paper you use?

Blimey. With this many permutations, the wallet sized card is already looking a touch ambitious.

Come on then. How worthy are you?