Bra in the gutter

It's impossible, when seeing something like a discarded bra in the gutter, not to reflect on how it got there. There are many possible reasons, none of which are particularly edifying, but all of which are quite entertaining. I'll leave you to make up your own...

Prime Minister's tea time

In these troubled economic and political times it's reassuring to see evidence of some old fashioned hospitality being displayed by the people of Brighton as the Labour conference hits town. The PM may be widely derided for his lack of charisma and his apparent inability to do anything right but it's good to know there's always a nice cup of tea available for him above the chip shop on Brighton seafront if he so desires.

Elsewhere, roads have been closed and a first-floor tunnel built between the Grand Hotel and the Brighton Centre, there are gun-toting policemen everywhere, traffic is permanently gridlocked, and smart-suited young people looking simultaneously earnest and smug are prowling the streets weighed down by mountains of paper, smartphones and identity tags as they strive towards a better Britain, bless them.

Centurian cyclists

Ignore for a moment the unusual pose I've adopted here. Try not to think about what I might be trying to conceal. Don't dwell on the reasons behind the almost freakish jollity on the faces of my two companions either. Focus instead, if you will, on the reason this photograph was taken: I'd just finished my first 100-mile bike ride and was feeling so overwhelmingly elated that I demanded someone took a picture of me and two of the three cyclists (the third is the photographer) whose apparently limitless energy had seen me through the dark miles from Plumpton to Devil's Dyke - miles 85 to around 97 of the 100.

The Brighton 100 is a new organised ride that starts and finishes in Preston Park, taking in quite a large part of East Sussex in a huge double loop that goes through Newhaven, Lewes, Eastbourne and numerous villages in the High Weald before heading over to Hurstpierpoint and back to Brighton - with a killer climb to Devil's Dyke three miles from the end. I finished the course in a shade over six and a half hours, at an average cycling speed (ie not including the compulsory 30 minute break for lunch) of 16.7mph. I was more than pleased with this time although I confess I was slightly disappointed not to hit the 17mph average mark.

I was pushing quite hard throughout so by the time I got to the refreshment stop at Plumpton, 84 miles in, I was getting tired but feeling ok. Leaving the pub I latched onto the rear wheels of my three new friends and clung on for dear life as they careered through the countryside at a pace that was very nearly too much for me. About eight miles outside Brighton I started getting cramps in my inner thighs. Then we hit the hills heading up to Devil's Dyke. Blimey but that was hard. I reckon I would have clung on to finish come what may as we were so close to the end, but having a wheel in front of me to focus on going up those hills felt like a real lifesaver. When I got to the top of the hill and knew it was all downhill from here to the finish I was filled with an incredible sense of elation and achievement.

It's the toughest physical challenge I've taken on I think - one I've been training for for around three months. I'm delighted to have stuck to the training and I'm even more delighted to have completed the course in a respectable time without crashing, falling off or otherwise disgracing myself. I think I may be a cyclist...

Old school fun

The whole idea of school reunions has always filled me with a special kind of horror. Why would anyone want to subject themselves to the inevitably unfavourable scrutiny of people they were fond of many years ago but with whom they long-since lost any meaningful connection? I assumed the bulk of any reunion would consist of career, waistline and hairline comparisons - none of which I'd emerge from with much credit. And why revisit a school where I spent a good part of my time feeling inadequate, insecure and in constant conflict with various teachers - the less said about some of whom the better?

How wrong I was. Last weekend was spent with a group of people I haven't seen in 30 years in most cases. I wasn't even all that friendly with some of them three decades ago. And yet we spent nearly three days together, meeting up in London on Friday for drinks and an evening meal, then again on Saturday at the school in Dover for lunch in our old refectory - surrounded by today's pupils no less - followed by a tour of much of the school. Then there were more drinks, another blow-out meal, more drinks, and some low-key alcohol-fuelled dramas (without which it would have been a pretty poor reunion, let's face it). On Sunday morning the brave-hearted met for breakfast at the school (I was blissfully asleep at the time - I managed a lie-in til 11.00!) a trip to the hills outside Dover where we used to meet to drink cheap wine and engage in immature pursuits, followed by yet another meal and then, finally, home.

People flew in from Australia, the US, Canada, various parts of Europe and travelled from all over the UK. There were even people at the London event who had crossed the river for the occasion!

I wouldn't swap a minute of the whole weekend. It was a fantastic celebration of timeless friendship, shared experience and joyful reminiscence. One of the most remarkable of many remarkable things about it was how effortless it was to pick up the old friendships where they'd left off. We're all older and different in many ways but the fundamentals haven't really changed. The sleazebags are still sleazebags, the diamonds still diamonds, and the feelings are just as strong as they ever were (once suitably nurtured in a hothouse of constant exposure and alcoholic lubrication). And now we've all grown up a bit we're capable of speaking to the people we never went near at school because we weren't cool enough - or because they weren't - which resulted in a whole series of new friendships. We were able to say what we meant this time - rather than muttering vague adolescent indications of how we felt about each other. The upshot of this was that I left feeling genuinely loved by these people about whom I'd stopped thinking for years until a few weeks ago, when the invitation arrived.

It was a heart-warming, life-affirming experience and I'm so glad I parked my scepticism and my nervousness and my silly misgivings. To have given in to them would have deprived me of a genuinely significant event in my life.

I took lots of photos, obviously, but I couldn't possibly pick one that did any kind of justice to the occasion so I've gone for a silly one: the really rather delicious apple crumble they served us in the refectory on Saturday lunchtime. You may feel I've tweaked the colour saturation to emphasise the yellow of that custard. You'd be wrong.

Another Marni injury

Not content with splitting her head open a few months back, then breaking her arm, then getting run over by a massive piece of farmyard equipment on a steeply sloping field when we were camping, Marni has added another injury to her increasingly impressive collection. This time she fell over a chair at school and landed awkwardly. It could have been worse by all accounts (well, hers anyway): her fall was broken by Morgan, a classmate who's so robust and plucky that I didn't even think to ask how he was after the incident. Needless to say, Marni's delighted to have a proper shiner to show off. If it gets any more spectacular over the coming days I'll take another shot of it (for her you understand...)

Hasn't she got beautiful eyes though?

Wide-angle bandstand

The newly refurbished bandstand on Brighton seafront has already become something of a photographic cliché so I approach it with some caution. But the sunset was beautiful last night and this couple were in just the right spot taking pictures of each other and the wide-angle lens just happened to be on the camera so I went for it anyway. Clichés are clichés for a reason after all (how clichéd was that?)

Back seat delight

This was taken while travelling at some speed in my brother's VW Passat as Black Sabbath's Iron Man blared out of the speakers. We were on our way to West Wittering beach near Chichester, a place I will definitely be returning to before long I hope. It's a beautiful stretch of sand and dunes - long enough not to be crowded even when it's a scorching Saturday in mid-September and thousands of people must have had the same idea as us: to make hay while the Indian summer sun shines. We were camping, for one night only, at a site called Stubcroft Farm, not far from East Wittering. There were 11 kids, seven dads and not a mum to be seen (although Oskar and Marni's very much wanted to be there). Just as well it was just one night I think - it could have all gone very badly wrong if we'd had two nights like Saturday. Let's just say single malt whisky and leave it at that shall we? All told it was a great success - it was particularly wonderful seeing the cousins getting on so well.

65daysofstatic

Good gig last night - 65daysofstatic at Digital. They were very noisy but the system at Digital is so good there were barely any after effects, thankfully. 65days are post rock or math rock or experimental or any one of a dozen other labels, but the bottom line is that they're really quite good (how's that for a new sub-genre?) I must go to more gigs during this little career hiatus of mine...

Someone described the gig thus: "...fucking phenomenal... for half an hour. Reckon they should play really short sets. It's a bit like being wanked off by someone with a death grip without achieving orgasm... feels fucking great, then a bit sore, then you wish they'd vary their grip or something. But yeah, brilliant for 30 minutes or thereabouts." Nigel liked this description so much he nicked it for his review. I like it equally so I'm nicking it for here.

090909 cooking skills

A small audience mainly consisting of reasonably well to do late middle-aged women with quite fancy hairstyles was entertained this lunchtime by some cooking demonstrations at a stage outside the Churchill Centre in Brighton. I think the chefs pictured came from The Arrogant Frog.

The demos were part of the Brighton and Hove Festival of Food (or something like that), which I applaud, but which I think has some way to go before it registers on the global gastronomic calendar. Still, the food looked nice and I found some interesting looking sausages for supper, so I left happy.

A tough life

Today was the first proper day of my career hiatus. Since I left my job at the end of July I've been surrounded by family, kids, holidays, festival and a lot of noise. Although the kids went back to school yesterday Rach was here for half of the day - most of which I spent on a huge bike ride in any case, so it really didn't feel any different to the holiday days that preceded it. But today was different - the family were all otherwise engaged and I had the whole day to do whatever I wanted with. So what did I do? Filing, laundry, grass-cutting and bike-fettling. It was a day of blissful mundanity. To celebrate the glorious hum drumness of it all I went for a swim in the sea before picking up the kids from school. The water's still warm enough for it not to be a balls-out masculinity test every time you jump in and the sun was beating down when I got out, so I dried myself on the beach and took photos that made my feet look odd. It's official: I'm happy.

New friend

This rather intimidating dog approached me while I was eating a crayfish and prawn ciabatta with chips at a nice pub in the wonderfully named Funtingdon, a small and rather posh village near Chichester, last weekend. She sat quietly and politely, never becoming in any way pushy, but never taking her eyes off my face while I ate my lunch. She's one of those scary pit bull types so I didn't feel comfortable stroking her or even engaging with her very much because I don't generally trust dogs like her. But as time went on she won me over with her unflinching attention and eventually I started speaking to her and even stroking her a bit. She behaved impeccably throughout - but I still didn't give her any food. I do so love dogs - even the intimidating ones it seems.

We were in the area to spend some time walking in the country, eating posh food and generally being away from the kids for a day or two to mark our anniversary. It was a delightful weekend that left us aching worthily from our walking exertions, but also thoroughly toxic thanks to the rather excessive blow-out we enjoyed on the Saturday night. I paid my penance in full today by embarking on a 77-mile bike ride that's almost completely incapacitated me - but which has also made me feel incredibly virtuous.

Ten years on

This weekend was spent celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary. So really there's only one photo I can reasonably post today - even though I didn't take it, not the original anyway. It's just a photo of a photo, complete with glare from the glass. But it's also one of my favourite photos. It looks like something David Bailey would have taken in the sixties if you ask me, and it captures the happiness of that amazing day better than any of the other several thousand shots - all taken by my mate Jon Rigby, an excellent (professional) photographer and a jolly nice chap to boot.

First panorama

I've never done one of these before. It's quite fun in a labour-intensive kind of way. I'm sure it wouldn't take much to fine tune this one so it's not quite so screamingly obvious where one photo ends and the next one starts but there's something appealing about the joins being obvious. In fact I thought long and hard before deciding not to include the jagged edges, Hockney-style, as though the photographs had just been thrown together.

This (or these I suppose) was (were) taken just outside Abbotsbury in Dorset, from where we've just returned from our annual holiday. It was a triumph, thank goodness. After last year's total wash-out I'm not sure we could have survived another rainy holiday. Camping in the English countryside in good weather is almost as good as it gets if you ask me - doing so in relentless downpours is something approaching hell on earth.

Note that I'm making no apologies for being away for such a long time. There's just no point!