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So the post Christmas/New Year period is over and we all return to normal - um, not quite. My cough remains and my energy levels are still well down on my usual, possibly not helped by working silly hours.
My ex and I are still worried sick about our daughter who is still awaiting confirmation of the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis - she's possibly getting worse and her GP wanted to admit her to hospital. In the end she went but didn't stay and they hoped to arrange the MRI next week sometime. She's got to the stage where if she falls over she can't pull herself up again; this the girl who a few months ago was running, swimming, cycling and doing three exercise classes a week. It breaks my heart.
On the positive side, once NatWest Bank decided I wasn't fraudulently using my own debit card, they allowed me to buy a new bike, a Boardman Fi compact hybrid, which is very nice, very quick and hard work. The chainset is a compact 50/34, so will be hard work on hills as I usually ride a triple, oh well, maybe 2013 is the year I get fit - ha ha. I attach a piccie, it's a very pretty bike even when ridden by an old crone.
Today, I was astonished by two things: first, the sun is shining and I managed a ride on the above bike and fitted a bottle cage; second, after completing the Observer crossword, I read through the paper and there was a rant by Julie Burchill - her with the squeaky, whiney voice and transphobic attitude. It was in support of her friend Suzanne Moore being tweeted by loads of outraged trannies after an article she wrote, and was very insulting to transsexuals of all shape and size. I left a comment on the website but won't include a link - BC would catch fire it's so awful - the rant I mean. If you want to be outraged look on the 'Comment is free' section of the Guardian/Observer website - though quite honestly, I wouldn't bother.
The new bike while I was fitting the bottle cage.
Comments
I hope your bike serves you well.
Your daughter remains in my prayers. And your health seems to be challenging lately as well; my thoughts and prayers to you as well.
Would you mind including the link to the forum to which you mentioned in a pm? Thanks.
Love, Andrea Lena
Bikes and Burchill
...not necessarily at the same time, of course!
Nice wheels... the 34 chainring should be okay if you can change out the larger sprockets for something more comfortable. And I have bad experiences with that kind of bottle cage - I used to cut myself so often taking the bottle out I threw it away in favour of a wire cage.
As for Burchill, well! The piece, which I read in the Observer, is so incoherent I can't really make up my mind what she is complaining about. The allegedly quite clever woman obviously has no idea of the subject matter at all and confuses transgender, transvestite, people who have had GRS, people who have had none and everything in between!
If she plans to have a rant in a quality newspaper you'd think she would do a little research first. Mind you, that tells you quite a bit about editorial standards these days. [Goes off indistinctly muttering about "in my day" and "get off my lawn".]
Penny
PS Sorry to hear about your daughter. I ought to point out here that the symptoms of MS and ME can be quite similar. When I was originally forced to give up work I had several episodes like you describe. Don't discount ME or Fibromyalgia.
Not Fibromyalgia !
Fibromyalgia is a made-up condition invented by lazy physicians who can't be bothered to do a proper diagnosis, The other two are regretably only too real. They can quickly be diagnosed and differentiated from each other in most advanced countries, but perhaps not so well in the UK, where guessing often now replaces diagnosing what the patient has.
There are now a few new medicines that can halt the progress of MS, available, but in the English NHS it depends on your postal district and an awful organization so cynically known as "NICE", that really should be called NASTY, whether a patient will get it prescribed or not. (The Scots and Ulster people have a seperate, better funded NHS)
"NICE" was set up by the Polits to delay the take up of new medicines because they tend to be dearer than the older ones, so that more NHS money could be spent on Administration and RE Re-organizations. The only European country that is worse with letting new ones be used is Belgium, where the company that develops one has first to get it registered as an approved drug, then the insurance companies have to agree to reimburse it, and then the government has to agree to a price for it. Many products just are not available there as it is only a small market and many Belgians go to The Netherlands for treatment to be prescribed, if they are Flemish, or to France if they are Walloons, or to either Germany or Luxembourg if German-speaking. "Medical Tourism" is a rapidly growing phenomenon in Europe these days.
Most Brits put up with the second worst health service in Europe (surpassed only by Romania!) because they have not experienced any of the other countries' healthcare systems. Those of us that have experienced them hurry abroad to get seen to properly if we have something go seriously wrong.
Much of what gets labelled "Fibromyalgia" is a thing for a Psychiatrist to handle, others have one of several varieties of rheumatoid conditions, but it is not in fact a real disease entity, just an imperfectly diagnosed condition.
Please 'scuse the rant.
Briar
Of course!
I can excuse the rant, but I'm sorry that I must disagree with your assessment of fibromyalgia. My wife and I suffer from the condition, which goes hand and hand with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which in turn can be directly linked to the herpes strain, HHV-6. It's more of a immuno-system deficiency, which I can assure you is quite real. It's like wearing a suit of 'pain;' mostly never debilitating, but horribly tenacious and frustrating.
My doctor is one of the foremost experts in the field, and she's convinced that if anything, it's under-diagnosed, and that many of the more serious immune system diseases are wrongly attributed to what might actually be fibro. Just my opinion, but I'm pretty sure I'm not alone on this; even to the point of having several colleagues here who share both my opinion and my condition.
And while I don't agree with you, I still think the world of you!
Love, Andrea Lena
Hand in hand with illness
I have to agree with Drea here. I have a close friend who suffers from a delightful mix of ME, FM and CFS. I pick up the pieces on a regular basis, and I often spend quite a bit of time massaging her to ease the resultant pain.
Ang: what a classic piece of JB. Burchill or Bindell, doesn't matter which. Like five-year-olds in the playground. I gave up on the comments after seeing how they turned into a parade of radfem sock puppets, but if I get her 'message' right, she is saying (as a rich, white woman in a western democracy, who has exceptionally privileged access to the media) that she has suffered far worse than any trans person.
Oh, grow up.
Here's one she made earlier
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2001/jan/20/weekend.j...
WTF !! Is this woman kidding?
WTF !! Is this woman kidding? This is inflammatory to the point of inciting violence.
Burchill
Interestingly, the top of the article page (above the article itself) now has this text:
Her argument started off coherently enough: she was writing in support of a journalist friend of hers who'd received a lot of abuse on Twitter following remarks in an article she wrote about the fashion industry.
Julie then launches into a very anti-TG rant (of which one of the mildest but bizzarest was probably "bed-wetters in bad wigs") before concluding with "don't threaten or bully us lowly natural-born women, I warn you ... You really won't like us when we're angry." (Is she related to Bruce Banner?)
Skimming through the first couple of pages worth of comments, the vast majority of respondents were shocked and outraged at the article, wondering why it had been allowed to be published.
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Re: A mixed week
Hello Angharad. I will send all the positive love I can along the coast to you and then on to your daughter. I know it hurts and at the moment the not knowing is very frustrating. I hope the scans take place as soon as possible.
I must say the new bike looks nice, let’s hope we get some good weather soon so you can give it a good road test.
All my Love.
Anne G.
Sympathy
I'm concerned for you daughter. MS is very bad ... but I'm not telling either you or her anything you don't know. Although my thoughts are with you and them, I'm not sanguine about the outcome. That's one of the things that makes this so brutal. There is nothing anyone can do, but watch a person you love almost more than life itself, be slowly but inevitably destroyed. I'm sure I speak for all of us, when I say we feel for you, and, if kind thoughts count for anything, you and yours will get all we can send to you.
As for your new bike, Cool! I don't ride two-wheelers any more. My last ones were motorcycles, and the old story was true. It's not if you will crash, but how often. Now, I have the comfort of enclosed, four-wheel, fully air-conditoned, and thoroughly entertained leisure as I motor through life.
So, get fit! ;-D
Red MacDonald
sorry Ang
but that bike is an absolute Dodo! Why ever did you part hard earned cash for it, i hope it was cheap!
Cable disks - aaarrrrgggghhh! single stay rear guard - i hope you like the sound of rubbing tyres! Don't even get me started on the frame! CB really should stick to commentating.
I really thought you had better taste and experience after all you have a nice Ruby and the Chameleon.
Its gonna be a couple of weeks yet before i take delivery of my new mount, a Peugeot CR02.
Fingers crossed for your offspring
hugs
Maddy
Madeline Anafrid Bell
Cable disc brakes.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with mechanical disc brakes. We have a Magura hydraulic calliper brake on the front of our tandem and a cable operated Avid BB disc on the back and I've never had a bike (single or tandem) with such powerful, progressive braking. I can lock the back wheel if necessary (though I don't) and that's difficult to achieve on a tandem.
Descending at up to 80kph is comfortable though the screams from the back seat tend to encourage use of the aforesaid superb stopping power ... albeit gently :)
You've seen my bike in Derbyshire (though I guess you won't remember) but my frame is a Kinesis Racelight with carbon fork. It's not super light but it's got me up the Ventoux and the Aspen though not as easily as when I was 20 years younger but OK for a septuagenarian :) My neck and shoulders preclude dropped bars these days though I've covered many tens of thousands of miles on dropped in complete comfort before I damaged my upper spine.
Robi
Angharad, one question:
how do the cats feel about your new bike?
May Your Light Forever Shine
Dear Angie,
I'm impressed by your new bike, anyway. I'm biased toward light carbon fiber frames, but my last Al frame was from 1999 and used somewhat thickwalled 6061 tubing. I figure most manufacturers, at least for their not-the-cheapest-model bikes use a stronger Al so the frames can be more vertically compliant ie. not as harsh a ride over bumps, etc. I'd rather have road handlebars, but otherwise having a hybrid seems like a good idea. It's like a mountain bike with road wheels. You didn't get rid of your road bike, did you?
Here in the desert, not many bikes have fenders and I don't know much about them; having only one set of stays might be OK, it would depend on the stiffness of the rest of the fender. Cable disc brakes are still better than rim brakes, especially when it's wet. The compact crankset should be OK if, in your normal travels, you avoid the steepest hills. To have slightly lower gearing, one of the French component makers sells a 33T inner ring that works fine for me; fits on well, etc.
I'm very sorry about your daughter; maybe a better treatment will be available in a few years....
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Piccie?
Where's the piccie?
Dave.
Lots to say.
First and most important, I'm very sorry to read about your daughter's illness. We have no children so I can only imagine how awful it must be for her, you and your whole family but my thoughts are with you all.
Second the Julie Birchill article. I read it over breakfast in the printed Observer and could hardly believe my eyes. Birchill has always been a nasty-minded individual who used her undoubted vitriolic writing talents to get on but this article takes her nastiness to a new level. I also read the Suzanne Moore article which seems to have triggered the whole thing off and that really didn't seem all that bad. I think some TS individuals who took offence were perhaps over sensitive but Moore should have apologised for any offence and it would have blown over. I quite like a lot of Moore's columns but the two Julies (Birchill and Bindel) have a history of transphobia.
Lastly your new bike. It's almost like the bike I built for myself about 3 years ago. I wanted a lightweight touring bike with straight bars and low gears with clearance for mudguards and there wasn't anything available so I made my own. I know from experience on our tandem 18 months ago that it's pretty lumpy round your way and low gears are a necessity (low gears are necessary, high gears are merely for fun if you aren't racing). My bike has a 44/32/22 chainset coupled to a 13-25 9 speed cassette which gives me a decent close set of medium to low gears that get me most places in the Peak. It shouldn't be too difficult (or even expensive) to put a triple chain set on your Boardman if you feel it's needed. It looks to be an ideal winter cum touring bike. I really don't understand the current trend to eschew mudguards. A few years ago everyone on winter chain gangs had mudguards fitted when out training and usually a saddlebag. There seems no point training on a bike as light as the one you're going to race on - you won't feel the benefit.
my very best wishes
Robi
Response
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/13/julie-bi...
A reasoned piece.