An ever spinning wheel

Recently, a freelance writer for the Guardian, Laura Laker, wrote a piece about cycling in Cambridge, titled:

What makes Cambridge a model cycling city? With considerate drivers, dedicated bicycle parking and bike-friendly city planning, it's no wonder cycling is a popular means of transport.

The article made me mad, incensed even, so much so it incited me to write a comment on it. 186 others, and still counting, have done the same thing. It wasn’t just that it was poorly written, rambling, repetitive and riddled with delusions. The delusion came down to the fact that the writer based her whole article on seemingly one visit to Cambridge, in a quiet time on the roads and no proper experience in cycling around Cambridge. It wasn’t even that initially she wrote, “in a city of 120,000, students number only 3,500.” It was subsequently changed, after a few comments citing the error, to 43,000! How could someone get it so wrong? No, it was because she painted this misleading idyllic portrait of perfection, a haven for cyclists and everything is bright and sunny in the world. She relied on facts and figures, not opinions, perceptions and most of all, experience.
What she doesn’t seem to understand is that Cambridge is a cycling city. The new measures creating cycle routes and the such like haven’t made it into a cycling city, like the much lauded Sheffield, it just has an inherent cycling culture. She comments on the cycle racks at Cambridge train station, stating the numbers, the facts, but not mentioning that cycle thefts are rife, that it’s impossible to find a space unless you get up very early, and even if you do find a space, the chances are you won’t be able to get your bike out again as someone will have locked theirs to yours.
She goes on to say, “Cambridge drivers are considerate of cyclists in a way I've never witnessed in the UK.” Yes, drivers are more considerate, but through experience rather than civility. As one commenter said, “you just assume that every cyclist is an idiot and, despite the city being a world-renown centre of education, you're rarely proved wrong.” There are too many horror stories about cyclists being clipped by cars, forced into the curb and attacked by other road users to say that drivers are considerate.

There "were no buses driving on [her] back wheel and no cars revving their engines trying to overtake dangerously". She was certainly not there during rush hour and had a very lucky journey by the sounds of it, found a sweet spot in time when there was barely anything on the roads, an eerie silence which I have experienced; it’s like Cambridge is a ghost town. She sees all the bikes chained to every conceivable object or just chained to themselves, not commenting on what that means: not enough cycle racks or racks in convenience places. She also mentions the cycle parks, which she doesn't say are usually full.

Lastly, and the comment that got me the most incensed, "Hills Bridge Road [sic] near the station, for example, is used by 4,000-5,000 cyclists a day, and recently priority was given to cyclists, pedestrians and buses as a result." Let’s say we ignore the possible typo, but more likely idiotic naming mistake. She hasn’t done her research. A little digging would’ve found how long it’s taken to make the “improvements” to that damn bridge. How they changed their minds three times before they settled on the design of the cycle route over it and if she had asked any cyclist who uses the bridge, bar the kamikaze ones, they would have told her how dangerous it is. It wasn’t just me who got incensed about it, "Hills Road Bridge is a complete nightmare and the planner who redesigned the cycle path 3 times in about a year, each time just as dangerous and confusing as the last, should be shot." Here's a picture of the lovely cycle bridge instead:

Anyway, here is my comment, under my moniker mingsysar, don’t ask:

I am Cambridge born and bred. I have been cycling since I was a child. I cycled to school and I cycle to work. Every day. I have been cycling the Cambridge cycle routes for over 10 years, and I still don't think I'm qualified enough to write an article about cycling in Cambridge, but here goes.Cycling is extremely popular in Cambridge, there are many cycle routes and there are lots of cycle racks, repair shops and schemes to support cyclists. There are less lycralouts as @burtthebike called them, cycling is the best way to get around Cambridge (the traffic is terrible and the buses are expensive and unreliable), as my refusal to use any other mode of transport will attest, and I did start cycling to school on my own from the age of 11.

However you cannot write an article about cycling in Cambridge until you have experienced rush hour, which, lets be honest, is when the majority of cyclists are out; apart from students, most of the Cambridge cyclists are made up of commuters, parents taking their kids to school and schoolkids themselves. Cars cut cyclists up, buses gets so close that it is frightening, cars encroach on the cycle lanes and don't get me started on the new Hills Road Bridge which is going to get a cyclist killed it's such a death trap; cyclists will have to cut across traffic to go straight ahead on the Leisure Park side. It's not just Hills Road. We do have a great cycle bridge over the railway, but Cherry Hinton Road, Queen Edith's Way and Newmarket Road are extremely hairy to cycle down. But by far the worst for me is Mill Road; it's so bad, I refuse to cycle down it. It's not just me and the roundabouts are notorious for cycle accidents; Elizabeth Way, Coldham's Lane, Midsummer Common, Perne Road/Cherry Hinton Road, Perne Road/Birdwood Road... Cycling round Cambridge in ice and snow is treacherous as well.

It's not just vehicles, the cycle routes and the roads themselves, there are cyclists that make good cyclists look bad, cyclists that think they rule the road and foreign students ride three abreast; there are ideas afoot to run cycling proficiency courses for foreign students. There are cyclists that flout the law, running through red lights, going up on the pavement endangering pedestrians and despite the schemes the police run, more cyclists still don't use lights than not. You only need be out of an evening to realise that. It's become so bad the police are issuing on the spot fines.

Cycling isn't safe in Cambridge for another reason too. You should see the cycle store at the Police Station, it is full of stolen bicycles. There is a dedicated team of policemen who work flat out trying to prevent cycle crime in Cambridge, but the thieves are just getting cleverer. The amount of bikes that get stolen in Cambridge rises each year. You have to be extremely savvy when locking your bike up in Cambridge.

Lastly, there must be a reason why cyclists put cameras on their helmets and film their journey. And why was this never mentioned in the article?


That's my beloved old bike, Destiny. To big myself up a bit, my comment is the second highest recommended comment (out of the 185 comments, mine has been recommended 117 times) after this one, and so many cyclists in normal clothes and no helmet. This is what all other conurbations in the UK should aspire to: cycling as a perfectly normal activity, not just the preserve of lycra louts and pastie heads.”

Here a couple of comments on mine, Have to agree with mingsyser [sic]. His [sic] article is much closer to the truth than Laura's." "I'm a longtime Cambridge resident. Mingsysar nails it. Laura really, really doesn't."

Oh and in case you didn't get the reference, the title is taken from the song Windmills of Your Mind” used in the film The Thomas Crown Affair. Check the lyrics out, they’re haunting, poetic and perfect.

Thing 10 – Everything is open, nothing is set in stone

Everything is happening for me at the moment; I have a full-time job as an Information and Library Assistant at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, a job I've managed to keep for about two and a half years now, I’m learning to drive at last after years of putting it off and I’m about to start a distance-learning MSc in Information and Library Studies in September at Aberystwyth University. It has all fallen into place all of a sudden after coasting through life with nary a thought of the future. I thought I had all the time in the world, just "with the cares of the world" right in front of me instead of far behind. My boss finally encouraged me enough to give me the confidence to apply for the MSc and it has all happened so quickly. In researching where to do the course, I settled on Aberystwyth as it seemed to me to be the best, had a great set-up and many Cambridge librarians have gone there. It just so happens by complete coincidence that our summer holiday, which was booked over a year ago, was a mere 18 miles from where we were staying. I didn’t realise until afterwards! So I organised a visit, spent a long morning there getting my own private open day basically and I now feel a lot happier about the whole thing. I also fell in l
ove with Aberystwyth. But how did I get here? How come I'm studying again? How did I become a library assistant?

The short answer is I don’t know. But in trying to rationalise it, I will go through in chronological order, bear with me as it’ll all make sense in the end, it did to me anyway. I do tend to live in my own little world most of the time; for those of you interested it's like the world on the other side of the mirror in the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus where I can stumble upon anyone from people out of my past to fictional characters such as Sydney Bristow from Alias: dream-like, surreal, dark, technicolour and magical. I left full-time education five years ago, wow has it been five years? I graduated from Anglia Ruskin University with a BA in English; I adore reading, literature and books so it was the natural choice, plus it was my best subject. One of my teachers said I was like Matilda: long dark hair, painfully shy and always had my head in a book, yet hopefully with the same intelligence, imagination and spirit. I may have done English, but I also picked and chose modules in drama, film studies and creative writing, whatever interested me. I always tried to choose the juiciest fruit from the tree of knowledge and even those seemingly out of my reach. I fell off branches a few times trying to do just that, but least I tried; the bruises always fade and never leave lasting damage. I am a writer at heart and on top of everything e
lse I’m going to start writing the novel I have had in my head for many years now. I may have left it too late and it may be too much to take on alongside everything else, but committing yourself to something for a few years makes you realise all the things you have not yet done. My time management has never been the best and I'm an all or nothing type of person, so at the moment it's "all" but I've had months and months of "nothing"ness.

After leaving university, I didn’t have a clue what to do; I had vague ideas of journalism, publishing and even MI5! I blame Spooks. So I went to a temp agency and got a very interesting administrative job at the police station, contracted initially for a month as a data entry processor, but I progressed into various and diverse tasks for a few different departments, and finally lasted seven months as I proved too good to let go, that’s literally what they said. As proof, they couldn’t afford to keep me on any longer in that role, but they offered me another so they didn’t lose me. I got a lot of experience: work experience and life experience; if you want your eyes opened, work in a police station; but I couldn’t take the tension any longer. I’m surprised I lasted as long as I did without having a nervous breakdown. So I had to leave. Directly afterwards, I finished working for Heffers in their classical music shop, my first proper job and one I had for seven years. I still miss it.

I then applied for a job off my own back as a content editor for an online reservations company. We had a great team of people, which is what it was all about for me. From doing that job I discovered Watchmen, Veronica Mars, Freaks and Geeks, furthered my love of anime and made a fantastic group of friends. Thanks guys. I can’t remember if I left there or if I was let go, either way it was due to restructuring. I went briefly back to temp work, but quit because I got another job as maternity cover, after a long interviewing process; the final meeting was a presentation about the functional food industry. I was a research assistant for an offshoot of a development agency. I hated the job, not the actual work, just the place. So to rescue my sanity I left; it was either me or them and let's face it, it was not going to be them. I went after I was due to leave I might add because of the person I was covering's procrastination, which didn’t help things. A few more interviews came and went and then I saw the advert in the paper for my current post. I had always wanted to work for Cambridge University, an institution I have great admiration for and pride in; I'm Cambridge born and bred. That may be the reason why it jumped out at me, seemed to fit, made sense; I don’t know how to describe it except something clicked inside my head. I didn’t have the insight to analyse it further, but I applied for the job more in hope than anything and to my great surprise, I got it.

There does seem to have been some overarching master plan to my career progression so far, just not of my own making. All those previous jobs have been unconsciously preparing me for what I do now. Heffers gave me extensive customer service experience, cataloguing skills and till work. The administrative job is obvious: data entry, office experience, acquisitions, filing, word processing, the list is endless. Working with such a great team of people, the relationships I’ve developed and liaising with the different departments in the police station, civilians and police officers alike, have proved essential to what I do now. Working in a police station isn't actually that different to the world of academia, there are similarities between police officers and faculty; the former needs things urgently the latter wants things urgently... The content editing job is less obvious, but I learnt professional creative writing, web-based publishing, proofreading, accuracy, attention to detail, I even did some editing in foreign languages. I also got to go to the headquarters in Amsterdam which was brilliant. The research job, well, working in a business school requires excellent research skills and that job interview where I had to do the presentation is similar to what our students go through now. I was literally doing what our students do for their projects, coursework and so on. It was also my first experience of databases, introduction to the business world and I was basically paid to search the internet and read newspapers! I also got to play It’s a Knockout on one of the company away days, but that’s a whole other subject.

I have never hidden my love of libraries, I have always felt instantly at home in them, surrounded by books and knowledge; it's simply where I belong. So in reading this, you will now know I have never worked in a library before, apart from a brief stint at school, but I’ve been working towards librarianship without even knowing!

My story is actually pretty similar to Lottie Smith; here is her post via Adventures of a Librarian.