If you're a pedestrian please pay attention. If you approach a pedestrian crossing and the light depicting a red man standing still is illuminated please, whatever you do, don't step off the curb.

If you do choose to be a total imbecile and walk off the nice safe pavement into the path of traffic that has just been given a green light to move away from it's previously stationary position do not amble across.

If you do chose to amble across and a cyclist rings their bell and shouts at you, get the hell out of their way.

If you can't be bothered to get out of the way and the cyclist falls off, because of your stupidity, don't then ask in a patronising way if they are alright. When you do ask if they are alright don't be surprised if they have a slight air of annoyance at your stupidity, and don't, whatever else you do at this point, blame the cyclist or complain about cyclist jumping red lights, and don't then stand in the middle of the road while the rest of the traffic that was stationary waiting for you to get out of the way approaches.

This is pretty much what happened to me this morning as I came off Blackfriars Bridge, and as a result I have several large bruises and blood running down my leg. The stupid bint who decided to cross in front of me this morning acused me of being reckless (presumably for going through a green light at very low speed) and complained when I shouted at her for causing me pain. Perhaps I should have just run into her...

I don't usually post this kind of thing (or much else for that matter), but this tickled the old funny bone this afternoon...

One Point Dares

1. Ignore the first five people who say 'good morning' to you.
2. To signal the end of a conversation, clamp your hands over your ears and grimace.
3. Leave your fly open for one hour. If anyone points it out, say, "Sorry, I really prefer it this way".
4. Walk sideways to the photocopier.
5. While riding in an elevator, gasp dramatically every time the doors open..
6. When in elevator with one other person, tap them on the shoulder and pretend it wasn't you.
7. Finish all your sentences with "In accordance with the prophecy..."
8. Don't use any punctuation.
9. Interrupt your conversation with someone by giving a huge dejected sigh.
10. Use your highlighter pen on the computer screen.

Three Point Dares

1. Say to your boss, "I like your style", wink, and shoot him with double-barrelled fingers.
2. Kneel in front of the water cooler and drink directly from the nozzle.
3. Shout random numbers while someone is counting.
4. Every time you get an email, shout 'email'.
5. Put decaf in the coffee maker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has got over his or her caffeine addictions, switch to espresso.
6. Keep hole punching your finger. Each time you do, shout, "dagnamit, it's happened again!". Then do it again.
7. Introduce yourself to a new colleague as "the office bicycle". Then wink and pout.
8. Call I.T. helpdesk and tell them that you can't seem to access any adult web sites.

Five Point Dares

1. At the end of a meeting, suggest that, for once, it would be nice to conclude with the singing of the national anthem (extra points if you actually launch into it yourself).
2. Walk into a very busy person's office and while they watch you with growing irritation, turn the light switch on/off 10 times.
3. For an hour, refer to everyone you speak to as "Dave".
4. Announce to everyone in a meeting that you "really have to go do a number two".
5. When you've picked up a call, before speaking finish off some fake conversation with the words, 'she can abort it for all I care'.
6. After every sentence, say 'Mon' in a really bad Jamaican accent. As in: "The report's on your desk, Mon." Keep this up for one hour.
7. In a meeting or crowded situation, slap your forehead repeatedly and mutter, "Shut up, damn it, all of you just shut up!"
8. At lunchtime, get down on your knees and announce, "As God is my witness, I'll never go hungry again!"
9. Repeat the following conversation 10 times to the same person: "Do you hear that?" "What?" "Never mind, it's gone now."
10. Present meeting attendees with a cup of coffee and biscuit; smash each biscuit with your fist.
11. During the course of a meeting, slowly edge your chair towards the door..
12. As often as possible, skip rather than walk.
13. Ask people what sex they are. Laugh hysterically after they answer.
14. Sign or pp all letters with your initials and a swastika.
15. Dry hump the photocopier. When someone spots you, stop and cough embarrassingly, then lean in to the machine and whisper loudly, "I'll see you tonight".

Some of you may recall how I begged for sponsorship last year for a cycle ride from London to Brighton. I am intending doing that ride again this year, but I'm also contemplating another, slightly longer ride. There are some details I need to discover, but I also need to gauge whether or not there is sufficient sponsorship out there for it to be a) worth doing and b) at all feasible anyway. The problem, you see, is that I need to raise £1200 as an absolute minimum in sponsorship.

Before you all^* turn away let me explain the few details I have so far. Firstly the cause: St John the Baptist RC secondary school in Woking has a project called SJB Africa. They are aiming to build a school in Malawi - more details over here. One of the fundraisers is said bike ride, and takes place at the end of July 2009. A small group starts at Tower Bridge in London on Friday morning and cycles to Newhaven for a ferry to Dieppe. After an overnight stop in Dieppe the group cycles south stopping after about 50 or 60 miles for another overnight stop. On the Sunday the group rides the remaining 80 or so miles into central Paris, ending at the Jardins du Trocadero, just under the Eifel Tower.

It's 320km, or 200 miles in old money. I'm really keen to do it, but as I said I need to raise a minimum of £1200 in sponsorship. So. How much interest/willingness is there out there?

^* Not actually sure how many are still checking in on this, but I guess this will be a reasonable barometer of that!

I had so many punctures on my ride to work this morning that I actually ran out of self adhesive temporary patches. The latter punctures were due to my ineptitude at puncture repairs, but the irony comes in with the cause of the first puncture: the anti-puncture strip between tyre and inner tube has an edge which, when incorrectly fitted, will not prevent a puncture but will actually slice the tube.

The other 9 punctures were down to my stupidity.

OK, so it's well over a week since I did the ride and some of you have been waiting ever-so-patiently to hear all about it. Of course some of you have asked this week when it is, so clearly weren't paying attention in the first place... As it turned out I had the timing all wrong, so it was just as well I checked on Saturday evening before the ride and discovered that I was, in fact, starting at 8:30am and not 7:30am as I'd been telling anyone who would sit still enough to listen during the week before. I had become slightly cocky about it. 'Yeah, no problem at all. I'm sure I'll make the distance, it's just a question of how quick, and even then I'm starting to revise my estimate downwards', was the sort of thing you might have heard had you been unlucky enough to get stuck in a room with me during the week prior to the ride. My original target time was four and a half hours, with a hopeful eye on the four hour mark if I felt particularly good on the day. I turned up at Clapham Common for the start and couldn't believe the number of people that were there. I knew that there were 27,000 entrants, but I also knew that they were starting from 6am and that I was in one of the last three starting slots (8:30, 9 and 9:30am are the last three). The scene was almost unreal, and the number of people saying things like, 'what time did you manage last year?' and 'yeah, I asked for a 7am start and got stuck with this - started at 6am last year and it was just too early' was mildly alarming. I felt like I was the only first-timer. My 8:30 start time turned out to be an estimate anyway and I finally passed the start line just after 9am. Five minutes later frustration kicked in. The average speed was just a couple of miles per hour due, mostly, to the volume of riders, but also to the number of sets of traffic lights. Now call me a winger if you like, but if the roads are closed to allow a massive cycle ride through, why are the riders forced to stop at the red lights by three armed (I kid you not) police per set of lights?! After about an hour, which somehow equated to about 12 miles in, we stopped. By we I mean every single cyclist as far as the eye could see in front and behind. Every last one of them. Stationary. This lasted for something like half an hour and was caused by an 'incident'. No idea what the incident was, but I was by now beginning to doubt that four and a half hours was achievable, never mind the four hours that I'd started wondering about. After this little hiccough it was plain sailing for the next not-quite-40 miles or so. I did all sorts of fun things like keeping up with a couple of people who clearly cycle a lot more than me - slipstreaming is definitely the easiest way to cycle at 32mph. I also had a nearly-accident at just over 30mph - I passed a car coming in the opposite direction, pulled out to overtake a bike that I'd been closing in on at a scarey rate and bounced off the guy beside me. Just think about that for a moment - I'd just passed within inches of a car, so there wasn't anyone there and then when I moved sideways there was. How close must he have been behind me, and what was his speed like?! Anyhoo, he bounced off me and carried on up the road at what can only be described and an unachievable-by-me type of pace. Those of you counting the miles will note that at this point in the tale we are about 50 miles in, and therefore not far from Brighton. I was, surprisingly, feeling pretty good at this stage, although a little thirsty and wondering how much a bag of chips would cost me on the pier. It was time to tackle Ditchling Beacon. I'd looked this up a couple of times and the prospect of a mile long one-in-four hill after 50 miles of riding didn't fill me with warm happy thoughts. I paused in Ditchling village to top up with water, start my camera recording and stretch my muscles (they weren't quite stretched enough by this stage). Then there was no delaying any more and off I rode. At first I wondered what the fuss was about, and then I realised that I was not really in what you could call a high gear and wasn't going all that fast. I decided as it got steeper to drop down to a lower gear and broke the gear change. I was not happy. I lost all momentum, got off the bike a kicked it several times. I managed to get it into the lowest possible gear and set off again. The noise was terrible - it was kind of trying to change seven gears and kept jumping, so I couldn't ride it. I got off and kicked it again - harder this time. Got back on and thought it was better. Then the chain fell off. I spent a few minutes cursing the bike and then got the chain back on, got it in the lowest possible gear and started off. Two stops later, and after a lot of puffing I reached the top. I was a bit miffed that I hadn't managed to get up in one go, but I didn't walk any of it, so I figured that was better than nothing. Now, if you ever do this ride yourself don't listen to the commentary as you reach the 'top' of Ditchling Beacon. It's all lies. They keep telling you that you're at the top and it's all downhill to the sea front. Utter bollocks. There are two more hills. Not large ones, but hills all the same. At the top of the hill, believing I was at the top, I sorted the gears a little and managed to get the bike working for the top seven gears only. This seemed sensible for a downhill sprint into Brighton. The downhill was almost as terrifying as the climb was knackering. When the downhill finally got going I ran out of gears and simply freewheeled with my chin tucked down on the handlebars - I set a new record for my personal best top speed on two wheels at 41.something mph. Then I saw a tiny little problem - the first traffic light for 30+ miles. And it was red. The rest of the ride into Brighton was as uneventful as the first 10 miles out from Clapham. It was lovely to be greeted by such a large crowd of people as we rolled through the town and onto Madeira Drive to the finish line. At this point I seriously believed I could have turned round and gone back to Clapham, and probably would have done had I not had Claire and the girls waiting with Tim to drive me home... next year maybe. Speaking of which, who's up for it next year? One final word on the sponsorship. Many, many thanks to all those who donated. I think my final total is in the region of £800, but I'm still collecting the last of it. If you do want to add to the pot retrospectively then please do - send a cheque payable to British Heart Foundation to me (ask for the address) or go to http://www.justgiving.com/jamesadane/ which will be active until about September.

I suspect most of those who read this are already aware of this request, but on the off chance that there are readers who are not a) on Facebook or b) in my email address book I thought I should post something here.

I have been granted a place on the annual London to Brighton Cycle Ride which is organised by the British Heart Foundation.

So on June 15th I will join 26,999 other lunatics at Clapham Common, point my bicycle in an approximately southerly direction and peddle hell-for-leather until I either reach Brighton or fall off, whichever is sooner. Since it's organised by the BHF they ask that participants raise sponsorship for them, hence this post. There are three ways you can donate if you would like to sponsor me:

1. I have a JustGiving page. If you use this then the money doesn't come anywhere near me and goes directly to the BHF, and please don't forget to tick the 'Gift Aid' box if you pay income tax in the UK as this will add 20% to your donation at no extra cost to you.
2. You can email me via my comments page and I'll add you to my paper sponsorship form. You can then post the money (cheques payable to British Heart Foundation, address on request), or I'll pester you after the ride for money. Please include your name, home address & postcode and either an amount per mile or a total amount you wish to sponsor. Again your donation can be Gift Aided, so if you're a UK tax payer let me know and I'll tick that box on the form as well.

My target on this is £1,000, which I don't think is unreasonable - I know a lot of people and I'm already approaching half that total. For those of you who are on Facebook, I've setup a group so you can get updates on training(!) and a review of the ride afterwards.

One last thing; if you know anyone who you think would be willing to support the BHF by sponsoring me, even if I don't know them and they don't know me, please feel free to point them at this page.

Thanks for reading!

Dragon Mama reported a conversation she had with our eldest this morning regarding school yesterday:

Teacher: Who can tell me an 'ing' word
Alix raises hand
Teacher: Alix?
Alix: Minging

DM thinks I should think a little more before adding to the children's vocabulary in future. I, on the other hand, am still laughing about it. And I think she should get extra points for picking a word with two ings!

So Fernando Alonso has defended his countrymen over the racist abuse showered upon Lewis Hamilton last month. Fair enough. I suspect that the 'fans' who were at the centre of the incident are a small minority, but there was still a missed opportunity here. Couldn't he have said something like, 'the racist abuse directed towards my former teammate was abhorent, but please understand that the culprits are a very small minority voice in my country'? Surely his PR people will be rueing the missed opportunity to show Alonso as an ambassador for both Formula 1 and Spain too.

While we're on the subject both Alonso and The Dictator have declared that an anti-racism programme is unnecessary in Formula 1 because 'this was a one-off incident.' This, I would argue, makes it precisely the right time to kick off an anti-racism campaign; stopping it before it gets a foothold will be far, far easier than stopping it once it's an integral part of the sport.

And yet strangely believable. One of my [Portuguese] colleagues is still puzzling over my anger at him this morning after he dripped espresso (please note the lack of a letter 'x' and learn to pronounce it correctly) into my tea. He couldn't understand why I poured the tea away and made a fresh cup. The dozy pillock.

You may recall that I recently announced my intention to take part in the London to Brighton Cycle Ride this year. Well my application is now in the hands of Royal Mail, so here's hoping that a place is given and I get to join in the fun. Watch this space for more details.