Alan Coleman

I was looking around online earlier and came across this great picture of Bernard Hinault and Greg Lemond settling their differences at the top of Alpe d’Huez during the 1986 Tour de France. It’s a defining moment in Tour history, a truly inspiring image and a tribute to the sportsmanship of both riders. The two of them are up there with the people that I admire most in life. Hinault, very much the master at this stage of the relationship, is a picture of joy as the emerging understudy Greg Lemond looks on with admiration and respect. The whole image, Peugeot, Credit Lyonnais, paint on the road and the smiles all combine to give a perfect window into that late 20th century European psyche.

This is often referred to as the Golden Era of cycling, before helmets removed all its personality and drug use became an acceptable fate. Certainly the riders have changed in as much as they all seemed to come in different shapes and sizes, ranging from tiny Columbian climbers like Luis Herrera to enormous Dutch sprinters who attacked the flatlands with relentless force. Maybe attitudes have changed too, sure it was competitive but it wasn’t so much about being the eventual winner as having a couple of glorious moments.

It’s like all these things though isn’t it? It’s the romance of it all, the memories, the sound of Phil Liggett’s exited voice and the feeling of pride as Robert Millar leaves Pedro Delgado behind in the Pyrenees. Cycling isn’t the most skilful sport in terms of individual competitors, but it’s probably the most romantic and certainly the most stylish.

This is a fantastic picture, and one of my favourite images of the last few years. Even if you’ve been living in Mongolia since the turn of the century and don’t recognise them, they look like the sort of people you’d like know, right?

Look at Joe Calzaghe, with his humble stance and cool as thumbs up. When he answered his critics by teaching Jeff Lacy how to box in Mach 2006 I honestly thought that it was a defining point in my life. Still unbeaten after 45 fights, he is quite literally, a great bloke. Victoria Pendleton’s shy smile hides a personality that ignored her coach when he insisted that she was too small for track cycling. She went on to dominate her sport as the undisputed champion of the world with far too many titles and gold medals to list here. Lewis Hamilton’s friendly hands in pockets confidence is the epitome of cool. He ignored the racist slurs and backstabbing that accompany his chosen sport to rise as a true champion in unbelievable style.

I have no doubt whatever that any one of the above would stop and help you in the street if need be.

As a simple picture, it’s the embodiment of personal achievement, good nature and everything that is great about our country. Stuff The Daily Mail, the Royal family, the BNP and waving plastic flags at Last night of the proms. These people are what Great Britain is all about.

The first cycling shirt I ever had was the back and white Peugeot strip from in the early eighties, I must have been about 10 or 11 at the time and it was probably a Christmas present from Mum and Dad. I remember clearly that just like the shirt worn by the French professional team, it was simple in design with the Peugeot logo printed clearly above black and white checks around the chest. It was, and still is, a classic.

I would learn later that it was the same shirt worn by riders like Robert Millar, Phil Anderson and Stephen Roche as they made the move to professional cycling from the top French amateur outfit, ACBB. These are sportsman whose careers I’d follow closely over the next few years as I’d became a keen, if below average, amateur rider.

Up until 1985 my exposure to the sport had been little more than the annual Grand Prix of Essex, a prestigious early season amateur classic usually won by a rider from the fantasticality named, Manchester Wheelers. Along with the Grand Prix of Essex there where of course Dads own cycling stories, which amounted to little more than a rusty track frame hanging nostalgically the garage. It was an Ephgrave, and he’d talk about it in almost reverential tones, smiling with pride as he ran his hands gently over the lugwork. There was no doubt that it had once been a truly lovely machine, however I don’t think that he’d ever actually ridden it, not whilst awake anyway.

So that was that, a ten speed racer and the Peugeot team shirt, nothing more than an occasional interest. All that would change in the summer of 1986 when Channel 4 covered a sporting event that would change the course of my life.

Enter, The Tour De France. And men like Bernard Hianault, Laurent Fignon and Robert Millar, sportsmen demonstrating unimaginable feats of endurance with one of the world’s most picturesque countries as a backdrop. Continental cycling has always been the aspiration of British cyclists, and The Tour is no exception. A three week traveling show of guts, glory and the human being in its finest form. And some EPO as well.

Anyway, it’s on for another week, so there’s enough time for plenty more about The Tour, the prologue in London and why cycling is better then football.

At first I thought the new advertising campaign for Apple Mac, featuring Mitchell and Webb from Peep Show, was just slightly amusing. Then I realised that I was laughing not at the characters, but at the utter stupidity of the content on display. I honestly thought we’d got that Mac and PC thing out of our systems a few years ago, but it looks as though sneering consumerism is alive and kicking.

It’s based partly around the fact that Apple Mac computers tend to be used in the creative industries of music production and graphic design, examples of two occupations that suffer acutely from superiority complexes. The idea that the Apple is a superior experience is also a statement of identity, highlighting ones cool job that somehow transcends the trivial office environment of the sandwich man and the water cooler. The nature of the adverts in question being everything required to back up both of these statements.

Maybe that’s a bit mean. I know plenty of Mac users, Amoungst others Becki, Roger, Dickie and Peter, you know who you are. These people are amongst the most forward thinking people I have ever met, creatives operating at the top of their chosen field. I love you all and the Mac is most suitable for your work. But really, it gets on my nerves.

In the adverts Mitchell plays the geeky PC bloke in straight clothes, his dry humour adding the dour and realistic personality of a fairly average bloke. Webb on the other hand is the smug student type with the stupid GAP jeans, every inch the epitome of cool with the sarcastic suburban wit. Ironically, and this is where the advert falls down, it is Webb who is the dislikeable character, the selfish fashion victim who
looks down upon his PC friend. Spreadsheets? Surely not! I mean why do a
mundane job when you could buy a Mac and create music? Nice idea, but in
reality you’ll end up down the pub or watching Telly.

Personally I identify with Mitchell, a bloke at least trying to get by
in life without entertaining the faddish and gimmicky tedium that
surrounds us. I look at Webb, and think about the arrogance of fashion,
and the middle class obsession with product, design and cool. Grown up
people, adults, defining themselves through brightly coloured and shiny
gadgets, the latest technology from the must have and satisfyingly
overpriced brand. Essentially, the inanity of bling for farmers market
types. Every time I see one of those smug thirty something’s marching
through Shoreditch, with a Mac tucked under arm and a stripy scarf round neck, I feel the need to run up and stamp on this weeks trainers, then comb his fake scruffy hair as he lies on the pavement in pain.

‘There there Rufus, sorry about the retro Greenflash, but you’ll thank
me for this later’.

This campaign may have misfired. 25 Million people in this country now
look at those people with the other sort of computers and think, ‘Who
the hell do they think they are?’. In fact they probably don’t think
that at all, because unlike me and Mac users these are the people that
have the sense to turn their machines off at 5:30 and do something
interesting, like dogging for instance.

Lastly and most sadly of all, just like surfing and snowboarding, the Mac may just have become a parody of itself.

We went round our friends Becky and Roger last night, they live north of the river in Turnpike Lane, a world of proper kebab houses and gigantic pubs. It was a great evening of lager, Champagne and Wild Boar sausages, topped off by a nice little drive around the North Circular.

Mandy does all the driving because my levels of concentration are so bad that behind a wheel I become an accident waiting to happen. I’m also prone to the odd bit of road rage. So now I just sit there and gaze blissfully out of the window, usually bent slightly forward with my mouth hanging open, like a mong. Sometimes I give a running commentary of the surrounding area, which I think Mand quite enjoys despite her protests to the contrary.

“Please! Please, just stop talking!”

There’s plenty to see on this journey. The joy of the Blackwall Tunnel, then over Hackney Cut and past the old Matchbox factory next to the marshes. Always, always something different to look at. Then onto the North Circular, guarded by its unfashionable office blocks from the 1960s. Greying and stained, the relegation to storage duties being the final insult, or nail in the coffin.

On past F.R. Shadbolt & Sons, with their factory and signage straight out of a post war new town advertisement. The sign facing the oncoming traffic reads: Veneer of the week – Cheerio Cherry. Seriously, who the hell needs Pet of the Month when we’ve got Veneer of the Week on the North Circular. Fantastic.

Past the Hospital up on the embankment to the right. I helped lay the footings for that place a few years ago, filthy and freezing work, up to my knees in fucking mud whilst that smug fat bastard smoked Henri Wintermans in his Beamer.

It’s all to be seen again on the way back, but this time from the other side. We end up taking a slightly different route home through Beckton. I was struck by the rows of boarded up flats and empty communities. The Beckton Arms looking a little defiant from behind the fence, wide eyed in the wake of change and Magners Irish Cider.

Home to the great news that The General is dead, and that the Widow is deeply saddened. The world is now a slightly better place.