At the weekend I learned I’d been successful in landing a grant for some research on the history of roads. I’ve been doing an awful lot of snooping around for iPayRoadTax.com, especially on the contribution cyclists made to get better roads from the 1880s onwards.
During my picture research I came across a whole load of sheet music covers from the 1890s. These include rhapsodies to the US ‘Good Roads’ movement, organised the League of American Wheelmen. The sheet music also includes songs and dances featuring scorching and bloomers. I’ve created an e-book with some of these images, and commissioned my kids’ piano teacher to resurrect ‘The Scorcher’ from 1897.
Greg Johnston did a great, foot-tapping job. An MP3 of ‘The Scorcher’ is embedded into the clicky-flicky version on the ebook below, and is also available via my iTunes podcast feed.
Thanks to volcanic explosions in Iceland, much of Europe has been an aviation-free zone for nearly a week, showing what ash can do to transport.
A larger volcanic episode in 1815 might also have had an impact on transport: it might have been the impetus for the creation of the bicycle.
In 1815, the ash from the eruption of Mount Tambora on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, led to a change in global weather. 1816 was ‘the year without summer’ in which severe summer climate abnormalities destroyed crops in Northern Europe and North America.
The shortage of oats meant less food for horses. In Germany, Baron Karl von Drais started his search for a form of transport that didn’t rely on oats. By the following year he had created a horse-substitute, one that did not rely on oats. His Draisine ‘running machine’ was the start of the modern bicycle. It morphed into the ‘hobby horse’ which took another fifty years for pedals, brakes and a diamond steel frame to evolve into what we would recognise as a bicycle. But, without Mount Tambora’s ash, Baron von Drais might have got his oats and kept to an equestrian mount.
Read the rest of "2010: Volcanic ash grounds European flights 1817: Volcanic ash helped create the bicycle"...
Today we tend to think of the Automobile Association as a roadside rescue organisation with a penchant for pro-car PR. However, for much of its early history it was a radical campaigning organisation, a thorn in the side of the Government. It was founded with the express aim of defeating police speed traps, as shown by this wonderfully evocative video from the AA’s archives:
The video is fronted by Sir Stenson Cooke who was the AA’s Secretary from 1905 until his death in 1942. He was knighted in 1933 but by this time the AA was embedded into society – now a car-owning society – and the AA was nowhere near as radical as when it was founded.
Cycling shares some history with the AA. In effect, the organisation was helped into existence by cyclists. In March 1905 a fellow called Walter Gibbons wrote to Autocar magazine suggesting a Motorists’ Protection Association for the Prevention of Police Traps. Two other motorists replied saying arrangements had been made to patrol the Brighton road to warn motorists of said police traps. The first patrols went out in April 1905. Guess what they used as patrol vehicles? Yep, bicycles.
Within months, this informal arrangement of a “special staff of cyclists” was formalised into an organisation and it appointed a full-time secretary, Stenson Cooke. This organisation was called the Automobile Association.
The AA relied on cycle scouts for some years. According to the AA, the organisation’s famous badge was “introduced simply to help the scouts identify AA members.”
Early AA cycle scouts used their own bicycles, for which they were paid an allowance. Before the introduction of uniforms in 1909, the scouts had to provide their own clothing too.
By 1912 there were 950 AA cycle scouts across the UK. The motorcycle patrols, known as Road Service Outfits or ‘RSOs’, weren’t created until 1919. By 1923 there were 274 AA motorbike patrols but still 376 cyclists.
The video above shows how cyclists were paid to be speed-trap spotters. It also shows how, before motoring became mainstream, it was a loathed activity: rich motorists were guilty of raising dust and damaging roads. I’m currently researching the history of British road improvements, especially in the years 1910-1937. This was the span of the Road Fund, the pot of cash raised from motorists from when a ‘road tax’ existed. Only a small fraction of this fund helped pay for Britain’s roads, something I explore on my campaigning website iPayRoadTax.com.
PS
It’s worth pointing out that Professor Edmund King, today’s president of the AA, is an active cyclist.
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“Once allow us to be put on separate roads and there will be an increasing outcry to keep us to those roads and to forbid us access to the ordinary roads of the country.”
Who said that? When did he say it and what was he referring to?
Opposition from a president of the CTC in 1878 to compulsory cycle paths, perhaps? Wrong.
A complaint from the Self Propelled Traffic Association of 1895? Nope.
Mind-blowingly, it’s by William Joynson-Hicks, writing in the Motor Union’s Journal in 1909. Joynson-Hicks, a Conservative MP petrolhead was Minister for Health, 1923-4 and Home Secretary, 1924-29.
It’s amazing to realise that motorists once had the same fears as cyclists today; that they’d be shunted off to a hinterland, segregated from other road users.
The Joynson-Hicks quote - and many other little nuggets of history - has come from my researches for iPayRoadTax.com. I’m working on a timeline of road funding, starting with the Roads Improvement Association, an organisation founded in 1886 by the Cyclists’ Touring Club and the National Cyclists’ Union.
The RIA wanted Britain’s dusty roads to be sealed with tarmac. The organisation pamphleted MPs and presented a strong case from “cads on casters” (the Lycra Lout equivalent of the late 19 Century, a reference to cyclists coined by uppercrust horse-riders) but the issue wasn’t taken seriously until adopted by the nascent ‘automobilism’ lobby.
Part of this lobby was the Self Propelled Traffic Association. It wasn’t self propelled in the sense we know today, it was in the sense of propelled by an engine, not a horse. A prominent cyclist sat on the SPTA’s council: E. R Shipton, secretary of the Cyclists’ Touring Club.
The SPTA was one of the organisations later to merge into the Automobile Association (AA), founded in 1905.
Cycling also shares some history with the AA. In effect, the organisation was helped into existence by cyclists. In March 1905 a fellow called Walter Gibbons wrote to Autocar magazine suggesting a Motorists’ Protection Association for the Prevention of Police Traps. Two other motorists replied saying arrangements had been made to patrol the Brighton road to warn motorists of said police traps. The first patrols went out in April 1905. Guess what they used as patrol vehicles? Yep, bicycles.
Within months, this informal arrangement of a “special staff of cyclists” was formalised into an organisation and it appointed a full-time secretary: it was called the Automobile Association.
The winter of 2009/10 has been cold, icy and packed with snow. OK, it hasn’t exactly been Iditabike conditions but plenty of hardcore Brit cyclists spent much of late December and early January on indoor trainers.
I don’t blame them. Without my spike tyres, I wouldn’t have ventured out much either. I have other winter product favourites but, first, the tyres that have kept me riding, and upright.
STUD U LIKE When the first few days of snow hit just after Christmas I wondered whether I should fit my spike tyres. They’ve been in storage for years. And for good reason: they’re a faff to fit and make a startling clattering noise on ice-free tarmac.
I studied the weather forecast and was convinced there would be enough black-ice around - about three day’s worth, predicted the Met Office - to make the switch. As it turns out they’re still fitted to the Xtracycle and it’s been my winter workhorse. There’s been a thaw, but black-ice is still an issue and, at the weekend, we got another dump of snow. The spikes stay.
My history with Nokian carbide-studded tyres goes back a long way. I first encountered them in the mid-1980s. Geoff Apps - the ‘father of English mountain biking’ - had been using Nokia 2-inch 650B snow tyres on his early mountain bikes, including the Range Rider. Geoff invited me to stay with him for one of his ‘Wendover Bashes’, some of the very first MTB events in the UK.
This was 1986. I’d spent the previous year touring some of the deserts of the Middle East on a Dawes Ranger. Geoff Apps’ Range Rider - fitted with gripshifts long before SRAM came along - was a much better climber than the Dawes Ranger, partly because of its tyres. By using thick Nokia inner tubes, Geoff was able to run at stupidly low pressures and could climb through mud with a sure footedness I knew I had to have too.
I’ve had Nokia tyres ever since (known as Nokian tyres since the 1990s). They’ve proved strong, and trust-worthy. Heavy, of course, and so the rolling resistance is a severe drawback but, on hard-packed snow, this is a minor consideration.
Over the last few weeks I’ve gone out of my way to find stretches of unsalted road and have confused motorists who’ve assumed as they’re stuck, I should be too. I’ve amused pedestrians who’ve been descending slopes holding on to hand-rails: it shouldn’t be possible to ascend slopes covered with sheet-ice but, taken carefully with no silly sudden moves, it’s been my spiked bike party trick.
According to the latest CTC magazine, UK suppliers of studded tyres have seen sales go through the roof (I shan’t say there was a spike in demand), with Schwalbe and Continental shipping in extra supplies from Germany. If you want to get spiked up, Peter White Cycles of the US has the definitive advice page on ice tyres, including blowing away all the myths about stud ejections and tarmac shredding.
OIL HAVE SOME OF THAT An awful lot of bike lubes can’t hack winter crud; Chain L can. It’s super gloopy. So sticky, in fact, that when applying, it strings out in a most pleasing fashion.
Technically, it’s a mixture of extreme pressure lubricants in a high film-strength mineral oil base. It also contains rust inhibitors and other additives to improve its longevity and wet-weather performance.
In use, it’s simply amazing. I picked up a sample at Interbike last year and started using it this winter when normal lubes weren’t coping with the extreme weather (extreme for the UK, that is).
There’s a time and a place for dry lubes: winter ain’t the time and NE England ain’t the place. If you ride through foul weather, I can recommend Chain L.
WASHED OUT I’m a huge fan of Nikwax products. They’re green and keep me dry.
My breathable shell layers get washed with Techwash, a non-detergent cleanser, and then re-activated with TX.10. I also waterproof my fleece garments with another Nikwax product and, when I’ve got a (stinky) full load of base-layers, wash them in Basewash.
Synthetic shell-, mid- and base-layers work partly because of textile tech but also because of a variety of treatments. Shell garments, for instance, often have Durable Water Repellent (DWR) coatings. These chemical enhancements wear off with every wash because detergents, being surfactants, pull the treatments away from the fabrics. Surfactants do the same job with dirt, loosening bonds and pulling it away from the fabric.
If you don’t re-treat your tech garments, they lose their effectiveness. Washing waterproof jackets in standard detergent is a great way to make them not waterproof. Detergent residue starts pulling water through the fabric.
Nikwax stuff appears expensive, but it’s worth it.
BUZZED UP OK, so I’m now stable on black-ice, well-lubed, and cossetted from the vagaries of the British weather but I’m going nowhere if I’m not caffeinated to the eyeballs. I have to start the day with an espresso. Just have to.
A mid-morning long black tastes great in a handlebar-mounted Soma Fabrications’ Morning Rush insulated coffee mug, available in the UK from Fine-Adc (the same guys who now do Action Wipes). Rather conveniently, the Morning Rush mount is the H-27 from CatEye, so you can switch over to an LED at night.
I may have taken the pic outside a snowy Starbucks, but I’m not fuelled by the Great Coffee Satan, my espresso bean of choice is Daterra’s Bruzzi of Brazil, roasted by Pumphrey’s Coffee, a Newcastle fixture since 1750.
That’s 1750 the year, not the hour.
Read the rest of "Grippy, gloopy, dry and buzzin’: riding through the cold snap"...
On December 17th, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Orville Wright completed the world’s first successful powered, heavier-than-air flight. The 12-second 120-foot journey was an history changing event, blazing a trail for military aircraft, commercial airliners and space travel. How was it funded? By a bicycle business.
On May 30th 1899, Wilbur Wright wrote to the Smithsonian Institution, asking for papers on man’s attempt to fly. He paid for the papers from his and his brother’s bicycle business. The accounts for the Wright Cycle Co. includes an 1899 entry of $5.50 “for books on flying.”
“I am an enthusiast but not a crank in the sense that I have some pet theories as to the proper construction of a flying machine,” he wrote to the Smithsonian, revealing he was “about to begin a systematic study of the subject in preparation for practical work to which I expect to devote what time I can spare from my regular business.”
He and his brother would take turns to man their bicycle store as they tested first a kite prototype and then larger scale gliders in 1900, 1901 and 1902. Their first powered aeroplane in 1903 used bicycle chains and sprockets to link the propellors. Their aeroplane frames were made up of bicycle-type double-triangles. Wilbur’s visionary ‘wing warping’ technique of controlling an aircraft’s pitch, roll and yaw was developed in 1899 after twisting an empty bicycle tube box with the ends removed. Wing warping is still used today, albeit with ailerons.
The Wright Brothers had used one of their bicycles to work out their ideal wing shape. The brothers took turns pedalling their converted machine in Dayton. A handlebar-mounted wheel (see inset pic above) was fitted with two metal plates, one flat, one curved, ninety degrees apart. Orville and Wilbur used the device to measure air resistance.
“The results obtained with the rough apparatus…gave evidence of such possibility of exactness,” wrote Wilbur.
By riding along and generating some wind flow, the brothers were able to disprove earlier theories on lift.
The brothers later invented the wind tunnel to fine tune their early experiments in aerodynamics. This was a box six feet long and sixteen inches square on the inside. They mounted a fan attached to a sheet metal hood to one side and replaced a panel on the top of the box with a pane of glass so they could see inside. The fan moved the air through the tunnel at 27 miles per hour and the brothers tested hundreds of small sections of wings and wing shapes. High-tech wind tunnels would, of course, be later used to fine-tune the best aerodynamic shapes for bicycles…
By 1903, the brothers had achieved their goal of constructing a practical flying machine capable of remaining in the air for extended periods of time and operating under the full control of the pilot.
The earlier, smaller machines had been built and tested in the Wright’s bicycle store, in full view of customers.
In a later patent infringement case, the Wright brothers had to recall these early experiements to prove their patents.
Orville remembered spending long hours at the bicycle shop, waiting on customers, performing repairs, and constructing his kite.
“I was not able to be present when the structure was flown as a kite, but I operated the machine in our store before it was taken out to be flown,” Orville told the court.
Bike buff boffins
The brothers were cycling enthusiasts. In 1892, Orville bought a new Columbia safety bicycle for $160. In the same year, Wilbur purchased a used Eagle safety bicycle for $80. Orville entered bicycle races put on by the YMCA Wheelmen. Wilbur liked to ride more slowly, taking in the passing scenery and, importantly, watching birds fly.
It’s therefore entirely possible that powered flight was conceived from the saddle.
The Wrights designed and built their Van Cleve and St. Clair custom bikes, starting in 1896. Their top-end bikes were priced around $100, which would be worth $2150 today, although they also had $30 models.
Originally small-town publishers and jobbing printers, the Wrights were inspired by their new found passion for bicycles to open a bicycle sales and repair shop called the Wright Cycle Exchange at 1005 West Third Street in Dayton, Ohio in 1892.
As their business grew, the Wright brothers moved their bicycle shop six times and changed the name to the Wright Cycle Co. in 1894.
In April 1896, the Wrights introduced their first in-house bike, the Van Cleve. Catharine Benham Van Cleve Thompson, the Wright brother’s great, great grandmother, had been among Dayton’s first settlers. Later in the year, the Wrights introduced a second, less expensive model called the St. Clair. Again, the name was drawn from local history; Arthur St. Clair had been the first president of the Northwest Territory, which later became Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
The St. Clair was built up from parts that were available from sources such as the Davis Sewing Machine Company of Dayton, Ohio, which later became the Huffy Corporation.
Cycle innovators
The Wright brothers introduced two innovations on their bicycles. The Van Cleve came with a special “self-oiling hub” and, in 1900, the Wright’s announced a “bicycle pedal that can’t come unscrewed.”
Wilbur and Orville used right-hand threads on one pedal and left-hand threads on the other so the pedalling action tended to tighten both pedals.
Up until then most pedals had right-hand threads, leading to pedal drop-offs.
Their bicycle business was profitable for many years. In 1897, their best year, they made $3000 between them at a time when the average American worker was doing well to make $500 per year. The profits funded their aviation experiments.
By the turn of the century, however, the US market was flooded with $10 mass-produced bicycles and the manufacturing side to Wright Cycle Co. became less and less profitable.
The Wright’s stopped producing own-label bikes in 1904. The bike store continued to sell branded bikes and P&A but was converted to a machine shop in 1909 when the Wright Company, an aircraft manufacturing business, started producing bicycle-inspired parts for aeroplane engines.
Bells are not necessary…
The Van Cleve was first advertised in Snap Shots, a weekly Dayton newspaper printed and published by the industrious Wright brothers. The last ever edition of the publication carried this self-promotion:
“For a number of months Wright Cycle Co. have been making preparations to manufacture bicycles. After more delay than we expected, we are at last ready to announce that we will have several samples out in a week or ten days and will be ready to fill orders before the middle of next month. The WRIGHT SPECIAL will contain nothing but high grade material throughout, although we shall put it on the market at the exceedingly low price of $60…and we will guarantee it in the most unqualified manner.”
And in an earlier editorial in Snap Shots, one of the Wright brothers showed his contempt for an issue that will tickle British bike shop owners because of the Department for Transport regulation that all bicycles now have to come fitted with bells:
“The Board of City Affairs will find that it is monkeying with a buzz saw, if it does not look out. The bicycle riders of this city are too numerous to be tramped on with impunity. Bells and lanterns are the biggest frauds ever invented
…”
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In 1895, Albert Einstein’s teacher said to his father: “It doesn’t matter what he does, he will never amount to anything.”
In 1911, Marshal Ferdinand Foch said: “Airplanes are interesting toys, but they have no military value.”
In 1949, Popular Mechanics magazine said: “Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.”
And in 1987, Peter Lumley, editor of a British bicycle trade magazine, said the newly-introduced Brompton shouldn’t win a ‘best of show’ prize because – a ’sad sign of the times’ - it was just a bike “you fold up and chuck in a car boot.”
As it happens, the Brompton did win the ‘best of show’ prize and went on to become the iconic legend we all know today.
David Henshaw, author of a forthcoming book on the Brompton, asked me to scan in the Brompton pages from my copy of the April 1987 Cycle Trader magazine. He told me: “I don’t think many people there that day would have guessed that 20 years later Brompton would be the only mass-produced bicycle to be made in the UK.”
Peter Lumley long ago recanted his dismissal of the Brompton. And those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones: also in 1987 I was asked by an industry magnate whether a standalone mountain bike magazine could work, I said no, and MBUK was launched soon thereafter. Shows you how much I know.
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I’m a sucker for old books on cycling. And the faded tome above is a real corker. It’s an American book on ‘how to bicycle’ from 1892, by L. F. Korns.
Almost the whole book is quotable but here are just a few choice extracts:
“A ride at moonlight is a nerve tonic that beats all the phosphorous compounds that Esculapius ever dreamed of.”
“As a means of locotmotion, it is the fastest of road steeds, is always ready for use, and never consumes grain.”
“To the business man who is shut up in an office or store most of the day, it is a God-send. It gives him the exercise he so much needs and which he would not get in any other way.”
“As a means of pleasure, cycling stands in the foremost rank, but in common with all the great pleasures, it may easily stand in the foremost in abuse. The desire to ride at an unreasonably high speed may become morbid…The ever lasting scorcher, bent like a hoop, and with sunken cheeks, ought to be quite sufficient warning against this abuse.”
“Cycling fills the remotest cells of the lungs with outdoor air. The pores are opened and the dead secretions are thrown off. It aids the peristaltic movement of the bowels…”
Here, the esteemed author, provides are some medical opinions:
Dr. K. K. Doty of New York said:
“Cyclers see considerable more of this beautiful world than any other class of citizens. A good bicycle, well applied, will cure most ills this flesh is heir to.”
J. A. Chase, a doctor from Pawtucket, surmised that bicycling would lead to fewer patients:
“I fear that the universal adoption of cycling would be bad for the doctors.”
Men of the cloth were bicycle advocates, too, reports Mr Korns. The Reverend W.J Petrie of Chicago said:
“I expect to see the day when not to ride a wheel will be a mark of a defective education, and people will say to such a person, ‘Why, where have you been brought up?’”
Rev. Maltie of Baltimore loved the airy freedom of cycling:
“If I were not a man, I would like to be a bird. As I am a man, I do the next best thing, and ride a bicycle.”
Clearly, I’m going to have to update my ‘Quote:Unquote’ article on cycling. This book, and 59 other flickable publications, such as the ‘Bike the Strike’ Bike to Work Book, can be found on Issuu.com’s Bicycling Group.
The New York Times is reporting that the UCI could be about to stage one of its irregular stabbing attacks against the sport it claims to represent. The Lugano Charter – a charter for stifling innovation – might be about to be upgraded.
It’s worth reading this charter. It’s the philosophic basis behind the organisation’s much more difficult to digest technical regulations.
The Lugano charter
Tuesday 8th October 1996
Being aware of the potential dangers and problems posed by a loss of control over the technical aspects of cycling, the UCI Management Committee has today, Tuesday 8th October, taken a number of measures here in Lugano.
In doing so, the UCI wishes to recall that the real meaning of cycle sport is to bring riders together to compete on an equal footing and thereby decide which of them is physically the best.
The features which have contributed to the world-wide development and spread of the bicycle are its extraordinary simplicity, cost-effectiveness and ease of use. From a sociological point of view, as a utilitarian and recreational means of transport, the bicycle has given its users a sense of freedom and helped create a movement which has led to the considerable renown and popular success which cycle sport enjoys. The bicycle serves to express the effort of the cyclist, but there is more to it than that. The bicycle is also a historical phenomenon, and it is this history which underpins the whole culture behind the technical object.
If we forget that the technology used is subordinate to the project itself, and not the reverse, we cross the line beyond which technology takes hold of the system and seeks to impose its own logic. That is the situation facing us today. New prototypes can be developed because they do not have to take into account constraints such as safety, a comfortable riding position, accessibility of the controls, manoeuvrability of the machine, etc. The bicycle is losing its “user-friendliness” and distancing itself from a reality which can be grasped and understood. Priority is increasingly given to form. The performance achieved depends more on the form of the man-machine ensemble than the physical qualities of the rider, and this goes against the very meaning of cycle sport.
The many effects of this rush to extremes risk damaging the sport of cycling. These include spiralling costs, unequal access to technology, radical innovations prepared in secret, a fait accompli policy, damage to the image of cycle sport and the credibility of performances and the advent of a technocratic form of cycling where power is concentrated in the hands of a few powerful players, to the detriment of the universality of the sport on which its future and continued development depend.
Sounds reasonable, but had this charter been around in the early days of cycling we’d have had no derailleur gears and no quick release wheels. Taken to its logical conclusion we should have no MTB suspension forks; no power meters; no composite frames. Just a steel diamond frame and a single gear.
In fact, the UCI could be seen to be at the very nadir of cycling cool: give the wonks their way and we’d all be riding around on fixies.
Read the rest of "The Lugano Charter to be revisited?"...
I’m a member of The Pickwick Club, the world’s oldest extant bicycle club, founded in 1870. It’s also the world’s oldest extant Dickensian association. As a member, I can invite guests to the club’s functions. There are two main ones each year: posh and ribald ‘luncheons’ in the 200-year old New Connaught Rooms, near Covent Garden. The great and good of the bicycle world go to these functions, from industry bigwigs to pro riders (I sat next to David Millar at a previous function). And I’d like to invite you to be my guest at the 2009 President’s Luncheon, taking place on Thursday, May 7th.
I have a number of guests already booked in – including some famous names – but I’ve reserved another space for you. That is if you’re a man. Sorry, but this Pickwick Club is male-only, unlike this Pickwick Club which allows members to, ahem, hang free. And you have to tell me why you’d like to be my guest. Be witty, be smart, get into the flavour of the event by drinking a glass or three of red wine before you pen your prose.
Your Pickwickian request needs to be short; must be an @ reply to me – @carltonreid; and must include the hashtag #BeMyGuest. This will then appear on this search page for all to see. This isn’t a competition, there’s no ‘prize’, I want to invite somebody who’s never had a chance to go to one of these wonderful functions.
So, what should you expect to see at the Pickwick Club? Hundreds of men in club ties and straw boaters, the uniform of the club since 1870, the year Charles Dickens died. His first novel was The Pickwick Papers. Club members are given sobriquets, all taken from characters in this book. I’m Mr. Grundy. There are only a finite number of characters in the book so to become a member you go on what is now a ten-year waiting list and, when an unfortunate member shuffles off this mortal coil, in you jump.
The Pickwick Papers, serialised in 20 monthly instalments in 1836 and 1837, follows the adventures of Samuel Pickwick Esq., his sidekick Sam Weller, and their fellow members of the eponymous, all-male club. It’s a very funny, laddish sort of a book, full of vim and vigour.
And intoxicating liqueur.
The modern-day luncheon starts at midday and finishes about three-ish: but members have been known to arrive home in the wee hours of the morning. As my guest you’ll sit with me and my other Pickwickian guests. You’ll also rub shoulders with lots of big-names from the world of cycling and be entertained by an after-dinner speaker.
You’ll need to make your own way to London, and must have the ability to get on a tube train (or collapse into a taxi) after an afternoon, and very possibly early evening, of wine, no-women and song.
