Randomnerd
Bimbleur
- Location
- North Yorkshire
At a time when many will be bargain-hunting and as I try to keep my head above the general fog of commercialization – no, I won't be replacing my sofa this January, thank you – I thought I would put in a word for “bespoke”.
I'll use a real-world cycling example in a minute, but just let me sketch some background.
A maker myself, with a couple of crafts under my belt (I made this belt! Do you like it?!) I find great pleasure can be had from something made with care and love. Making can be a pleasure in itself, as can having something someone has made for you.
There are opposed undercurrents abroad among society – well there are several I've noticed, but we haven't time here, and I think it would get p**liti**l – that we've all got Too Much, or many have Not Enough.
I'm not going to manage to keep the P word out of the next bit or solve the conundrums, but just imagine this is a review of a nice jacket, which it is....
Cyclechatters bemoan Christmas for its consumerism, and in the next breath share tips on where to get a cut-price, left-handed multi-tool. Wider chattering classes I sometimes mix with groan on about giving tins to food-banks and shoving their leftover woollies into Oxfam to redress the balance they're unbalancing by spawning three greedy kids all bludgeoned with grasping flim-flam from the moment they can walk.
“There's too much choice these days isn't there? Carpathian stuffed olive anyone?”
I was raised in a working class family with a father who had lived through World War 2 as a schoolboy in a large northern city, and a mother from a farm in Eire. Distinctly Victorian.... My folks had the same cooking pan set they were bought when they married. My old man made his living using many of the tools his grandfather used. There were aspirations and snobberies, even avarice at times, but not much “keeping up with the Joneses”. Hard work brought a better car, a foreign holiday, a telly of our own, security and decent food (by seventies standards, at any rate).
Depending on where you read, poverty in the UK is a startling problem. Eighteen million people in 2012 in UK were unable to afford adequate housing (http://poverty.ac.uk/editorial/extent-poverty) and fourteen million didn't have the money for household essentials. According to Share The World's Resources “the wealthiest 20 percent of the world’s population enjoy nearly 83 percent of total global income, whereas the poorest 20 percent receive a mere 1 percent” http://www.sharing.org/why-nations-need-to-share/global-poverty-inequality
And I'm going to review a decent cycling jacket now to let you know how we can help to change all this. Not.
A lady at Cioch Direct on the Isle of Skye made me a wind-shirt a year or two back, and I've been using it through all weathers for fairly intensive cycling: utility; touring; training. It's a nice burnt orange colour, made of Beachcomber fabric and fits me well. For a few quid extra they make the shirt to your measurements, so I paid up.
It's a great wind-shirt. Keeps out the wind. The zip works as only a zip should. Up and down. The elastic cuffs and waist keep the shirt on, and the whole thing folds into its own pocket, which is magical. And handy. When you sweat it gets warm inside, so you open the zip. When it rains you get wet after a while. It's at least twice as expensive as most other wind-shirts recently reviewed on e.g., road.cc.
http://www.cioch-direct.co.uk/windproofs/windshirt.html Get one here!
I got passed by an old timer recently who creaked by on a super lightweight something with that outfit that screams extreme years of cycling, notably the ultra-bleached jacket back.
I'm hoping I don't get jumped on for a single sentence and pulled apart for some oversight. I'm hoping I don't get accused of some weird inverted snobbery myself for conflating poverty with bespoke cycling gear (of course it's ridiculous, but that's part of the point).
I'm hoping I can keep this wind-shirt long enough for the back to fade. I'm hoping I don't succumb to the lure of another wind-shirt. I'm hoping I can be happy with my lot.
I'll use a real-world cycling example in a minute, but just let me sketch some background.
A maker myself, with a couple of crafts under my belt (I made this belt! Do you like it?!) I find great pleasure can be had from something made with care and love. Making can be a pleasure in itself, as can having something someone has made for you.
There are opposed undercurrents abroad among society – well there are several I've noticed, but we haven't time here, and I think it would get p**liti**l – that we've all got Too Much, or many have Not Enough.
I'm not going to manage to keep the P word out of the next bit or solve the conundrums, but just imagine this is a review of a nice jacket, which it is....
Cyclechatters bemoan Christmas for its consumerism, and in the next breath share tips on where to get a cut-price, left-handed multi-tool. Wider chattering classes I sometimes mix with groan on about giving tins to food-banks and shoving their leftover woollies into Oxfam to redress the balance they're unbalancing by spawning three greedy kids all bludgeoned with grasping flim-flam from the moment they can walk.
“There's too much choice these days isn't there? Carpathian stuffed olive anyone?”
I was raised in a working class family with a father who had lived through World War 2 as a schoolboy in a large northern city, and a mother from a farm in Eire. Distinctly Victorian.... My folks had the same cooking pan set they were bought when they married. My old man made his living using many of the tools his grandfather used. There were aspirations and snobberies, even avarice at times, but not much “keeping up with the Joneses”. Hard work brought a better car, a foreign holiday, a telly of our own, security and decent food (by seventies standards, at any rate).
Depending on where you read, poverty in the UK is a startling problem. Eighteen million people in 2012 in UK were unable to afford adequate housing (http://poverty.ac.uk/editorial/extent-poverty) and fourteen million didn't have the money for household essentials. According to Share The World's Resources “the wealthiest 20 percent of the world’s population enjoy nearly 83 percent of total global income, whereas the poorest 20 percent receive a mere 1 percent” http://www.sharing.org/why-nations-need-to-share/global-poverty-inequality
And I'm going to review a decent cycling jacket now to let you know how we can help to change all this. Not.
A lady at Cioch Direct on the Isle of Skye made me a wind-shirt a year or two back, and I've been using it through all weathers for fairly intensive cycling: utility; touring; training. It's a nice burnt orange colour, made of Beachcomber fabric and fits me well. For a few quid extra they make the shirt to your measurements, so I paid up.
It's a great wind-shirt. Keeps out the wind. The zip works as only a zip should. Up and down. The elastic cuffs and waist keep the shirt on, and the whole thing folds into its own pocket, which is magical. And handy. When you sweat it gets warm inside, so you open the zip. When it rains you get wet after a while. It's at least twice as expensive as most other wind-shirts recently reviewed on e.g., road.cc.
http://www.cioch-direct.co.uk/windproofs/windshirt.html Get one here!
I got passed by an old timer recently who creaked by on a super lightweight something with that outfit that screams extreme years of cycling, notably the ultra-bleached jacket back.
I'm hoping I don't get jumped on for a single sentence and pulled apart for some oversight. I'm hoping I don't get accused of some weird inverted snobbery myself for conflating poverty with bespoke cycling gear (of course it's ridiculous, but that's part of the point).
I'm hoping I can keep this wind-shirt long enough for the back to fade. I'm hoping I don't succumb to the lure of another wind-shirt. I'm hoping I can be happy with my lot.
Last edited:
