Velocipedic Faux-profundities

I cycled into Oxford this afternoon to visit Blackwell's (I love buying books after pay day, and it's been a while since I've felt flush enough to treat myself). I wanted to buy some history books and memoirs -- stuff that feeds into my novel. I got the things I wanted: rather gloomy tracts about prejudice, war, and memory. If I'm to get back to work on the novel properly, I need to have my head in a miserable space for a while...a place where I'm up to my neck in the language of persecution, mass murder, and the bureaucratic banalities of killing. (So my blog might not be much fun for a while.)

Riding along the Woodstock Road in the sunshine, with hardly any traffic on the road, I hallucinated a better world: one where I lived in a city where there were no cars, and where the transportation system was bicycle-centred; there'd be miles and miles of cycle tracks -- properly integrated ones, which weren't interrupted every fifty yards, which were properly maintained and respected, and which didn't have stupid cambers, crumbling edges, or dangerous potholes. A better world, where fuckwit drivers of prestige German automobiles didn't park in the cycle lane and force you out into the traffic, and where people didn't open their car doors just as you reach them.

You can probably tell that my imagined better world bore little resemblance to the very concrete, crumbly, potholed, uneven, rutted, and fuckwit driver-infested reality I encountered on today's journey.

A more positive effect of this cold-but-sunny ride was the realisation that I'd like to move into Oxford proper when my current rental terminates. I've been a village boy for the past few years, but those broad north Oxford streets, the easily accessible bookshops and eateries, and the promise of weekend mornings in cafes are persuading me that it's about time I gave city living another shot. (When I moved out of London, I wanted peace and quiet and solitude, but now I'm turning back towards noise, bustle, extraversion and engagement. I'd like to move there right now, actually, while the thought's fresh and the spirit is willing.

It would be lovely to wander around a city again in the evening, with all the lights coming on, and the bars and restaurants filling up and coming to life. OK, I'm bored with the country life now.