Angharad's blog

Bike - 655.

Tonight's is being written as you read this. I've been marshalling on the Tour Series race at Exeter. Actually, I was selling programmes, but it helped the event, which was raising money for prostate cancer charities. The riders all 50 of them were hurtling around Exeter at far from safe speeds, there was at least one crash -but it was good spectator sport.

I've only just got home, so tonight's bike will be racing along as soon as I can write it.

Angharad.

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Fear of Discovery.

This has raised it's head again in my 'never-ending' tale of life and dormice. It's done so because it is a constant problem. My own transition was quite public and was known to hundreds if not thousands of people locally. I've also been 'outted' in the press two or three times, including mention on local TV and radio. So short of sending out six billion letters notifying everyone on the planet, it meant there'd be some who didn't know.

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Dormeeces

BBC Radio 4 Today programme, included a piece on a project to monitor and reintroduce dormice on the Isle Of Wight, which isn't far from Portsmouth. In one wood alone they have 400 nesting boxes for dormice.

I'm delighted that my story is reasonably close to real life, and even more so to hera that in areas where they are being monitored, the rate of decline seems to be decreasing. Go for it Spike!

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Angharad.

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Gabycon 2009 - a personal perspective.

I collected Brian on the way through, and stopped to eat my sandwiches at his house, then we went to play with the traffic. I'd left home at just before ten, and was at Brian's just before one pm. I'd only got lost once as well, which is good for me - I was to make up for it later.

The M42 seemed not too bad, Friday traffic is always heavy on the motorways, and we got held up a few times. Then the M1 near Nottingham was stop go, mainly stop. However, we chatted as we waited for the bottleneck to clear itself. This was almost habit forming, because it happened several times.

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Bike and Gabycon

This weekend, from Friday, I shall be attending the Gabycon. I'll be taking my little netbook plus dongle with me, and hope I can get a signal while 'oop north'. I also hope I can find an hour or so to write the odd episode of Bike. I'll make no promises other than to try and write and post if I have time. Otherwise normal service will be resumed on monday or tuesday.

I shall try and do an episode tomorrow, although I'll be packing and clearing six months' detritus from my car.

Angharad.

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Bloody Hills!

My cycling group did a thirty miler, which seemed to be forever climbing hills today - not hard in Dorset, place is full of them, 'delightful rolling countryside' say the visitors. They don't usually try to ride up them.

I am totally cream crackered, as the Cockney's would say. However, I have finished a complete story for the gabycon next weekend (8.5k words)which I will post here after it's been up on Maddy's site.

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6,000,000

According to the counter at the bottom of the page, the numbers are fast approaching six million. While I'm aware half of them are me checking for comments on my stories, or Gabi and Holly trying to make them grammatical after I've posted them, it's still an awful lots of hits.

Congratulations to Erin and her team for making this, in my opinion, the best tg fiction site on the net; and thanks for all the hard work they put in to enable us to read and post our masterpieces, we don't know or appreciate the half of it.

Three cheers for the Top Shelf team, hip hip...

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Happy Slapping

While cycling up The South Dorset Ridgeway on the A354, I got happy-slapped by a car diven by a youth with presumably his friend who did the slapping. Sadly, I didn't get the number, or a proper look at them being too busy struggling with the gradient and effects of gravity on my fat little body and bike laden with my work stuff.

I wasn't hurt, suffering only a light hit on the buttock, but it could have knocked me off or caused me to lose control of the bike and get myself run over: either way, I could have been badly injured.

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Violence in stories

The most recent episode of Bike and probably at least one more will feature violence. It's not something I enjoy writing about, although I find it challenging because I try to avoid it in real life as much as I can.

Unfortunately, I followed the characters into a dark area and it appears to be the only way out of this aspect of the story, and I am horrified that Cathy can give vent to such primordial actions to preserve herself and her loved ones, at the same time I'm sort of pleased she can do what is necessary. I'm not sure I could in her position.

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Bike 600

Well who would have thought I'd still be churning out this stuff more than eighteen months later? I know I write the stuff, Bonzi has a problem hitting the keys on a laptop - but I have little control over the characters, they just do what they do and I watch and write it down. This goes to prove that I'm totally bonkers, I suppose, nothing new there then.

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Cav does it again!

Mark Cavendish,(the 'Manx Express') the Columbia High Road sprinter has just taken his second consecutive stage win in the Tour Of California. At the end he left the others including Tom Boonen, for dead. He is on absolutely cracking form. This is his 32nd stage win in two years as a professional, bring on the TdF!

Angharad.

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Something New.

I'm working on a story which will be a one off, unless I post it in two parts. It will be different from anything else I've written and darker than my usual stuff. It's also a crime story. I have no idea when I'll get around to finishing it yet, I've done a first draft of about a tenth of it, but I won't be posting it in chapters and it won't be posted until it's completed. It will be posted here. That's it.

Angharad.

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Saunier Duval.

It occurred to me, that those non-cyclists who read Bike, might not have a clue what I'm talking about when I mention Saunier Duval (a cycling team - now defunct) and David Millar, a British rider who has been a national champion at road and time trial racing.

A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words:

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David Millar (yellow) winning the Elite Men's British National Road Race championships in 2007.

Angharad :)

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Kate Craig-Wood in the Guardian.

After her appearance on Midweek (BBC Radio4) a few weeks ago, she's now in Guardian Weekend - the Guardian's glossy magazine, with a far from flattering photo. Not quite sure what she hopes to achieve apart from explaining how she spent  £60,000 on surgery - I'd want a spare body for that, still some of us have to succeed without facial surgery or voice training.

Judge for yourselves. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/24/experienc...

Angharad.

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Angela Morely, conductor and arranger - an obituary

There was a very nice obituary written for this very talented transsexual conductor and arranger, in today's Guardian, link below. She wrote music for the BBC and films, and helped arrange music for such notables as John Williams in Star Wars and Superman.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/jan/23/angela-morley-...

Angharad

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