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For some reason I continue to be surprised when correspondents call me Brian. I’ll be frank, that’s not my real name…and, no, neither is Frank!
I enjoy writing under a nom-de-clavier as it provides a limited degree of privacy and a greater degree of intellectual escapism. I can experiment, discuss and develop new themes and ideas without caring one jot about professional credibility. I can even call myself Brian. And yes, I was kidding about the credibility…
Careful readers may have noticed that I prefer to write about bicycles and bicyclism rather than “cycling” – a term too often appropriated by the sport cycling industry to the detriment, I believe, of ordinary riders of bicycles. Let’s be clear, I regard humbly riding a bicycle to work on a daily basis as far more heroic than repeatedly circumcycling a velodrome in pursuit of glory or gold and a damned sight more socially and economically valuable too!
I may not always succeed but I try to treat the bicycle as a metaphor or analogue for something. Ocassionally I’ll just write a meditation on tinkering with an old bicycle – a literary brico-cyc-lage – often with obsessive attention to unimportant detail. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter. Sometimes I get it into my head to dig up random trivia. And quotes! I love finding references which express an attuitude towards the bicycle or bicyclism.
But I digress. The name – Flaneur Brian – is perhaps best considered a polyseme; a vaguely Joycean homonymic homage to Flann O’Brien, author of The Third Policeman, as well as being an amalgam of the Flâneur and the bemused victim of happenstance (epitomised by Brian, in Monty Python’s Life of) to compose a character that represents, to me at least, an archetypal urban bicyclist in the transportation paragone of the twenty-first century.
Have I lost you yet?
Call me eccentric…but you can call me Brian.
R:B
No, really!? An automatic bicycle parking system in Tokyo with capacity for 9400 bicycles.
Somehow this just seems entirely contradictory – a misapplication of excessive technology – but I’ll let you judge for yourself…
R:B
I attached a rudimentary camera mount to the Chiltern some time back but wasn’t entirely satisfied with the results – because the camera was mounted ahead of the handlebars, any movement of the handlebars was highly exaggerated making for some rather comical scenes.
However, I was able to salvage some footage from a trial outing and have finally turned it into a couple of shorts. Here’s a quick dash down the Tay Road Bridge to Dundee and up the river to the “new” Railway Bridge…
R:B
There seems to be a red thing happening in the better-dressed parts of bicycledom.
I’m never going to be accused of cycle chic…bicycle fogeyism, perhaps! However, to keep the red flag flying, here’s my contribution…a gorgeous, new, bright red Kronan that someone has decided to use as a litter bin for their pizza box…damn them! Come the revolution…
R:B
In light of my brief exchange with Fixup on the subject of bars bereft of brakes, I felt I really had to share this snap of a generally unspectacular bicycle I spotted in Amsterdam. There are likely thousands like it but there was something about the empty square bars that, for me, just epitomised the idea of the bicycle as a modernist icon.
R:B
