This is the latest in my annual series of reviews of books I have read. See:
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/01/books-i-read-in-2009.html
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2009/01/books-i-read-in-2008.html
http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2008/01/books-i-read-in-2007.html
for previous postings in this series.
The number of books I am reading seems to be steadily falling from between 30-40 per year back in the 1990s to much lower figures now. Interestingly there is a direct correlation between how much I am unemployed in a year and how little I read. You might think that being out of work would leave me lots of time for reading, but it is also about being inspired to read and when I am without a job, the debilitating lethargy quickly creeps over me. I guess this is why I know I could never be self-employed. Like the huge majority of the population from the moment I started play school I have been conditioned to having my day structured for me whether directly or indirectly through people making timed demands. As a result, being out of work so much in 2010 I have read less than even in the previous years.
Some people say that the book is dead and young people in particular tend not to read books. Pre-secondary school children do still seem to engage well with books, as sales of things like the Beast Quest series show. Reading is in fact at a height. The internet, though providing lots of video content, is actually full of text. A lot of that text is very badly spelt, but it is text all the same. Blogging is a very text based art and develops writing skills, though I accept to a limited extent in some cases, and reading too. The book as a medium rather than reading as an activity may be in decline but it is not that apparent. I remember when supermarkets did not sell novels or any books in fact, and yet, these days even comparatively small branches have a row of books. I find them in 99p shops too. Some of this I imagine is about the digital divide; 30% of people in the UK have no internet access and many others have poor, low band access. I am a well educated person who cannot afford a Kindle, whereas I can fill my house with books from charity shops and actually have a backlog of a few hundred books to read; I have not bought a new book in the past two years trying to keep the stack down. People give me books too. I think the tactile element of reading, the robustness of books, their ease of reading in a variety of light situations, the fact no-one is liable to steal your book, means that they will be around for a lot longer. The recession means they will be more appealing to those with few funds and a lot of time.
Anyway, for me, not having travel on public transport, no longer having a lunch break and having a lover who is often averse to me reading in bed, my chances for reading for pleasure rather than for information or trying to find a job have declined severely, and last year's very short list of book titles shows that. Expecting to have to move house at any time last year I focused on the heaviest books in my collection. Many removal companies refuse to move books (certainly three companies out of the last four I have used) and so I was concerned that if I could not reduce the weight I would have to abandon large quantities of my collection if I could not fit them in my car.
Fiction
'The Daffodil Affair' by Michael Innes.
This was the third in a three-book collection of terribly over-rated novels by Michael Innes. I commented on 'Death at the President's Lodging' and 'Hamlet, Revenge!' last year. This third book was even worse than them. It is a weird fantasy of a police detective sent during the Second World War to South America to investigate a man interested in psychic phenonmena who has abducted various people, a horse and even haunted buildings and brought them to a settlement he was creating. How anyone could do that during wartime seems odd. Of course, many of the people simply have mental health issues. The whole novel is very peculiar, totally unbelievable and a real waste of time. In nothing I have read by Innes does he seem to warrant the acclaim he was given.
'Chimera' by John Barth.
I really seem to have had a bad run of novels. This one was an utter shambles. It received an award in the mid-1970s and I can only imagine the award jury were on drugs at the time. It is supposedly a three-part novel that draws on Greek myths and stories from the Arabian Nights. It starts rationally enough re-interpreting the stories from a 1970s perspective though set in the ancient world. However, quickly the text becomes almost incomprehensible with the plot running out of steam and even if you know great details of the original myths, the writing is soon a mish-mash of phrases and snippets that seem to think they are so clever but in fact are pathetic. I certainly would warn you away from this novel, though I imagine there cannot be many left in circulation.
'The Deadly Percheron' by John Franklin Bardin.
I immediately worried that this was a kind of re-run of 'The Daffodil Affair' being a story set during the Second World War and involving a disappearing horse. In fact it is far better being about a plot to divert, even brain wash as leading psychologist so that he cannot reveal the identity of a murderer. It is written from the psychologist's perspective and is especially well done when he wakes up after having been almost murdered by being pushed in front of a train and begins to try to recapture his identity. As a European reader, seeing New York portrayed in the early 1940s, so apparently untouched by the war is interesting. The novel has elements of film noir stories, but with a greater psychological element than even those. Not a cheerful novel, but well written and engaging all the same.
'The World at Night' by Alan Furst.
Furst is renowned for his spy/intrigue/murder novels set in 1930s and 1940s Europe. This one was a real disappointment. It features a Parisian movie producer who is drawn into being a double agent working for SOE and the SD in wartime France and Spain. In the meantime he tries to make movies during the period of occupation and has lots of affairs before falling in love with an actress living in Lyons, which unlike Paris, lay in the Vichy region of the country. The whole novel feels like Furst is simply going through the motions. There is a real lack of tension throughout even in scenes as when the protagonist is escaping from a Gestapo prison. There is a lack of passion in the numerous sex scenes too. Furst is pretty good at conjuring up the context and details of the period, but in this case it makes the book as dreary as living in wartime Paris must have been. Something to engage the reader is really lacking from this book.
'The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology' ed. by John W. Campbell, Jr.
I have no idea where I got this book from but it is one of the best I have read in a long time. It is a collection of stories from the US science fiction magazine, Astounding Stories, which became Astounding Science Fiction in 1938. It is still being published, since 1992 under the title Analog Science Fiction and Fact. The magazine started in 1930 and Campbell was its editor 1937-71. This anthology published in 1952 includes short stories appearing in the magazine 1940-51, a period that Campbell feels was when science fiction was moving from being just the substance of 'pulp' magazines to becoming a more serious genre. I will list the short stories below because you will see many familiar names. I have included one of the stories from the anthology in a posting before: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/09/making-english-language-more-logical.html
I certainly think that a lot of contemporary science fiction writers especially those of the overblown, door-stop kind of writing should go back to these stories and see good writing in the genre. These were clearly the cream of the stories over an 11-year period, but despite their age they stand up well today and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. Of course, in 1940 the nuclear bomb was guessed at but had not been created, but already writers were analysing the likely impacts on humans and the struggles of dealing with such power. Interestingly only in a couple of the stories do you see Cold War sensibilities, and this is really only apparent in the later end of the collection. Knowledge of the solar system seems a little naive today, with primitive life on the Moon and bases established beneath seas on Venus, but to some extent show writing at that cusp before all the fantasies of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells about our neighbouring bodies were finally dismissed by space travel. Certainly 'Clash by Night' by Lawrence O'Donnell (1943) portraying battling companies of mercenaries on Venus could stand up beside the 'Dune' series even today.
As you would expect from science fiction there are stories questioning assured mutual destruction, first contact with aliens, brilliant children and creating immortality through manipulating cells. Though the language [for example people say 'good-by' rather than 'goodbye'], the clothing and some of the ordinary technology seems very dated now, it added to the charm for me as it gave a window into not only science fiction ideas but those of a mid-20th century US context. As with all best short stories, these pack stimulating ideas into a small package and often have an excellent pay off, sometimes in the final phrase.
'Blowups Happen' by Robert Heinlein, 1940
About the psychological pressures on men overseeing nuclear weapons.
'Hindsight' by Jack Williamson, 1940
About personal and inter-planetary rivalry in a colonised solar system, involving weaponry firing through time.
'Vault of the Beast' by A.E. van Vogt, 1940
About unleashing a sleeping alien entity.
'The Exalted' by L. Sprague de Camp, 1940
Rather comic tale of an intelligent bear investigating mischief at a US university.
'Nightfall' by Isaac Asimov, 1941
Great story about how, on a planet which suffers periodic eclipses, myths and cults arise explaining what is happening, with particular consequences.
'When the Bough Breaks' by Lewis Padgett, 1941
Parents' view of raising a genius child desired by a future civilisation, a kind of antidote to 'Terminator' (1984) and its sequels (1991; 2003).
'Clash by Night' by Lawrence O'Donnell, 1943
City-states on Venus use mercenary companies to fight their battles; tactical nuclear weapons are banned.
'Invariant' by John Pierce, 1944
A man has found a way for him and his dog to become immortal, with unexpected consequences.
'First Contact' by Murray Leinster, 1945
A really good exploration of the challenges of encountering new intelligent life on the edge of human space.
'Meihem In Ce Klasrum' by Dolton Edwards, 1946
Clever essay on the ridiculous aspects of English spelling.
'Hobbyist' by Eric Frank Russell, 1947
Lone human space explorer cannot determine why there is only one of each species on a planet.
'E for Effort' by T.L. Sherred, 1947
Really fascinating story of the careers of two men who develop a device which can show images from any time or place in history. A little reminiscent of 'Deja Vu' (2006) though on a far larger scale.
'Child's Play' by William Tenn, 1947
A very 'Twilight Zone' like story in which a man receives a child's kit from the future enabling him to create life.
'Thunder and Roses' by Theodore Sturgeon, 1947
Quite a sentimental story with a real 1940s feel about a female singer touring the USA in the wake of a nuclear war begging for the counter-attacks to cease for the sake of the world.
'Late Night Final' by Eric Frank Russell, 1948
Uptight commander of alien invasion fleet tries to prevent his crews fraternising with the humans. The character reminds me of Arnold Rimmer in the 'Red Dwarf' comedy science fiction television series (1988-99; 2009).
'Cold War' by Kris Neville, 1949
Very similar to 'Blowups Happen' looking at the psychological pressures on men manning nuclear weapon armed space stations circling the Earth.
'Eternity Lost' by Clifford D. Simak, 1949
About a man who has already had his life extended centuries seeking to have one, last, vital extension.
'The Witches of Karres' by James H. Schmitz, 1949
A playful story, a kind of 'Dances with Wolves' (1990) on the borderlands of a vast space empire with mischievous inhabitants of Karres.
'Over the Top' by Lester del Rey, 1949
An explorer is stranded on the Moon while Earth is on the verge of a nuclear war; reminiscent of parts of 'The Martian Chronicles' by Ray Bradbury (1950).
'Meteor' by William T. Powers, 1950
Nice twist on the usual meteor-threatening-to-crash-into-Earth story; the oldest story I know featuring mining within asteroids.
'Last Enemy' by H. Beam Piper, 1950
About staff who monitor different parallel universes being drawn into exploration of reincarnation on one version of Earth; one of the two stories in the collection with apparent US-side Cold War sensibilities but an interesting portrayal of behaviour in a society in which reincarnation is an established fact.
'Historical Note' by Murray Leinster, 1951
Very much a Cold War spoof exploring the consequences of developing personal flying devices in the USSR.
'Protected Species' by H.B. Fyfe, 1951
Nice consideration of colonial attitudes in space exploration, with excellent final line pay-off.
Non-Fiction
'French Revolutions' by Tim Moore.
An entertaining account of the author cycling around the 2000 route of the Tour de France, which I should have read long ago. Entertaining as all the best travel books are and especially good if you have enjoyed cycle touring and/or know France. For the impact had on my perception of myself see the posting: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2010/04/not-as-pathetic-as-i-thought-i-was.html
'The Collapse of the Third Republic' by William L. Shirer
A very good exploration of the fall of France in 1940 and the reasons behind it dating back decades. Shirer is renowned for his work on Nazi Germany. As a US journalist he was in France and Germany during the 1930s and into the war period. The USA being neutral until December 1941 he was pretty free to move around even during the war. He is excellent on the political aspects in the 1930s and early 1940s. He tends to get overwhelmed when describing the complexities of the fighting in 1940 and the book could have benefited from more maps at that stage. His journalistic style makes the book very readable and it is very informative on the period.
Showing posts with label Tim Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tim Moore. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Sunday, 11 April 2010
Not As Pathetic As I Thought I Was
As anyone who has read this blog over the last couple of years or so, or has more recently dipped into my accounts of cycling in northern France will, know, I have felt that I was a real failure as a touring cyclist. Despite covering 60-100 Km per day I seemed to be incredibly slow, averaging only 13-14.5 kph compared to the 24 kph that my local cycling club expected people to maintain over 80 Km. I remember too vividly the days I would set off from my hotel or hostel only to find myself slumping in a bus shelter an hour later feeling exhausted and the number of times I had to get off and push my bicycle up the middle part of hills, much to the derision of the local young people. I also remember regularly being overtaken by men who were 40-50 years older than me out for local club runs and moving at a pace that I could not hope to match. One reason why I gave up such cycling holidays (and a lot of bad luck was an additional factor, such as getting lost, finding all the hotels full, being robbed and confusions over ferry times) was that I felt I would never be fit enough to be convincing as a touring cyclist.
Having just read 'French Revolutions' by Tim Moore (2001), I realised that I had done myself a real disservice by not having read it nine years ago when I first bought it (I have a shed full of novels to read, most from charity shops, but with the occasional 'new' book, i.e. bought in the year it was published). Moore's efforts put my completely into the shade. In the summer of 2000 he went around the entire route of that year's Tour de France three weeks before the race was run. His climbs of Alps and Pyrenees was in a completely different league to anything I did and I probably never topped 120-140 Km in a single day and quite often it was nearer 80 Km, whereas he managed over 250 Km on one occasion. I remember a tourist office official in Amiens telling me explicitly that 96 Km in five hours thirty minutes was nothing to be proud of. What is striking is how many of the same things we encountered, including dogs leaping out at you suddenly as you rode through villages; wildlife, in my case, two deer, crashing on to the road right in front of you; elderly men overtaking you on bicycles that looked like they had been involved in the First World War; very positive and very dismissive responses from different hoteliers when you turn up in cycling garb; getting lost on ring roads, drawn towards motorways and lost in housing estates; staying in hotels that could be used in an episode of 'Maigret' with no need to adapt anything and above all the physical impact.
What I did not realise at the time was how poorly prepared I was for cycle touring in terms of my health. I had the creams to rub on sore parts of my body. I made sure I bought bottled water rather than relying on bidons which often become the home to lots of bugs. I made sure I had regular meal breaks with a decent amount of carbohydrate (and lugging a huge pack of custard creams - the biscuits containing most energy in a single biscuit around with me, just in case) and between these Orangina breaks to keep me from dehydration and fuel me with more natural sugar. I was ready for the diahorrea common for cyclists and the general 'windiness' coming from having your stomach crunched up over the crossbar for hours on end. I got to bed early and showered every day. However, and this probably stems from being excluded from the cycle club and not mixing with other more experienced tourers I neglected other aspects of the necessary health regime. Foolishly too, I pored over maps and read acommodation guides and downloaded guidance on navigating various routes from the CTC (Cyclists' Touring Club) but overlooked any health advice and also failed to pick up a single account of a tourer's journey. I suppose this was because I was used to setting off on a Sunday for a decent 65-80 Km run without too much difficulty. I made sure I ate well and was protected from the sun and seemed to assumed that with regular breaks and rest days that a cycling holiday in France would be like a series of Sundays (and now I remember that in itself caused fear as I was worried that I would arrive in a town on a Sunday and find everything closed. Being in a locked youth hostel in Dunkerque at night with no water in the taps and having to drink from the toilet as the only way to slake my thirst at that time of night because I had finished my last bottle earlier, probably added to that phobia).
What I realise now is that I had totally underestimated the cumulative impact on my body. Unlike professional cyclists, my muscles were not receiving any massage at night and I had not even done any of the stretching exercises that Chris Boardman's books recommended and that Moore followed pretty religiously. No wonder my muscles complained the next day. At school I had always been told that I would never be a sportsman and given my slowness compared to other cyclists I never even considered myself in that category even as the most amateur of amateurs. However, that meant I did not read the advice for sportsmen or engage with the kinds of activities they do to make their efforts less of a challenge. Even if you are cycling for a day in your local area, you need to think of yourself as doing sport and thus, a sportsperson, however minor. To ignore that fact can lead you into the kind of difficulties I encountered which reduced my holiday's potential for enjoyment.
The second thing was that I had made wrong assumptions about my medical condition, diabetes. I knew from reading and experience that a hazard for a diabetic when doing physical exercise is that the insulin they have injected earlier (diabetes is caused by the body losing the ability naturally to produce insulin which is what breaks down the sugars coming into your body so they can become energy) you would get a 'hypo', i.e. not have enough energy to continue. This happens even to people without diabetes and in cycling is called the 'bonk' which Moore suffered a few times. Being diabetic I was more familiar with this risk, hence, keeping up both the slow and fast burning carbohydrates coming into my system. What I did not do though was have things like the fruit, e.g. raisins and bananas, that are going dripfeed carbohydrates along the way.
Most importantly, it was not until I attended a course in 2008, that I realised a huge blunder that I had been making, in that it is as bad when doing physical exercise not to have enough insulin in your body as then your the sugar is trying to float around in your body as that, sugar, rather than energy your body can use. Suddenly, this explained a lot of the discomfort I had felt day-to-day. It is clear now that fearful of a hypo I was not taking enough insulin and so in fact was wasting a lot of the carbohydrate because my body could not process it and was simply urinating it back out again.
Another factor that I neglected to take into consideration when chasitising myself for my pathetic performance on my tours was the weight of the luggage I was carrying. As I stayed in hostels, bars and hotels I did not have the weight of a tent and like Moore I had only one change of clothes aside from my cycling kit and a minimal number of books to find my way around primarily and keep myself entertained when passing my evenings alone in a hotel in the middle of nowhere (I am absolutely useless at making acquaintances when away from home even when in the UK, let alone when abroad; my language skills are terrible and my social skills even worse). However, with the waterproofs, the cold weather arms and leggings and particularly the tools and spare inner tubes, etc. which did prove extremely useful, as you will get punctures, I estimate now it added up to something like 20-25 Kg. To put this in context the 8-year old boy who lives in my house weighs 26.5 Kg, so it was as if I had a child riding around on the back of the bicycle, weighing over a quarter of my body weight of the time. Of course, this was a big difference to the cycling I had done on Sundays in the UK when I would have a pair of waterproofs, a drink and my camera. Moore notes how much faster he was able to move when he was able to leave his luggage with his family, and I guess I would have been the same. Instead I had to carry everything I had with me, on my bicycle up and down whatever inclines I encountered. If I had had more French I would have given this context to the hoteliers and others who thought my efforts were poor.
It also explains for me, as it did for Moore, why we could not overtake the elderly men no matter how aged their bicycles were. It is not only that you have to exert more energy to move that weight, but it is constantly slowing you down so you have to overcome the friction element. In addition, Moore was riding something a lot racier than my road-mountain hybrid, however light it might be (and great over roads needing resurfacing). This was outlined in Moore's book when a friend of his, riding something like my bicycle, came to cycle with him in Switzerland. Of course, a lot of commentators by the road side, even in France, just see 'man on bicycle' and do not appreciate how many variants there actually are.
The need for approval is a strange aspect which impinged on Moore as much as it did no me. I have not achieved anything great in my life and could never afford to travel to exotic locations, so doing something that marked me out even just a little from the kind of people I mixed with, had an important aspect in my self-esteem. Giving that I set off on my first cycling trip from the single room above a chipshop on the Mile End Road, with a bathroom that I shared with seven other residents, getting some self-esteem was important. The fact that I can see the face of the woman in the Amiens tourist office to this day with her sneering comment, is probably not healthy. However, people touring are looking for recognition of what they have achieved and I am sure the same happens for hikers and mountaineers. I loved the fact that I felt I was part of a 'club', that cafe owners truly expected me to come back again in the future (especially on the routes frequented by numerous cyclists, there are favoured parts, inland from Dunkerque was one and there was another such area in eastern Normandy), and other cyclists nodding to me or helping out with the map. I found the camaraderie that I was later not to find in the local cycling club in the UK, and, in fact, more than that, the acceptance that even if I was nowhere near the quality of a Tour de France racer or even a local race racer, I was a cyclist going about his business which deserved respect rather if not acclaim.
Having read Moore's account and his difficulties that, despite, far greater preparation, far better equipment and far more support, were very similar to my own, I am beginning to feel a little better about my efforts. Of course, these days I am not fit enough to run to the end of my road let alone cycle 20 Km, but perhaps if I had come to Moore's book in, say 2002, I can envisage I would have far more cycling trips to recount here and probably a bit more self-respect. I have to remember the morning when a whole class of French school children, probably aged 9 or 10, all dressed in matching cycle helmets, were pulled to the side of the road to let me pass up a hill with their teacher pointing out how properly I was attired in my cycle helmet and bright cycling strip (that year bright yellow) so visible to motorists. Though I struggled up the hill, I dared not get off or slow until I was out of sight. I should also remember stepping into a pristine bar at the top of a hill that was run by a man who clearly (from the numerous black and white photographs around the wall) had been in the paratroopers and asked for two Oranginas and a single glass. I never drank from the bottle for some reason. He knew the steepness of his local hill and seemed please that I had chosen to stop at his bar and sent me off with a real rousing encouragement. I recommend Moore's book to anyone who has battled on a cycling trip. It has made me feel that my efforts were not wasted and that I was fighting against the odds, partly due to lack of the right sort of preparation, but even so, not things that other people had not encountered themselves.
Having just read 'French Revolutions' by Tim Moore (2001), I realised that I had done myself a real disservice by not having read it nine years ago when I first bought it (I have a shed full of novels to read, most from charity shops, but with the occasional 'new' book, i.e. bought in the year it was published). Moore's efforts put my completely into the shade. In the summer of 2000 he went around the entire route of that year's Tour de France three weeks before the race was run. His climbs of Alps and Pyrenees was in a completely different league to anything I did and I probably never topped 120-140 Km in a single day and quite often it was nearer 80 Km, whereas he managed over 250 Km on one occasion. I remember a tourist office official in Amiens telling me explicitly that 96 Km in five hours thirty minutes was nothing to be proud of. What is striking is how many of the same things we encountered, including dogs leaping out at you suddenly as you rode through villages; wildlife, in my case, two deer, crashing on to the road right in front of you; elderly men overtaking you on bicycles that looked like they had been involved in the First World War; very positive and very dismissive responses from different hoteliers when you turn up in cycling garb; getting lost on ring roads, drawn towards motorways and lost in housing estates; staying in hotels that could be used in an episode of 'Maigret' with no need to adapt anything and above all the physical impact.
What I did not realise at the time was how poorly prepared I was for cycle touring in terms of my health. I had the creams to rub on sore parts of my body. I made sure I bought bottled water rather than relying on bidons which often become the home to lots of bugs. I made sure I had regular meal breaks with a decent amount of carbohydrate (and lugging a huge pack of custard creams - the biscuits containing most energy in a single biscuit around with me, just in case) and between these Orangina breaks to keep me from dehydration and fuel me with more natural sugar. I was ready for the diahorrea common for cyclists and the general 'windiness' coming from having your stomach crunched up over the crossbar for hours on end. I got to bed early and showered every day. However, and this probably stems from being excluded from the cycle club and not mixing with other more experienced tourers I neglected other aspects of the necessary health regime. Foolishly too, I pored over maps and read acommodation guides and downloaded guidance on navigating various routes from the CTC (Cyclists' Touring Club) but overlooked any health advice and also failed to pick up a single account of a tourer's journey. I suppose this was because I was used to setting off on a Sunday for a decent 65-80 Km run without too much difficulty. I made sure I ate well and was protected from the sun and seemed to assumed that with regular breaks and rest days that a cycling holiday in France would be like a series of Sundays (and now I remember that in itself caused fear as I was worried that I would arrive in a town on a Sunday and find everything closed. Being in a locked youth hostel in Dunkerque at night with no water in the taps and having to drink from the toilet as the only way to slake my thirst at that time of night because I had finished my last bottle earlier, probably added to that phobia).
What I realise now is that I had totally underestimated the cumulative impact on my body. Unlike professional cyclists, my muscles were not receiving any massage at night and I had not even done any of the stretching exercises that Chris Boardman's books recommended and that Moore followed pretty religiously. No wonder my muscles complained the next day. At school I had always been told that I would never be a sportsman and given my slowness compared to other cyclists I never even considered myself in that category even as the most amateur of amateurs. However, that meant I did not read the advice for sportsmen or engage with the kinds of activities they do to make their efforts less of a challenge. Even if you are cycling for a day in your local area, you need to think of yourself as doing sport and thus, a sportsperson, however minor. To ignore that fact can lead you into the kind of difficulties I encountered which reduced my holiday's potential for enjoyment.
The second thing was that I had made wrong assumptions about my medical condition, diabetes. I knew from reading and experience that a hazard for a diabetic when doing physical exercise is that the insulin they have injected earlier (diabetes is caused by the body losing the ability naturally to produce insulin which is what breaks down the sugars coming into your body so they can become energy) you would get a 'hypo', i.e. not have enough energy to continue. This happens even to people without diabetes and in cycling is called the 'bonk' which Moore suffered a few times. Being diabetic I was more familiar with this risk, hence, keeping up both the slow and fast burning carbohydrates coming into my system. What I did not do though was have things like the fruit, e.g. raisins and bananas, that are going dripfeed carbohydrates along the way.
Most importantly, it was not until I attended a course in 2008, that I realised a huge blunder that I had been making, in that it is as bad when doing physical exercise not to have enough insulin in your body as then your the sugar is trying to float around in your body as that, sugar, rather than energy your body can use. Suddenly, this explained a lot of the discomfort I had felt day-to-day. It is clear now that fearful of a hypo I was not taking enough insulin and so in fact was wasting a lot of the carbohydrate because my body could not process it and was simply urinating it back out again.
Another factor that I neglected to take into consideration when chasitising myself for my pathetic performance on my tours was the weight of the luggage I was carrying. As I stayed in hostels, bars and hotels I did not have the weight of a tent and like Moore I had only one change of clothes aside from my cycling kit and a minimal number of books to find my way around primarily and keep myself entertained when passing my evenings alone in a hotel in the middle of nowhere (I am absolutely useless at making acquaintances when away from home even when in the UK, let alone when abroad; my language skills are terrible and my social skills even worse). However, with the waterproofs, the cold weather arms and leggings and particularly the tools and spare inner tubes, etc. which did prove extremely useful, as you will get punctures, I estimate now it added up to something like 20-25 Kg. To put this in context the 8-year old boy who lives in my house weighs 26.5 Kg, so it was as if I had a child riding around on the back of the bicycle, weighing over a quarter of my body weight of the time. Of course, this was a big difference to the cycling I had done on Sundays in the UK when I would have a pair of waterproofs, a drink and my camera. Moore notes how much faster he was able to move when he was able to leave his luggage with his family, and I guess I would have been the same. Instead I had to carry everything I had with me, on my bicycle up and down whatever inclines I encountered. If I had had more French I would have given this context to the hoteliers and others who thought my efforts were poor.
It also explains for me, as it did for Moore, why we could not overtake the elderly men no matter how aged their bicycles were. It is not only that you have to exert more energy to move that weight, but it is constantly slowing you down so you have to overcome the friction element. In addition, Moore was riding something a lot racier than my road-mountain hybrid, however light it might be (and great over roads needing resurfacing). This was outlined in Moore's book when a friend of his, riding something like my bicycle, came to cycle with him in Switzerland. Of course, a lot of commentators by the road side, even in France, just see 'man on bicycle' and do not appreciate how many variants there actually are.
The need for approval is a strange aspect which impinged on Moore as much as it did no me. I have not achieved anything great in my life and could never afford to travel to exotic locations, so doing something that marked me out even just a little from the kind of people I mixed with, had an important aspect in my self-esteem. Giving that I set off on my first cycling trip from the single room above a chipshop on the Mile End Road, with a bathroom that I shared with seven other residents, getting some self-esteem was important. The fact that I can see the face of the woman in the Amiens tourist office to this day with her sneering comment, is probably not healthy. However, people touring are looking for recognition of what they have achieved and I am sure the same happens for hikers and mountaineers. I loved the fact that I felt I was part of a 'club', that cafe owners truly expected me to come back again in the future (especially on the routes frequented by numerous cyclists, there are favoured parts, inland from Dunkerque was one and there was another such area in eastern Normandy), and other cyclists nodding to me or helping out with the map. I found the camaraderie that I was later not to find in the local cycling club in the UK, and, in fact, more than that, the acceptance that even if I was nowhere near the quality of a Tour de France racer or even a local race racer, I was a cyclist going about his business which deserved respect rather if not acclaim.
Having read Moore's account and his difficulties that, despite, far greater preparation, far better equipment and far more support, were very similar to my own, I am beginning to feel a little better about my efforts. Of course, these days I am not fit enough to run to the end of my road let alone cycle 20 Km, but perhaps if I had come to Moore's book in, say 2002, I can envisage I would have far more cycling trips to recount here and probably a bit more self-respect. I have to remember the morning when a whole class of French school children, probably aged 9 or 10, all dressed in matching cycle helmets, were pulled to the side of the road to let me pass up a hill with their teacher pointing out how properly I was attired in my cycle helmet and bright cycling strip (that year bright yellow) so visible to motorists. Though I struggled up the hill, I dared not get off or slow until I was out of sight. I should also remember stepping into a pristine bar at the top of a hill that was run by a man who clearly (from the numerous black and white photographs around the wall) had been in the paratroopers and asked for two Oranginas and a single glass. I never drank from the bottle for some reason. He knew the steepness of his local hill and seemed please that I had chosen to stop at his bar and sent me off with a real rousing encouragement. I recommend Moore's book to anyone who has battled on a cycling trip. It has made me feel that my efforts were not wasted and that I was fighting against the odds, partly due to lack of the right sort of preparation, but even so, not things that other people had not encountered themselves.
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