Glamour or crash?

This picture should give some background as to why there is a need to risk falling off one’s Velo in the name of glamour. Somehow, if you don’t make an effort you feel like you are letting everyone down, even the buildings.

It was going to happen sooner or later… the need for a Velo ‘v (infamous rent-a-bike’s) as the (mostly) reliable, fastest and cheapest form of transport, colliding with a day when I was wearing a skirt. Now I have certainly seen plenty of women riding their bikes in skirts, mostly long billowing skirts that cover the necessary (although it would concern me that it might get trapped in the wheels and cause some very undignified crash), but mine was of a shorter variety, therefore risking flashing my pants to oncoming traffic – not very ladylike or glamorous, and at possible risk of arrest.

However, I have found a solution to the dilemma – how to look ladylike and sophisticated (ok, perhaps my interpretation of the two as I am unsure whether I ever fit into those two categories…).

Firstly, one must adjust the saddle so it is as high as is possible to still ride the bike, thereby creating a downwards angle from pants to knee – if the saddle is too low and your pants to knee angle becomes horizontal, you risk the pant flash on every pedal.

Secondly, I have adopted a new technique for cycling where your knee performs an up and across manoeuvre rather than the straight forward up and down as used by normal cyclists. If you can imagine sitting on a chair with your knees clamped together, it is as close as I could get to the cycling equivalent, and it seems to work – oh how glamorous and French to ride one’s Velo whilst wearing a pencil skirt – it defies the laws of common sense and contravenes both my Englishness and sportiness but then if your bike always comes with a basket you’ve already lost the sportiness battle, and with my Dior sunglasses and impractical high heels I feel well and truly local. Plus, if I fall off my bike the chances of being helped up by a passing French man must be greatly increased.

However, whilst trying to avoid another French lady on a bike, I managed to ride into a large and very solid tree yesterday. Luckily I was going extremely slowly and sustained no damage to either me or my Velo, only some slight damage to my ego as the woman I was trying to avoid nearly fell off her bike through laughing at me (the vache). I was very glad there weren’t actually any passing French men to either help me or laugh at me, although as I was appropriately dressed in shorts not a pencil skirt they may not have bothered anyway.

On the subject of glamour, last weekend I jet-setted off to Marbella for a hen weekend. Not the most glamorous you might think when travelling Monarch in cattle class, with another hen weekend of 20 year old Essex girls sat behind me drinking their way through duty free, but once I was there it was a classy weekend, needless to say the details of which remain on tour.

However, as I draw ever closer to the dreaded big 30, there are a few things left to achieve before I reach that age, and some things I know I won’t be able to do after that age. The first of those being wearing plaits. I have often heard it said that women over 30 (probably over 20 too) shouldn’t attempt to wear bunches or knee high socks (a rule clearly ignored in Korea, although they seem to get away with it) so I thought I would give it a last bash whilst at a “White party” (as in everyone has to wear white!) in Marbella. I thought that if I couldn’t carry it off normally, people might put it down to me being a surf chick. I’ll leave it to the audience on this one, I was 50/50 and I probably won’t be doing it again soon, but from this angle it’s not too bad I don’t think. It’s also a good excuse to show a picture of the bride to be (Susie in the centre) and the chief bridesmaid and host in Marbella (Nat on the left).