Yup - slipping. No new info (well, when is it really "info"?) for a month. It's kind of nice actually because it means I'm busy and have no time, even though I'm up to fun stuff. A friend said recently that young people today feel that their lives aren't validated unless it's on the internet. Are we all turning into the boneless blobs on Wall-e much faster than the film predicted? Maybe - tell you what though, I could do with a route 44 / big gulp style milkshake right now. I guess there's your answer.



Anyway - news. Why else would you be here? Paris - Roubaix was brill. Simpson got us lost a LOT of times and worked the car over a fair bit before we even left London but his 'fakie / switch euro driving' was fine and dandy. It was weird driving the exact same cobbles I rode almost a year to the day ago on my moto trip. We hammered around on the Saturday in the big red Ford and got the car throughly filthy. Driving those roads in a car is bad enough - I simply have no idea how they cope on road bikes. Evenings were spent drinking beer, eating pizza and watching "Flavor of love" starring Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, and "Americas best dance crew" on MTV. Heavy.
The race was brill - highlights include a run Le'Mans style back to the car and chasing team cars down French back roads, watching 'Spiderman the second' climb a railway bridge to get a better view and drop his camera. Drunk Belgian cycle fans are always good, as are motorway horn honking sessions as the race runs parallel, then over us, then onto cobbles next to us for a mile or 2. Helicopters, noise, the hard shoulder full of support vehicles, and by pure luck, being caught up in exactly what we were racing to see. Amazing. I sat in the sun at Roubaix whilst Simpson took some snaps and lost my lightmeter. Liability. Good old Pippo came second. Well done lad. Boonen (who won) got busted yesterday for, of all the performance enhancing drugs, cocaine. AGAIN! What a doofus.



I've actually driven the Manta now - about a meter backwards and forwards but still! It's great. Really good late Easter weekend at home with the rents. Been riding the 20" more after a session at the Monkey Bumps on Saturday with Alec, Andy, Ed and the crew. Unfortunately I only had the 26" mongoose to hand so my dodgy trail riding was even more dodgy. Stoppies down landings anyone? The Ecclesall woods singletrack was a treat and a half though. Bicycles are good. I think Paddy might have got through to Fera more than I ever have when he told her it's easier to "just roll with it" regarding all the bike nonsense. Wise words indeed. Of course he was a bit merry at the time but that doesn't matter. [Hope you had a good birthday pal.]



On the Friday we said goodbye to Andrew Savage, a makeup artist I worked with during my time assisting David O'Driscoll. He was also a very good friend of Sam Jones and a really decent guy. The funeral was sad but colourful with funny stories and good people. Was great to see so many people and appreciate just how well respected he was within the photography industry and out of it. Do check out his site HERE.

The following week I had a small exhibition in a cafe in Beckenham. It's still there if you're passing the Belleberry Deli next to Clock House station. Was good fun and always nice to see your work up somewhere other than your house. Thanks Bernard.

Pete & Hannah visited for another random night out (karaoke for Dom's birthday). The lass singing the Meatloaf duet was rubbish but the old man singing "The man comes around" was awesome. A cockney Johnny Cash. We had the best Sunday ever - so lazy, big breakfast, playstation session with Pete, ride on the BMX, read some magazines and hung out with Fera and then Yvette from the States visited and took us out for a burger. Perfect day.

The day after I left for Prague. A big Pilsner job with james. In 7 days, the LATEST we slept in was 5am. No really. Dawn and dusk shots every day. As awful as I felt for the first couple, routine kicked in and I actually liked getting up early and seeing parts of the city, which would later be thronged with tourists, deserted. Real treat. The beer was great (straight out of a huge cask at 8am in the cellars of the PU brewery). The company was awesome and Prague is just stunning. I remembered from GCSE geography that acid rain is killing the place - the west pollute the most and the east get the fallout. The famous Charles Bridge is limestone and I can only imagine how sharp the statues must have been before the industrial revolution. Saying that, it's still one of the most fantastic bridges I've been across. We hired Segways for an hour or so and I've never laughed so hard. You definitely can't be shy on one of those. They WILL be banned so get a ride on one soon before they're restricted by the man. Saturday night we shot at the Pilsen Brewery again and then headed back to Prague around midnight (after a beer of course) to a jazz bar called Blue Light. Rather than going back to the hotel for a few hours, we stayed there till 04:30 and went straight to the last shoot on the bridge. We had become the people we laughed at every morning. The whole trip was so much of everything it's going to take a while to come back down. A week felt like a very long time (due to fitting two separate shoots into each day with a snooze in the middle) but never boring or stale. Thank you to everyone who made it possible. You know who you are.



That's pretty much it. I went motorcycle protesting yesterday so if you were in the centre of town and got held up it was because motorcyclists are being forced to pay £1.50 to park in Wesminster when they are actually the solution to congestion, not the cause. It's a stealth tax and needs to be stopped. Tell your friends and visit the site. And come along next time.

Be in touch. Busy here but all good fun.