king kong bicycle stupidity old friends

bicycle stupidity first, 3rd in the set which includes falling off my bike because i was reading the map while cycling & changing the inner tube but leaving the new one off and putting the old punctured one back on...

this time it was partly because EDF have been doing some roadworks & disrupting the cycle paths near the barbican for months now... once before i was cycling back through this part of town in the middle of the night and something similar happened but i averted it... not this time...

so firstly it's a handy little junction, one single lane for cars, two cycle paths either side, as i've said the cyclists have been forced into the motorists lane recently, there is a gate that comes down over the motorists lane, but other than that time in the middle of the night i have never seen it down... that gate has always been open...

but this was yesterday, a sunday, and i only ever use this route to get to work normally...

also worth noting is that i'm still without my bike, i've become accustomed to the girls/kids bike that i've been borrowing for the week and i can go really fast on it now, but the brakes aren't that good...

picture the scene, bombing it down this quiet road near the barbican, singing a caetano veloso song in my head, following a route i know really well...

thankfully the gate gave so i wasn't too injured, i like to think the gate suffered more than me...

my forearms still hurt a little, dumb place to be hurt being as i'm a pianist, no bruises though which kind of disapoints me...

i was just in a state of shock at first but after awhile i started to feel a bit like desperate dan, crashing into solid objects that bend under my momentum, by the end of the night i was imagining the collision as though i was king kong...

anyway i dusted myself off, bent the gate back into the shape it should have been and continued on my way to dulwich village to meet with bo, spanna, E & the like, a really nice place called the greyhound, (in fact i bumped into G & C, G who recorded connie with me)... lovely afternoon i had, old friends galore and all the better for it... hungarian T was there, spanna's ex, i hope to get him round for a game of chess before he goes back to budapest, he reminded that the last time we'd played was on the roof of the herne hill house i lived in briefly back then...

then once more onto the bike and i swept home, one of those long, slightly drunken, exhilarating cycle rides, no accidents this time, the gate noted...

picked up G who was dolling herself up and we got a bus up to the muswell hill odeon to see king kong which was triumphant... very satisfying, kong himself just fantastic, very moving, i've vidoe'd the 1933 original which was on BBC2 this afternoon, going to compare it once enough time has passed...

really nice to see it in that art deco cinema, carefully reproducing the 1933 style as peter jackson is doing in this remake...

also just delicious to go with G, peggy lee singing bye, bye blackbird in the film and i was very glad to be sat next to her...

where somebody waits for me
sugar's sweet, so is he
bye bye blackbird

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