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on the road bike (revised edition) ned boulting. yellow jersey press paperback 323pp illus. £8.99

"I can't believe you actually shaved your legs. Chris thought this was terribly funny, when he saw me.
But you told me to.
No I didn't, he pointed out. I just asked if you had
Oh. He was right of course, but still...Why did you ask if I had?
To see if you would.
And I had."

a book that i partially reviewed, or perhaps simply made mention of, gave testament to the dutch affiliation with the bicycle. though their country faced the same increasing onslaught of the motor car in the late fifties and early sixties, there seems to have been a greater resolve to retain the flexibility and goodness of the bicycle even in the face of motorisation.

britain fared less well, at least if you're a cyclist. our less than strenuous fascination with the bicycle has been usurped even by the good folks in portland, oregon, leaving us almost empty handed. i say almost because as we all well know, having read the first edition of ned boulting's on the road bike, professing an interested yet disassociated intrigue with the great british velocipedinal eccentric, he would always be my sole choice to offer such a perspicacious narrative such as that already read and reviewed. why then, other than the fact that i consider him a good friend, would i feel moved to offer this reprise?

aside from the fact that i figure little has truly changed since prince bradley's successful bid for world domination, ned has seen fit to tie up some loose ends with, as the cover tells me a brand new chapter along with many others, i rather enjoy mr boulting's writing; it is admirably self-deprecating, even if that often seems more of an adopted persona than a sketch of real life. at first publication, on the road bike cleverly managed to poke gentle fun at us all through his portrayal of some of the genre's more prominent characters (after all, the book is subtitled sniffing the yakskin shoe).

you may be wondering, not unnaturally, what it is that makes this stance so endearing, so let me explain. in much the same way as jokes about scotsmen are often only funny when told by other scotsmen, boulting has managed to be a scotsman, so to speak. his writing identifies him as one of us while he pretends not to be. like the fallacy that islay malts are all matured by a wave-dashed sea wall (they're not), the notion that a man who shaves his legs even at a whimsical behest of the 1992 olympic pursuit champion could not be numbered amongst the pelotonese (come the revolution) is almsot unthinkable. and that's despite his annoying predilection for turning up on itv's football coverage.

the brand new chapter is a scattergun of everything that's happened since last year's first edition; froome's yellow jersey, wiggo's eventual victory in his home tour and the bicycle ride with chris boardman for which legs were shaved. ok, so there's a tad more to it than that, but overall, this is the chapter that has turned a particularly excellent book into its gestalt. you'd think me a tad overwrought if i heartily recommended purchasing this in addition to the original; would i ever be so presumptious? but if the original passed you by, don't compound the error by letting this one go.

it's what the ad breaks in the tour coverage are for.

through the generosity of yellow jersey press, i have one copy to give away to the sender of the first correct entry chosen at random from the yak skin shoe.
'for which uk tv channel does ned boulting present the tour de france?
entries to brian@twmp.net remembering, as always, to include a full postal address. closing date is wednesday 4 june.

thursday 29 may 2014