NaBloPoMo day 6: Tale of two books, part 1

I finished this book today, and I loved it.  So much so that I'll read it again to condense the review into the usual format.



A big chunk of this year's fun was wrapped up in the Tour de France (knitting element of this to follow), and Ned Boulting, Chris Boardman, Matt Rendell and Gary Imlach were a huge part of that. And this year the race-as-billed was just weird - Cav going out so badly at possibly the most important stage of his life, at least in his opinion; Froome pulling up at a completely undistinguished roundabout in the Nord in the pouring rain (while everyone wondered about Wiggins); then Contador; headless teams rushing around all over the place...  This book attempts to capture Ned Boulting's memory of the race, while doing an awful lot more besides.

So there's the recounting of the race, which is great; but sort of secondary as everything somewhat blurs and Nibali becomes dominant. If you want that though, you'd go to the Tour website and look at the stats...

I'm going to insert one of my photos from near the start of the Cambridge-to-London stage here, because it looks almost like a sports photographer's with the riders in focus and the crowds not. And because I turned up.




There's also the remembering of the absurdities of the race delivered in the highlights and the superb, rambling podcasts; the Cameraman's Wandering Thumb; nearly being run over by Norberts while trying to deliver a podcast; Chris Boardman's precision/grumpiness combo...

The third element is some history; both small elegies to the cyclists retiring this year (David Millar - this bit made me cry - Jens Voigt with the mystifyingly-pronounced surname...) and people much further back but within the living memory of some (Gérard Saint)... Then there are the interviews with people still intimately involved with the race, like Peta Todd, wife of Mark Cavendish, who gives a pretty frank account of the difficulties of living with a man whose joy and despair is measured in split-seconds.

The fourth is the affection and commitment to the race, and its utter absurdity, from the publicity caravan to the Italian official attempting to explain new rules using a human version of Google translate; the hysteria of being utterly knackered and completely wound up and still having to talk to people in a multitude of languages...

And the fifth is a deep, complicated, affectionate love of France, from wandering the aisles of an enormous Carrefour staring at the huge display of tinned peas and carrots and then just buying pistachios and wine to take back to the hotel, to a discussion of the construction of stools (the furniture kind) in Campanile hotels, to a history of Carcassonne and Viollet-le-Duc...

And just realised I hadn't mentioned one of the main things: it's funny; very funny.  If you're of a similar age to me, and Mr B, I defy you to read this on a train and get past the third page without attracting the attention of your fellow passengers.  If you're just a slip of a thing, there'll be something to tickle your fancy and make you embarrass yourself a page or two later.