2013-05-21T23:47:55-04:00 Harry Cockburn http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=harry-cockburn Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Harry Cockburn Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2569824 2013-01-28T19:11:54-05:00 2013-03-30T05:12:01-04:00

Harry Cockburn http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cockburn/
I arrived on my own, watched the TGV shimmer away in the evening heat and crossed the station car park to a small bar opposite. I had a glass of beer and waited for the car to take me to where I was staying.

When I arrived at the wall builders' camp, I introduced myself to everyone, sat down between two friendly faces and pulled out a bottle of wine from my bag.

There was a man from Togo, a German boy, two Korean girls, the two men from Mexico and a Columbian girl. All of them declined a drink.

I drank the bottle over the course of the evening, finding the process only slightly less pleasurable done without like-minded companions. Nevertheless, I decided to join in with the mindless sobriety and embark upon the two weeks of wall building entirely without alcohol.

By the end of the trip I felt a vigorous satisfaction, partly through the qualitative accomplishment of shifting tonnes of sandstone, but also in part to an exacting fortnight's asceticism.

Since then I've occasionally experimented with abstinence as a tool for level-headed self assessment.

However, London is a place where drinking is deeply necessary. Business in the fermented streets of the city is conducted through a thin veil of functional alcoholism, and for many, a drink is as valuable as a promise.

Stopping drinking for a month in the capital, while also working as a full time journalist could easily lay bare the vanity and futility of keeping one's nose so close to the grindstone (or so I suspected). So the decision was not without the risk of existential crisis.

It turned out my fears were unfounded. I've not had any alcohol for 28 days now, and what I've learned as I drift towards the endpoint convinces me that there is no good reason to stop drinking for a month if you don't actually need to.

While abstemiousness or sobriety can lend you advantages in a few situations, there are times when you must be drunk, if only to remain polite to your friends without becoming horrendously bored by their frivolous jabber.

Over the past four weeks I have offended and disappointed people through ordering ginger beer at the bar. Two friends' birthdays have come and gone in January, and while I entered into the parties wholeheartedly, the sense of brotherhood that mutual inebriation engenders simply couldn't flourish and I ended up sloping off early.

I have hung my head in shame in front of bar staff in the few pubs I've bothered visiting during the last four weeks - some of which were in south Wales and struggling to make ends meet. No landlord is pleased at the arrival of a teetotal young man. Young men are those creatures most perfectly adapted to devoting hopelessly enormous amounts of money to the bar. But the pub owner knows that's just not going to happen when the target market is sipping up elderflower cordial through a curly straw.

I've also missed my glorious hangovers. Hangovers are an entirely denigrated element of the drinking process - people are always trying to cure them. I revel in mine - writhing in that sublime suffering which Kingsley Amis describes as a "unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation". I'm at my most creative the day after a sodden evening. It's a time when new thoughts spring up like freshly irrigated shoots and almost anything can seem possible to achieve, especially in the kitchen.

I've lost the Friday Feeling and I can't wait to get it back. The thrill of leaving the office on Friday is because the weekend is when you can do what you want. When you actually can't do what you want, there's far less to celebrate. And drinking is all about celebrating.

However, the worst part of the whole tale is that I've hardly learned anything interesting or new from my month off.

Investigating temperance in a foreign country during a period of intense labour was exciting. Failing to have a beer on the weekend is just pointless.

In a few days time I'll be back to normal, and I mean that extremely positively.
I have never before chosen to be so unnecessarily bored in all my adult life, and for that I can only apologise to myself.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2397222 2013-01-04T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-06T05:12:01-05:00

Harry Cockburn http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cockburn/
Some cyclists are more active in promoting participation than others, and over the years I have made a considerable effort in persuading the people around me to cycle to work. I'm motivated by improving people's recognition of how easy and how rewarding cycling is, by the fact that another cyclist on the road is better for the environment, and by adding to the political weight behind improving facilities for all cyclists.

What I consistently find is that it takes a nudge, or a few nudges from different sources to get people to take the plunge, but once they've commuted by bike for the first time, they suddenly realise what all the fuss is about.

Potential cyclists always ask the same questions, which have easy answers.

Nine times out of 10, there is a perception that cycling is an especially dangerous pursuit. There is a huge amount of statistical information available to indicate that cycling is not a one-way ticket to intensive care, though there's no doubt that the city streets can appear intimidating to new cyclists. However, once you're used to the hazards of a busy road, all it takes to remain safe is to wear a helmet, be visible and remain alert. Nobody is trying to kill you.

After safety, people begin to get very hung-up about the weather. In Britain the argument is that it's either sweat-drenchingly hot, or unpleasantly wet and cold.

I've commuted in London and Brighton over the past five years, and other than a rare blanket of snow, it's always been possible to commute, even in the worst conditions, and to still be absolutely comfortable within a couple of minutes of arriving. The effects of bad weather can be entirely eliminated through straightforward preparation and a few choice purchases.

Even for my very short commute of less than four miles, I wear cycling gear and wash and change at work. This means giving myself an extra 10 minutes in the morning, and taking a shirt, socks and pants in a small rucksack (trousers and shoes stay at work), but it means that when I eventually sit at my desk, I've had 20 minutes exercise and am alert and fresh.

Finally, people are put off cycling by the cost of buying a bike, and the chance that they'll have it stolen.

If you have never cycled before, then now is the time to look for a second hand bike. Ebay and Gumtree are awash with unwanted Christmas presents at this time of year and there are spectacular bargains to be found. Measure your height and inside leg and then do an internet search for a rough sizing guide. For more serious road cyclists, this website offers a particularly good sizing guide.

Many workplaces now offer secure areas to park bikes, but even if you don't have this luxury, a decent lock and a sensible parking place will significantly reduce the chance of theft. Bicycle insurance is inexpensive and should the worst happen, it will cover the cost of replacement.

Once these initial worries been dispensed with, there is a huge amount to love about cycling to work.

This week's news that rail fares have risen by 4.3%, and by over 50% in the last decade are just one indicator that cycling can save you vast amounts in transport costs.

From where I live in Hackney to work in central London, I'm saving hundreds of pounds a year in transport costs, and over twenty minutes of journey time each way.

In addition, I'm adding to the number of cyclists on the road and reducing carbon emissions, keeping a base level of physical activity in my day-to-day life, and most importantly of all, I'm not crammed into a tube or a steaming bus at rush-hour.

Of course, not every distance is cyclable, but the vast majority of journeys are, and they will be considerably faster by bike. If you work in London, then you have to live quite far out to gain time by using public transport over cycling.

So while Britain is entering its traditional period of detox after the festive excesses, commuters ought to be re-assessing the all-round gains that can be made by taking to two wheels and celebrating rather than loathing their journey to work.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.1085689 2011-11-10T06:22:55-05:00 2012-01-10T05:12:01-05:00

Harry Cockburn http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-cockburn/
It was a terrific piece of writing, hilariously written, and convinced me to purchase books by both authors. After that I was hooked, and have subsequently devoured a considerable proportion of their output; a magnificent melange of comedy, politics, atheism, sex and bacchanalian celebration.

So last night's blockbuster event organised by Intelligence Squared at the Royal Festival Hall was always going to be good.

Originally billed as a conversation between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry, pneumonia prevented the famed journalist from appearing. Insisting that the show must go on, Fry was joined onstage by Richard Dawkins, where the pair co-ordinated a wildly entertaining voyage through the life and work of Christopher Hitchens.

Employing a gigantic TV screen with a satellite link across the Atlantic, a love-in of massive proportions ensued. Martin Amis and Salman Rushdie both made on-screen appearances, as did poet James Fenton, but before Fry was able to reach these eminent figures, a last-minute addition to the line-up gave the audience a grainy webcam view of actor Sean Penn at home in Los Angeles, smoking and looking as though he'd just crawled out of bed.

"Congratulations on smoking by the way," Fry laughed during their discussion of Hitchens' critique of Henry Kissinger. "I think the audience would be less shocked if you got your penis out."

Unfortunately, shortly after that, the webcam died, and Fry was momentarily left floundering:
"I haven't slept for three days," he joked. "I wake up screaming, 'God damn you Google!'"
Richard Dawkins' presence seemed somewhat staid after this fun, but the atmosphere quickly adapted to a slightly more serious discussion that centred on our reluctance within society to cause offence. "I don't see any reason to tip-toe around if offence is deserved," Dawkins said.

Satirist Christopher Buckley then appeared on the screen and took the evening back into the realm of anecdote, and had the audience rocking in their chairs with a story of how Barbara Streisand once "caught fire" at one of Hitchens' weekly drinking sessions in Washington.

James Fenton recited a poem of his called The Skip that Hitchens had requested, and Salman Rushdie elucidated some of their clique's notorious word games such as 'Hysterical Sex', in which you take the name of a famous book or film and substitute the word 'love', for the phrase above, thereby achieving titles such as 'Hysterical Sex in the Time of Cholera', or (one of my own), 'From Russia with Hysterical Sex.'

It was, however, Martin Amis who provided the evening's most entertaining moments. Going through old photographs with Stephen Fry, he was fantastically funny, noting a baguette stowed away in Hitchens' top pocket while in Paris, and remarking upon his abundant sprouting chest-hair in another that showed him smoking a cigarette while holding a brace of pheasants on the Rothschild estate.

Hitchens' absence was sad, although during the course of the evening Fry received two messages sent by the author Ian McEwan who was watching the event live with Hitchens in Washington, and this went some way towards convincing the audience that they were somehow in the presence of the individual in question.]]>