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the gods have spoken

though secretly i doubt she may have changed her behaviour to the extent that she would have me believe, my daughter claims no more to be in thrall to the celebrity magazines available in blatant cmyk on the shelves of wh smith. when younger, there was scarely a day passed without yet another variant on the quest for celebrity culture appearing beside the sofa, offering the only interruption to hours of iphone gazing. i wouldn't be at all surprised if the latter had been concentrated on websites concerned with the selfsame celebrities. nowadays, my daughter claims such gossip and trivia is no longer of concern.

in my first year at art college, the walls of the ground floor corridors were hung with monochrome images of movie stars from the forties and fifties pictured smoking cigarettes. such imagery is probably no longer considered politically correct, and it is only in retrospect that i wonder quite what the point of such an exhibition actually was? i do not recall it being of any relevance or influence on the artworks carried out within the college walls.

what it did impart, however, was that these often unidentified movie stars were considered to be influencers on us mere mortals. it's an odd stance to portray, given that the art of delivering lines of script in short bursts while surrounded by camera, lighting and production staff hardly confers any intellectual status. it's quite possible that the original intention of the photographs was simply to associate each star with a particular brand of cigarette, in the likely scenario that ordinary joe soap would do likewise and transform their own fortunes into a verisimilitude of holywood.

and we all know how that turned out.

it would be invidious of me to look down upon such individuals from above, safe in the knowledge that such distant sycophancy could never be one that i would affect myself. in fact, there can be few who have remained immune from the oft-times transformative thoughts of being able to recite epithets uttered by the rich and famous. i cannot deny having searched google for pertinent quotes by drummer buddy rich, to casually repeat in front of my young drum students. the fly in that particular ointment is the fact that almost to a boy and girl, they have no idea who buddy rich was.

statements such as "primarily, the drummer's supposed to sit back there and swing the band." has little relevance to youngsters for whom the concept of 'swinging' is something of a lost cause. and the quote "if you don't have the ability, you'll end up playing in a rock band." probably engenders nothing but confusion, considering playing in a rock band is precisely what most are hoping to do.

however, no matter buddy's influence on drummers of a certain age and musical taste, and a tendency to treat him as something of a percussive demi-god, you and i know that it is only the velocipedinal greats who truly accord with deity worship. take even a cursory look at images from cycling's great heritage, and it's not hard to see the pain and suffering endured by the greats. riding heavy steel bicycles, equipped with componentry far less technologically advanced than the average modern-day leisure cyclist, they often grasped victory by a substantial margin across roads for which tarmac was a forlorn dream. the teamwork often espoused by the likes of 'ineos', 'bahrain-merida' and 'jumbo visma' was often less than fully formed in the days of black and white photography.

but yet despite the external trials and tribulations experienced during competitive careers, the gods of cycling still took the opportunity to benefit mankind with a series of salient expressions. attributed to il campionissimo is the phrase "it's a little like wrestling a gorilla. you don't quit when you're tired, you quit when the gorilla is tired." i cannot report that the two children occupying the croft after school found that particularly enlightening, but they'll learn.

and never a truer word was spoken by eddy when he proclaimed "cyclists live with pain. if you can't live with it, you will win nothing." and i'm pretty sure we can all agree with cav, when he said "it doesn't matter whether it's raining or the sun is shining, or whatever. as long as i am riding a bike, i know i'm the luckiest guy in the world." i fact, i'm sure i've said something remarkably similar myself, though i doubt anyone was listening at the time.

so, where would one find the above words of wisdom and more, always assuming no desire to spend hours of spare time trawling google's inner sanctum? fortunately, possessed very much of our best interests, the northern line once again have our backs and our walls firmly in mind. entitled 'the gods have spoken', the northern line's 2021 calendar features images and quotes from cycling's gods, cleverly superimposed upon walls of the realm (actually doing so is not such a bad idea).

imagine the delight of your workmates throughout the coming year, either in person behind a facemask, or virtually on 'zoom', when, at the beginning of each month, you can regale them with wisdom such as "if you brake, you don't win." (mario cipollini), and "everyone must choose one of two pains. the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret." (peter sagan).

your popularity will soar to heights previously only dreamt of.

the northern line 2021 calendar

tuesday 1 september 2020