Reasons to be hopeful?

As I cycled through East Oxford with my kids this morning, I began to realise there may be some positives to the present worrying situation. Unrelentingly glum as these times may feel, I did notice that my immediate surroundings were transformed – hugely for the better!

You should have seen the beam on my daughter’s face when I actually agreed to let her ride her bike on the street. She has been campaigning for this for months, but until now I have always said no, as sadly our road does not yet have protected cycle lanes to allow for safe cycling. But today the normally choked route was blissfully free of motor traffic. The noise and menace of lorries, vans and hundreds of single-occupancy cars was gone – we even heard birdsong on Iffley Road!

And when we arrived at school (still open for us key workers at the time of writing), the headteacher was busy taking photographs at the entrance: “We seemed to have solved the problem of dangerous driving and car parking” he remarked wryly.

Not only were the pavements free of people-carriers; the air seemed cleaner too. Whilst that was just an impression, I later read that the National Centre for Atmospheric Science have confirmed that air pollution is falling dramatically across major cities – something that those with respiratory conditions must welcome at a time when they are more vulnerable to the virus.

I am not alone: on my ‘statutory daily exercise’ yesterday I noticed many people out walking and cycling, thankfully all well distanced from each other. This is a cause for celebration, just what we have been trying to encourage people to do to help tackle the country’s obesity crisis – an epidemic every bit as serious as our present concern, and one which will certainly not be getting better by Easter.

Many people are also now working from home, and finding that it can be done and may even have advantages. I’m hopeful that a good proportion of those poor folk who used to sit fuming in their metal boxes near my home every morning and evening won’t go back to doing that. Is it too much to hope that those who can, will continue to work from home at least some of the time? Or start cycling instead of driving, having unexpectedly rediscovered the joys of two wheels?

On a wider note, if we as a country can take rapid and unprecedented actions to overcome our present challenge, then maybe we will take similarly radical steps to tackle our even greater and longer-lasting existential threat, the climate emergency? There are already some optimistic signs, with the government quietly publishing its ‘Decarbonising Transport’ plan last week, whose ambition has been described as “gob smacking”.

Maybe some good will come from these strange times after all. Keep well, and let’s focus on the reasons to be hopeful.

Healthy streets: something we can all agree on?

In current times, we’d be hard pressed not to find ourselves privy to multiple divisive debates. 

In this country, the toxic legacy of the Brexit referendum can appear to have left us with a broken society. We struggle to enter civil conversations about issues that affect us all, such as how to respond to the great existential issue of our time: the climate emergency. We might accept the scientific consensus that man-made climate change is real and urgent, but what we can and should actually do about it – and how quickly – still seems to split families, friends, and communities.

One of our major contributions to the climate crisis is transport; yet here, we are also rife with divisions. We slip easily into unhelpful tribalism based around modes of transport: motorists against bus users; pedestrians versus motorists; everyone against cyclists! I do it myself, often oversimplifying travelling in Oxford as a choice between those selfishly fuming in their congesting metal boxes, versus the clean, green angels flying past on their bikes.

These categories are really unhelpful: many cyclists are also motorists; most train-users also use buses or taxis; and we are all pedestrians! The words themselves can be problematic too: it will always be difficult to promote a ‘pedestrian’ future, when the dictionary definition is: “showing little imagination, not interesting, boring”.

These categories are also silly: why would we define ourselves solely by our mode of transport? I walk the kids to school, ride a bike to work, take the bus to the train station, and hire a car for occasional trips to the countryside. What does that make me?

According to Lucy Saunders, an inspiring and highly experienced public health consultant, finding better words to describe our various travel choices is an important step towards showing respect for different viewpoints, reaching agreement across groups and making much-needed progress. Instead of classifying ourselves (and each other) as pedestrians, drivers, cyclists etc. She suggests we talk about people; people walking, people cycling, people driving cars, people riding on buses. The way we choose to travel does not define us.

Lucy started by researching the health impacts of transport, public space and urban planning. Happily, it turns out that public spaces designed with improving people’s health in mind, also create city streets that are – quite simply – nice places to be in; places that foster social interaction, economic vibrancy and environmental sustainability.

What’s more, she has developed ten clearly defined and measurable indicators about the health of our streets, which may just be the holy grail we’ve been looking for: impossible to argue with! After all, who doesn’t want streets that are easy to cross, have shade and shelter, places to stop and rest, are not too noisy, and where people choose to walk and cycle? Is there anyone who would protest against streets with clean air, where people have things to see and do, and everyone feels safe, relaxed, and welcome?

‘Healthy and attractive streets for all’: this is the ambition. Surely that’s something we can all agree on?

Can 1,400 Facebook likes get more people cycling in Oxford?

The Cyclox Facebook page has over 1,400 likes. Together with our Twitter profile that now exceeds 1,700 followers. Oxford’s ‘voice of cycling’ social media presence is really taking off!

Compared to other cycling campaigns, we are certainly doing pretty well: of 108 campaign groups in the UK, Cyclox ranks fourth in terms of social media following, behind the huge London cycling campaign, and those in the much bigger cities of Leeds and Edinburgh. In fact, in a thinly-veiled attempt to manipulate the data, we calculated that on a ‘likes per head of population’, Cyclox comes well ahead of any cycling campaign in the country!  

However, maybe none of the cycling campaigns are doing very well: certainly we have a long way to go to catch up with the Oxford Mail (37,428), Oxford University (3,706,134), or even Cristiano Ronaldo (120,916,519).

But does any of this matter? How exactly could clicking on social media help achieve the strategic aim of Cyclox, which is to get more people in and around Oxford cycling, more safely and more often?

One way is that social media could help us persuade decision-makers (such as the County Council, our local transport authority) and the voting public to actively support safe cycling in Oxford. 

Local councillors tell us that they really do listen to issues raised by constituents – face to face conversations and direct mails about specific issues are particularly helpful.  However, in this digital age, engagement through social media is another powerful way to demonstrate to our elected politicians that they have strong and broad backing when then support cycling.

The public are also likely to hear about Cyclox through Facebook and Twitter.  People may stumble across us through a random post and may then get involved by responding to consultations, coming to our events, helping with stalls and perhaps even becoming a champion, or committee member. Of course, we hope they will join Cyclox: as well as needing the modest annual subscription to fund our campaigns and pay a part-time coordinator, this gives us another number to celebrate, the legitimacy of having over 500 paying members. 

Although it’s not just about the numbers; recent discussion in social media circles has suggested that ‘engagement’ is a better measure than ‘likes’. Certainly, the discussions, debates, even occasional arguments on the Cyclox Facebook and Twitter pages go well beyond just liking, or retweeting.

Whilst engagement is great, it’s much, much harder to measure, especially for small, volunteer-run campaigns like Cyclox.  So, for now at least, even if it’s the only thing you can do to support us, please like our Facebook page and follow us on Twitter – it really does help up us spread the word!

Cash needed to realise our vision

Just imagine:  you leave your house to cycle into Oxford, and are quickly channeled to a fully-protected cycle superhighway.  It's amazing - wide and well-paved, there's not a pothole in sight.

As you glide into town past the ‘Welcome to Oxford – Europe’s cycling city’ sign, you admire the design, a continuous, protected bike lane with careful routing behind bus stops and priority over side streets and at roundabouts.

And when you arrive to the safety, calmness and clean air of the motor-free city centre, there are ample options to park your bike right next to your destination, trailer and all.

It’s not impossible: all it will take is some political will… and panniers of cash!

And there’s the rub – with austerity in full swing, our roads in ‘managed decline’ and children’s centres closing, where is the extra money going to come from to transform Oxford into a cycling city?

Well, a good start would be the county council, as highways authority, committing to spending a percentage – how about 20 per cent? – of its £57m annual transport budget on cycling infrastructure.

And the council also runs public health, which should surely be investing in cycling, which a former chief medical officer called “a miracle cure”. Remember, a 2016 Highways England report said that Danish levels of cycling in the UK would save the NHS £17bn over 20 years.

Government could help too: the Department of Transport could put far more emphasis on active travel, beyond the limited budget and vision of the likes of the Cycle City Ambition and Local Sustainable Transport funds. And does Oxford get any of the £12m a year available to local bodies in England for Bikeability cycle training? Or the £100m of ring-fenced funding for cycling schemes from Highways England?

In fact, does anyone even know how much is actually spend per person on cycling in Oxford? The Government claims it’s presently over £10 per person per year following Cycle City Ambition Fund investment. However, such figures tend to conflate both local and national spending, and do not indicate long-term funding commitments. Compare the Dutch city of Groningen, which will spend £77 per head on cycling in each of the next five years.

Yet there is hope!

Robin Tucker, who chairs Oxfordshire Cycle Network, agrees that there is virtually no independent capital now, but he hopes that funding could materialise from a combination of national bids, developer funding, and smart use of the maintenance budget.  And he should know: Robin is also on the transport committee of the Local Enterprise Partnership.

He will speak at a free, open meeting organised by Cyclox on Tuesday, March 31, at 7.30pm at St Michael’s at the Northgate to tell us more. It should be a fascinating insight into the ‘wheels within wheels’ of political decision-making. Hopefully he will offer hope that there really is money if we know where to look for it.

The best books for 3 year olds?

When my journey as a dad started, my reading came to an end.

No more drifting off with Julian Barnes, relaxing Sundays with Alain de Botton, or bathroom appointments with the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency.

Baby books were no substitute – if I have to read another Maisy Shops Online or That’s Not My Bloody Badger book I'll pen my own obituary.

But now baby has become toddler, amazingly, books are back!  They are different to adult novels: shorter, simpler, and illustrated.  Pictures are particularly important - it only dawned on me recently that whilst I look at the words, my daughter focuses exclusively on the illustrations - and at best these don’t just reflect the text, but add to or contrast with it.

Here are the top 10 gems I’ve discovered so far:

10. I Love You Little Monster:  Giles Andreae may be better known for Giraffe’s Can’t Dance, and this one verges on smoltz, but still gets me every time. “So when you get knocked down, my sweetheart / Look up at the sky without fear / For sometimes we need to be flat on our backs / Before starlight begins to appear.” Can any parent read this to their toddler and remain unmoved?

9. Billy’s Bucket:  this simple, imaginative story from Kes Gray / Garry Parsons has both father and daughter chortling, whilst gently reminding us that adults rarely know best.

8. The Hill And The Rock:  David McKee is famous for Elmer the elephant, but I find the stories rarely match the quality of the pictures.   This, on the other hand, couples his trademark comic-book style with a brilliantly quirky moral tale of making the best of what we have.

7. Hairy Maclary:  Lynley Dodd creates simple and amusing tales and illustrations for cats like Slinkly Malinky and dogs like Schnitzel von Krumm.  She is also rare as a children’s author who can actually rhyme and scan, making these great read-out-loud favourites.

6. The Incredible Book-Eating Boy:  Oliver Jeffers’ Lost And Found is a classic, but the brilliant illustration and the cracking ending for this make it my favourite from his impressive output.

5. Kicking a Ball!:  Janet & Alan Ahlberg hog much of our shelf space:  Peepo! and The Baby Catalogue were early favourites, and Eat Peach Pear Plum should replace all nursery rhymes, which to me range from the merely inappropriate to the deeply unpleasant.  But as I’m trying to indoctrinate my daughter to love the beautiful game, I’ll just keep saying "Kicking a ball, kicking a ball, that's surely the purpose of life, after all".

4. Princess Smartypants:  funny, brightly-illustrated, and with a punchy message for my strong, independent daughter - Babette Cole will be missed.

3. A Bit Lost:  few words and a simple ‘are you my mummy?’ story, but Chris Haughton’s cracking and distinctive design makes this a pleasure to read over and over.

2. Paper Dolls:  Julia Donaldson is popular for a reason – she is wonderful.  I could include any number of her superbly-told, uplifting tales – Toddle Waddle was the first book my daughter could quote; Charlie Cook and Tyrannosaurus Drip are recent favourites.  This is no exception, with her faultless rhyme and scan, here with a particular deftness and a lovely ending.

1. Journey:  here’s a find.  No words at all, just super illustrations and a cracking story.  If you haven’t discovered it yet, get it!

Of course, there are bags of badly-rhyming, poorly-scanning rubbish, written in the mistaken belief that having the language skills of a 3 year old is a qualification to be a children’s author.  Writing for kids is different, but – as with music, theatre or films – it’s every bit as hard to do well.

But I’m happy to say there are plenty of great books for toddlers.  I’m not happy to leave out classics like Where The Wild Things Are or The Train Ride, or more recent favourites like Shark In The Park, Supertato, or How To Hide A Lion.  

And with lovely friends and family lending and giving us books, bargains a-plenty in local charity shops, and our criminally-underrated public libraries, I hope and expect to fully revise this list by the time I’m reading to my baby son.

Work to restore city to its role as cycling capital

Dear newly-elected councillor - first of all, congratulations!  Being a local politician is a pretty thankless task.  Budgets are tighter and demands greater.  The district/county split is confusing and unhelpful.  We understand that - and we'd like to work with you.

Let’s talk about cycling. You know the stuff about how great it is for economic growth, health, inclusion, clean air, carbon reduction… (if not, stop reading now and check out the Cycletopia vision on the home page of Cyclox).

So the question is, how can we actually improve things in practice, in your ward, on the streets by your house, for the people who voted for you (and those you want to vote for you next time)?

Segregated cycle routes are top of my personal list. I just want a reasonable share of the road, enough for me and my little daughter to cycle safely to the nursery or the shops without being scared of motor traffic. These routes really help people who are too nervous to cycle in traffic to take up cycling, boosting health, reducing congestion and improving our environment.

Both you and I will spend a lot of time on planning consultations. Please push a little harder on each one to ensure that people can get to new houses, stations and shopping centres, on foot or by bike safely and easily.

Funding is critical: the Department for Transport says that 'for every £1 of public money spent, the funded (cycling infrastructure) schemes provide £5.50 worth of social benefit'.

So please lobby for more cycling infrastructure. And can you start now by ensuring that, of the money already at your disposal – however squeezed it is – more of it goes towards cycling?

Maintaining our existing roads and paths is also vital. It would be lovely if every route were smooth as a cucumber! But at least could you make sure the worst craters (pot holes) in your area are repaired promptly and durably?

One of the great things about cycling is avoiding the stress and cost of parking a car. We just need some modest investment – and your political will – to make bike parking better. Perhaps you could commit to installing even just a couple of new bike stands in the most useful location in your ward?

 As well as all this practical stuff, feel free to think big! What can you personally do to help restore Oxford as the cycling capital of the country?

In fairness, you could request something back. The likes of Cyclox can and will do more to reach out to you as a politician, to better understand your needs and challenges. Our first politicians’ bike ride takes place next month – come along, and you can tell us in person how we can help you.

Congratulations again. You now have the opportunity make a real difference for the people of your ward – and we want to work with you to achieve that. Now, please, let’s talk!

Home birth - for dads

It’s the most amazing experience of any dad’s life: when the woman we love gives birth; the moment we guide our first-born into the world; our transformation from man to father.

And the setting for this momentous event?

In this country, we are still nearly always surrounded by health professionals not friends, in the bleached blandness of a hospital ward rather than the familiar comfort of home.

Happily, Katja had other ideas.  She wanted a home birth, to keep things as normal as possible.  I’d heard mums (and dads) tend to be more satisfied with birth at home, and was comforted by anecdotes from colleagues and the reassuringly ordinary NCT homebirth group.

There may also have been a desire to avoid the delivery suite where she works.  She would have had great care, but there are some things even clinicians prefer not to share with colleagues…

The truth is that I basically went along with her wishes.  Though it helped that we live a couple of kilometres down the hill from the John Radcliffe.  Having said that, I’ve worked in plenty of hospitals, and generally they are best avoided unless you are ill (which Katja wasn’t).  I decided to do a bit of swatting up myself.

In short, for some women a hospital is completely appropriate: for high-risk pregnancies or complicated labours where there’s a danger to mother or child, a delivery suite with the dedicated staff and equipment is absolutely where birth should be.

But, whilst the definition is a little vague, most pregnancies are not high-risk.  In fact, many of the women who give birth in hospital delivery suites are not high risk.  Thankfully, everyone agreed Katja’s risk was low.

And then, just a couple of weeks before our birth, NICE revised its guidance on place of birth.  In light of new evidence that the rate of interventions is lower, and the outcome for the baby is no different, they concluded that many more women, including first time mums, should give birth at home or in midwife-led units.

If there had been any lingering doubts (there weren’t), the hateful Daily Mail’s response dispelled them:  the NHS, it thundered, “with maternity wards experiencing the highest birth rate in years thanks, in part, to immigration, is exploiting the concerns of paranoid middle-class mothers to save cash”.  I’m not sure if they saw my immigrant midwife wife as part of the problem or the solution (and she’s German too, which apparently is ‘different’ to Romanian).  Anyway, that did it:  home birth it was!

So how was it for this dad?

For me at least, it really helped that this was our home, our territory; women are meant to be offered choice whatever the setting, but it’s so much easier to have home advantage:  it helps football teams, it’s well known in business negotiations – and it applies to birth too.

In practice this meant there was minimal intervention.  The midwives were great, keeping back most of the time, with just the occasional check of baby’s heart rate – yet were attentive and quietly efficient when needed.

Once labour was fully underway, we began our pain relief starter menu:  lashings of squatting and swaying, a sprinkling of paracetamol, bathed in relaxing hypnobirth music – a good beginning.  We progressed to a main course of TENS machine accompanied by frequent glugs of gas and air (Katja claims neither were necessary, but she nearly belted me when I suggested taking them away!). 

Interestingly, for us the best relief came from the simplest sources.  Wrapped around Katja’s waist, the heatpack really helped, so I was kept busy topping it up in the microwave.  And the pool was great, though filling it with two and a half baths worth of 37 degree womb-temperature water stretched both our ageing boiler and my wits – in itself justifying the reassuring presence of Donna our doula!

Labour lasted eleven hours, and I was also kept busy bringing cold coconut water for Katja (and catching it in the bowl when she threw it all up!).  My back massages appeared to help, thought I knew when to stop as my hands were unceremoniously brushed away.  And my encouragement to breathe seemed to work, though after a few hours I was boring even myself (and irritating Katja, who informed me we’d now entered the pushing stage!). 

Overall it was great:  rather than stressing about when to go to hospital, I spent much of the labour with the cat on my lap next to the pool!  But it wasn’t all relaxation for dad – my biggest challenge of all was to repeatedly change the music as Venga Boys kept creeping onto the playlist...

Only occasionally did I did get a bit wobbly:  as the baby approached, Katja asked the midwife to cut through the remaining membranes with a rusty coathanger (in my mind – actually a perfectly sterile and expertly-applied ‘amni-hook’).  Then the head appeared but quickly decided to go back inside; and moments later the calming blue water turned a worrying red.  A glance from our kindly doula and a quiet word from the chilled midwives reassured me all was well. 

After hours of labour, the moment of birth happened quickly, and was wonderful.  Baby emerged with her hand by her face (‘waving’), so needed a gentle nudge from the midwife, who then guided her into Katja’s hands – so it was proud new mum herself who lifted our baby from the water; what a special moment. 

Suddenly, after nine months of patting a bump, I was holding my pink, gurgling, bright-eyed daughter.  I’ve no idea where her long dark hair comes from, but her eyebrows and frown looked dad-like to me, and I was predictably smitten.

That wasn’t quite the end of it.  After a while to get all the goodness, we clamped the cord and I was allowed to ceremonially snip (hack) it apart.  She weighed in at a hefty 4kg, making me even more respectful of her amazing mum – who at that moment was quietly delivering the placenta on the sofa!  Baby’s waving on entry had left mum with a bit of a tear, so the no-nonsense midwives quickly stitched her up on the kitchen table – how cool is that?

So as dawn approached, and after a celebratory sip of champagne with our doula and the midwives, we were left alone – tired, delighted, holding our beautiful, healthy baby girl – and happily in our own home.