Keeping the Riff-Rapha out

The sun was out, the air was refreshing, the company was good, the roads were quiet, the cafe was warm and modern, what could spoil the Sunday Club Run? Spoil is probably too strong a word but let's go with the theme for now.

Well, it was this... (points to picture below).

The Velominati have their so-called rules, but there is little which can be applied to the appropriateness of over-priced, over-stated Denim in *my* club run cafe. I am a tolerant man, ask any of my Brompton riding friends**

Crimes against Cycling Exhibit A

Rapha Jeans.

Yes.

That's what I thought.

If you think that I am making a mountain out of a molehill, please never speak to me again, unfriend me from LinkedFace, move to somewhere inside the District and Circle line and sell any bike which is not a fixed gear courier pavement cruiser or Condor fixie.

I'd never actually seen a pair of the offending articles before and as many of you know, I really appreciate the Rapha branding machine for the way it portrays cyclists.

I've often dreamt of being floppy haired fop riding up and down thoroughfares of Clerkenwell on my way to read the iPad version of the Guardian at the local Venezualan Fair Trade Guava and Quince Juice Bar.

But somehow I've never really made the grade.

Having said that, if I turned up in the blue and gold lycra uniform I sport on Sundays I would probably have been mistaken for some form of "Grumpy Super-Hero" tribute act. A cycling club in full flight is probably about the only thing that could rival the Marvel Super-Hero pantheon for the amount of spandex/ lycra/ figure hugging material that is (just about) legal to wear in public. If Brendon Reynolds had turned up in his Argyle patterned overshoes we'd have looked like the militant faction of the Ronnie Corbett Sock Appreciation Society. See Exhibit B.

Exhibit B

So, there is a time and place for all things.  And that is my point. "They" would frown upon "me and my kind" in that London. So it's only fair to adopt an equally "snobbish" stance.

The fact that the Rapha Jeans (Exhibit A) were spotted in Rural Bedfordshire is as incongruous as the above. Cycling is a broad church and we are all brothers and sisters on the road. But the Cafe is sacrosanct. I know can understand the logic of the Countryside Alliance's arguments (although not support it) but let's be clear, the rock cakes, mugs of murky greasy spoon tea, the ability to clear any National Trust restaurant in seconds due to the mud, sweat, general road detritus is a skill which is unique to the cycling club.

We'll leave your Quinoa Salad alone if you can keep off my patch.  Deal?

(**friends may also be too strong a word but they do let me glare at them with a smile on their face now).