

Middle-aged (wo)man in lycra
(Published by the Malay Mail Online 22 Dec 2014 & Maisons Laffitte Cyclo News Jan 2015) I was asked recently what drove a forty-something female to join the racy ranks of the French cycling classes. I didn’t want to have to explain. Only the follow-up email from “USML Cyclotourisme” was too polite to refuse: “Je sais que ton vélo est sur le traineau du Père Noël." “I know that your bike is on Father Christmas’ sledge” (because someone nicked your old one even though it was lo


If walls could talk
(Published on 2 December 2014) I visited an extraordinary building in Paris recently where someone had taken the unusual step of asking its construction workers what they thought and did while assembling the plate glass and acrobatic steel armatures. It was the swanky Louis Vuitton Foundation’s glass ship museum, which President François Hollande called “a miracle of intelligence, creativity and technology,” during its official opening late October. A miracle Los Angeles arch