bikes and space

The Tour de France is on! And I've figured out what's truly great about it: you need to take nearly a whole day to watch it. Then? Repeat daily for three weeks. While it's on, the GDP of France sinks, because the French are so universally keen that they abandon everything else for the duration. And herein lies the key you can't beat the Tour for giving you space. It is truly relaxing and satisfying to watch, because you have to give yourself permission to do nothing else. There may be a crash or a breakaway any minute - it's just that there's a lot of minutes. Around three or four hundred of them each day. It's like cricket, in that nothing much might happen for a very long time, and yet you're on the edge of your seat in a very mild way pretty much all the time. Just in case it does.

You could quite happily watch the highlights and get the drift and the exciting bits - and lose all the point. That would make it sensible, contained within a practical span of time that doesn't clash with work. Forget football. There's nothing relaxing about its sweaty shoutiness and crappy histrionics, and it lasts a paltry 90 minutes or so. (So I hear - I'm no expert on this.) And it's on at the weekend. That's just bread and circuses. No more than low-grade cathartic release of a week's boredom and frustration. The Tour simply bids au revoir to work altogether for the best part of a month.

Now that, for all the lycra and skinny tyres, is anarchy.