[tape begins]

Q: We've got to stop meeting like this.

A: Past as prologue.

Q: So you admit you haven't learned your lesson?

A: Why did the admin cross the road?

Q: Why indeed?

A: I crossed the road, it would appear, to tilt at yet more windmills.

Q: So why bother? Are you dense?

A: I am resilient.

Q: Yes. But are you dense?

A: Scientists have yet to catalogue all my properties. I revisited the Cycling Plus forum, now subsumed into the BikeRadar megalith, to make a point.

Q: Which is?

A: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Q: Come again?

A: One has but to follow it's a small world after all to see that the direction it was taking was a foregone conclusion. The usual suspects played their parts flawlessly. Plaudits especially to OL2 (I think it was), who persevered in his role as 'mindless attack dog #1'.

Q: That thread has been locked, with attack-dog posts deleted.

A: Has it? [checks] What do you know, it has. That's a first for me.

Q: Were you aware there is now a companion thread?

A: There would be. I can't be bothered to read it.

Q: Afraid?

A: If I was afraid I wouldn't have flown into the death star in the first place. No, I can't be bothered because a) I already know what's going to be written, and b) I've got better things to do.

Q: Better things than to "make a point", as you put it?

A: That quote was taken out of context.

Q: You'd better be joking.

A: I'm joking.

Anybody who actually absorbs what I wrote will see that it bears little resemblance to what some of my reviewers seem to have read. Perhaps they're attempting to read between lines in search of something which isn't there. What they're actually doing is seeing it through blood-tinted spectacles.

I think what really got a few people into a goat-sacrificing mood was my comment that the old C+ forum was "nothing special". Clearly I was wrong. It was special needs.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: They know not what they do or say. The hardcore rank and file who frequented the non-cycling boards, that is. Never mind the antisamitics, who obviously like a good blood feud. Most of them seem to relish dishing it out but are less tolerant at taking it.

Q: Weren't you being a little thoughtless yourself, pouring salt into an open wound?

A: If there's one thing I can't be accused of, it's not putting thought into my words and actions. acf is a castle of thought mortared by the - sorry, I'm already lost in metaphor. As for salting wounds, again, read what I wrote. I challenge anyone to identify actual animus. Must we forever tiptoe around the corpse?

Q: You speak of a "blood feud". Who are the antagonists?

A: On one side you have me, and I am generally one of your less hostile types, as the record will show. On the other side you have Chuffy a.k.a. Aunty Rubbish a.k.a. Evilchuffy; Ravenbait; Gavin; and a supporting cast of lesser characters, some of whom are members of acf and partake of my hospitality.

On reading Chuffy's latest outbursts I felt a little like Sally Field accepting her Oscar for Places in the Heart: "The first time I didn't feel it but this time I feel it and I can't deny the fact you hate me. Right now, you hate me!" [Wipes theatrical tear from eye]

Q: What's the history there?

A: Aunty Chuffy and I met back in the mists of C+F time, when I was writing for Cycling Plus magazine. As I believe you'll learn if you read the transcripts of your own interview tapes, he first came to my attention as a literary critic. While this was not exactly endearing, it was of little importance in the grand scheme of things. Later, after I'd started acf, he turned up on my doorstep disguised as a mirthless imp hauling a chip in his burley trailer that was too large to fit on his shoulder. I believe he thinks I was mortally wounded by his pronouncement in his inaugural sig that I'm "not funny". I've got news for the master projectionist: I never claimed to be funny. His obvious disenchantment with the forum lead to the not unreasonable conclusion that there was no future in a relationship; and so he was shown the door. Since then he's taken to stalking me, even going so far as to brag that he lurks on acf using yet another pseudonymous account.

Ravenbait is a more complex figure. She is clearly intelligent, but just as clearly, unable to look my way without a red mist forming over her vision. She appears unable to forgive me for running a successful forum which counts amongst its members some of her friends, and has been demonstrably incapable of moving on, protestations to the contrary. At least that's what the Chronicles tell me.

My take on Gavin is that he never accepted his booking in the Hotel, though there may be more to it than that. He holds probably the most extreme opinion, and was even rumoured at one point to have been considering a lawsuit.

What my detractors fail to realise is the feeling isn't mutual. I don't care what they think about me as a person or as an administrator. What is annoying is the disinformation campaign they seem hell bent on perpetuating. It would be enough to annoy anybody. (The cure is to write it out of my system, like so.) None of us has dibs on the truth. Some of us, however, have more believable character witnesses.

Q: Little speech over? Why dredge up ancient history?

A: "You have to know the past to understand the present." That was the late great Carl Sagan, ladies and gentlemen.

[tape ends]