This turned into an even longer essay than expected, and whilst it’s a personal narrative about cycling, the important part is: I’m riding RideLondon 100 for charity, you can find a link to the details – and the fundraising – at the end. But first, an essay about riding bikes.

Since moving to London, I had kept cycling down to the odd hirebike ride. The roads all seemed a bit hectic; the idea of commuting on a bike, half-awake, never appealed; when I didn’t drive, getting a mountain bike somewhere mountain-bike-worthy was challenging. And I liked walking anyway.

That first 2020 lockdown, barely leaving the radius of our house on foot, suggested that perhaps I could revisit that decision. So I grabbed my old bike from home – bought from eBay back in the very early 2000s. The tyres were flat, the grips had perished, and I didn’t really trust any of the cables.

I set about refurbishing it, learning how to cable a bike, re-index gears, and so forth. That was pretty satisfying. Then I took it for some rides. What I learned was:

• I rather enjoyed riding bikes
• this bike was definitely too small
• and, whilst we’re at it, the wrong kind of bike

I bought a different bike that winter. Something more suitable for the road, drop handlebars, appropriate tyres, sensible price. And I started riding it.

I started riding circles: 11 or 12km down the back roads to Greenwich, out to see the river, and back through Lewisham; out to nearby parks. I had not ridden in years, never in this area of London, never mind on drop bars. Lots to get used to. And I did, so the circle got larger: I found a 20-something kilometre circuit out through Greenwich, through the tunnel, and over to the cablecar, before heading back along the Thames path. And then I started heading south.

South takes you out to Kent – to The Lanes, as a south London cyclist might say. First, out to Keston and back through Bromley, beginning to see glimpses of green, other cyclists waving as they pass. I started doing 30-35km loops, coming home quite tired. I described the bike as “the bike that £20 built” – every now and then, a canny £20 in the classifieds would adjust or add to it – a new saddle, a longer stem, some pedals from a friend, some cleated shoes from a chap down the road selling up, a old winter jacket from an audaxer. I keep turning the pedals.

(I am doing this in the cold: I have managed to scrabble together enough kit (thank you, leg-warmers, thank you, thick winter jacket) that it’s not too noticeable, but later on, people would express surprise that I really started getting into cycling over a cold winter. What can I say: rain is rubbish, but cold I can put up with. It was just good to be out.)

Not entirely expectedly, I discover I am really enjoying riding – even more than I thought I would, when I decided it was time for a bike that fitted. It is time away from screens, away from work, and requires enough of my brain that I can’t daydream. I pedal, I breathe, I look around me. I keep wanting to go further. At this point, I wonder about cycling with other people. Everybody I know who cycles is much fitter, rides much further, but maybe I could chip away at this. I know of a local club that seems friendly; their low-end ride is around 60k. Maybe I could build up to that? If I can get myself to 50k, it’s time to sign up, I tell myself.

I keep pedalling.

There’s a moment I really remember, from spring 2021, when I’m on something like a 40k route I’ve plotted out. It’s my first time really heading for the Kentish lanes, out up Layham’s and up to Skid Hill. The further up Layham’s you ride, the greener it gets. I love that within an hour from home, under my own steam, I’m hitting something I’d recognisably call “countryside”. Cross the Croydon Road, pedal up Skid Hill Lane, dodging the flytipping, and you get to a right-angled corner. Everyone who’s ridden it knows the 90º right-hander. It looks out over a valley, a dip between two hills. Later, I will learn to love the combination of Hesier’s and Beddlestead lanes that joins the hills more directly, a fast, sharp descent into a just-right climb. But for now, I’m looking through a gap in the hedge, and I’m not in London. Rolling fields, lines of trees at the top, open skies. Nothing but Outdoors. And it’s invigorating: I came here on my own steam, this is the reward. My heart leapt a little.

I’ve now ridden that corner umpteen times, and not much leaps any more, but I always enjoy the view; I always enjoy the sensation that I am Somewhere Else, and I will return home later. Similar views still lead to similar heartleaps, though: east Kent lanes surrounded by rapeseed; flying down through rows of heather; sweeping down Star Hill, the mist sitting on fields full of haybales; a first glimpse of the sea; and always, the end of a long ride coming into sight.

I keep pedalling. I hit a 51k route, and sign up for a social ride with London Velo. (I found them via Tobias, and much of what follows comes, perhaps, down to someone I know once deciding to ride with such a nice bunch of folks.)

Riding in a group is, as expected, fun: less for the aerodynamic benefits, more for the company, people whose main thing in common is that they want to be out on a bike on a Sunday morning. There’s chatter, about what we’re doing, what we’re seeing; notes of support as we rifle down gears to grind up hills; the chatter dims as the climbs rack up; but always, there’s friendly faces waiting at the top.

(“Where do you go?” people often ask when we’re out, and I tend to say: “in a circle!” “What do you mean?” “Well, we’re coming back here. It’s just the circle is 60km long.” I am still riding circles.)

My first ride, I find myself beginning to bonk on a hill I will later come to dislike – steep, ugly, in the way of getting home – near St Mary Cray. Another rider is near the back, and they drop down to my pace, grinding up with me. I feel useless, and yet I feel supported. Nobody cares; the point is we all get home together, that we did the thing together. That afternoon, I am a wreck: I spend it on the sofa, overwhelmed with tiredness.

I learn that I need to manage nutrition better through rides. Keep eating, that’s the main trick.

Another week, another hill, and I’m grinding up at the back. There is something I begin to refer to as a Pushing Incident. I get to the top, and apologise profusely, and am reminded that nobody minds.

Our rides are “no-drop”: that means, if we get spread out, because some people are faster than others, we wait for everybody. Usually, this is the top of a hill. Staying together on the flat is fine, descents aren’t an effort to catch up on, or to take a little slower if you’re outpacing others, but it’s hard to climb slower than you’d like; you have to do a hill at your own pace. And so we wait, because we’ve agreed we will.

This aspect of group sport – doing a thing together, collaboratively – is new for me. I reach the top, and apologise, and nobody minds, but something in me doesn’t believe them. It takes me a little while to realise this is an idea rooted in my head: I am not an athlete; I am the out-of-breath kid at the back of cross-country.

(Cross-country is a muddy, outdoors kind of running. In more adventurous terrains, it is something like fell-running. But when you’re 11, it’s a thing to be done in PE class, that takes a winding path around the school grounds and often outside, requires no equipment, no track, no indoors. We do it in the winter and spring months, and I only ever remember it in the damp. It is awful. I dislike running, I dislike the stitch I get. I am certainly not fit, and at that point in my life, I am highly disinterested in the physical. I am at the back, I don’t see how to get nearer the front, and I’d rather talk to my friends, because I’m definitely, definitely bored.)

No. I am not at the back of cross-country, nor am I bored. I am a man, almost in his forties, out doing something for fun with like-minded adults. When we say “no-drop”, we mean it. Everyone was at the back at some point. When you go up a ride tier, you will be at the back of a faster ride.

It will take me many rides to fully internalise this, that there is no Back, that some of us are slower up hills because we’re heavier, some because we’re recovering from injury, some because we’re taking it easy. The point, for me at least, is getting there – and getting there together.

(I will also begin to change my perspective on what it means to Be Athletic. Or rather, what I’m slowly changing my perspective on is Having A Body. My mental image of myself is so often a “brain in a jar” – I think, I type, I’m good at being smart, I have some dangly arms and legs attached. What will happen in the next eighteen months is that I begin to like having a body, as well. I begin to extend beyond the jar.)

“After two rides, we ask that you join the club“, but it’s a no-brainer, of course I’ll join the club. Every other week, new company, new routes, new people to meet, a way out of the house and lockdown.

The club have a day ride one weekend to Whitstable. A hundred kilometres. Far too far. I decline. Stick to the 60s.

Slowly, I get faster. The data says so. The secondhand cycle computer is saving my data, and I’m throwing it all into Strava (because That’s What You Do). Not for the likes, for the socials; just to see how I’m doing. It’s for me. Besides, everyone else I know on it is so much faster, going so much further. Months later, a friend will share a long ride in Scotland, and I will cheer them on; they point out – and I paraphrase – that whilst nobody wants to hear your Strava Boasts, Strava Pride is different. Sharing pride is important. Look at this, you say, I did this, me.

Months later, another ride. I chat to someone who’s coming out for the first time, grinding up a hill. As I pull away a bit later, I point out that there is no Back, we’ll be waiting, and there’s nothing to apologise about. I should know. I remember the friendly faces who pushed me on when I had no idea what has happening, and I am pleased that I can offer support to someone I recognise.

(Next year, she will pull away from me at the end of a long ride, having been more dutiful on the turbo than I. And: we are both going far faster than on the ride I am describing in the previous sentences.)

I keep pedalling, and pedalling further. The summer ‘22 season hits and I’m on regular 80km+ rides with the club… and it feels fine. I’m at the back of a slightly faster group. Each week, I can’t wait to get out: to feel the wind, to feel the snicker-snack of the drivetrain, to see new sights, to see how far my body can take me. I’m enjoying getting a little faster, but I enjoy going new places, going further, much more. Distance, places, are the things beginning to appeal.

One day, I decide to ride 100km to the sea; it is no longer too far. It is slower than planned owing to a brutal headwind, but I roll through Rochester, out to the marshes, past Sheppey and up to Thanet, and there’s a tickle of adventure.

After 12 months on the starter bike, I buy a new one, ending up with something both more capable and flexible. It’s taken me on off-road trails in the New Forest – a real delight – and, with a quick change of wheels, back on to the lanes and roads of the south east. It is magical: a spot-on drivetrain, brakes with remarkable modulation, a frame that supports and cushions. I regularly wonder if it is “too good” for me, as if there is an upper bound on the quality of sporting goods I am allowed – as if I am not ‘good enough’ for it. I wonder where this peculiar kind of guilt comes from. I have already ridden it nearly as far in five months as I did in a year on the starter bike.

The first bike, that I fixed up that lockdown summer, is given a new home. I take it to the Bike Project, a charity based up the road in Deptford. They give bikes to refugees new to the UK: getting around a new country, when you have very little money, and a lot of places to be, is hard. A bike (and lock and helmet) makes that easier. So Bike Project give people bikes; they also refurbish and sell used bikes, in order to raise money for charity.

A week later, they email to tell me they have sold my bike for exactly what I paid for it on eBay, in 2002. Good. Someone else can use it, enjoy it, and maybe more people can benefit from the funds it raises.

In about three weeks from now, I’m going to take part in the longest ride I’ll have ever done: RideLondon 100, covering 100 miles – 162km – from central London, out to Essex, and back. (Really, that’s why I rode to the coast: part of the training plan). I am largely, but not entirely, looking forward to it. This is the deeply, deeply buried lede of the essay.

A lot of friends and clubmembers are riding; I’ll be in good company, and am looking forward to seeing everyone out there. I chose to do it as both a challenge – further than I’ve ever ridden by a good deal – but also as a bit of a luxury: a day out on entirely closed roads, in the summer! When I signed up, 160km still felt a long way off. It still feels a long way; I am hoping that company and adrenalin will carry me over the line.

I’m going to be 40 this year, and whilst I’m glad I’ve made peace with my corporality at this point in life… I’m also aware that the time in my life to embrace that physicality is probably shrinking rather than growing. My knees certainly remind me of this.

So in the meantime, I will ride. There has been something like a training plan – some longer rides, some interval work – and I’m hoping it pays off. I certainly am fitter than I’ve been in my life. It feels a long way from 11k loops to Greenwich.

London Velo – my club – is a Deptford club, and so we’re raising money for a Deptford charity: The Bike Project. The club as a whole has a fundraising page, and, if you feel like supporting us on our ride, you can do so there. Bike Project would appreciate it, especially in a time when it’s harder than ever to be a refugee in this country. I will appreciate your support for them, when I’m somewhere in Essex, and the thing I need to do is keep turning the pedals.

I’m excited for it, though. It turns out, that November, that buying a bike was a very good idea. Not just for my body – though I’m enjoying that new relationship – but also for my brain. Well done, past me.

I finished my rewatch of (all of) Halt and Catch Fire. I blame Robin for the push. And now, rather than just emailing my three friends who definitely care, I’m writing about it online.

Halt is one of my favourite TV shows. It took me a while to realise this, the first time around: I think I actually knew that for sure around season 3 (of 4). The final season is definitely my favourite final year of a show ever.

And here’s the thing, really, I just wanted to watch season 4 again. But season 4 doesn’t taste so good without the build-up to it. Really, I was signing up to go on a journey: I wanted to ride the rollercoaster again, and I wanted the end of season four to hurt in all the ways it does, to heal in all the ways it does. I wanted to rebuild my relationships with these characters precisely to feel a specific moment of grief in all the right ways.

(That moment landed, just as well as the first time, and everything else – the joy, the kindness, the friendship, the delight of watching reconciliation – landed too).

It’s a funny show. It starts out… quite badly, wanting to tell one particular story, and the moment it starts swerving away from that, it becomes more interesting. That point isn’t the beginning of season 2, incidentally: it’s easy to hate on the messy first season, but rewatching it, it confirmed that it course-corrects fast and hard. Once Donna is brought up in the mix around S1E4 it starts showing hints of what it’ll be, and the last few episodes of season 1 – pretty much once Donna says “I’m coming with you,” and the gang drives to COMDEX, are it taking flight. The rewatch definitely confirmed you cannot pull the “Parks And Rec Manouevre” (“just start with S2”) with this show.

But: it definitely improves, and it is one of the most impressive instances of a show seemingly deciding that it wasn’t working, changing everything up, and that actually working. What worked was, of course, the ensemble. What didn’t work was The Joe MacMillan Show. But Joe is a great character – maddening, obnoxious, and then at key times, not. So his role shifts up, and new characters get the spotlight in S2 – and that shift of focus keeps happening. Throughout the run, the structure of the show and the roles played by the same characters are constantly rejigged: who has power? Who wants it? Who is satisfied? Who is unfulfilled?

It’s easy to comment on how successfully the show reinvented itself. I think, though, that the way that also happens diegetically is perhaps my favourite thing about the show.

More plainly: Halt and Catch Fire is one of my favourite dramatic depictions of change.

Drama is largely about conflict and tension, and how that can be resolved: successfully for all, or with winners and losers. Characters change (or they don’t) in order to get what they want. But Halt does something more interesting: characters also change because life happens, and it changes them. It plays out over about 12 years, and one of my favourite things in the show is how the characters age, how they escape their old loops, how they become more themselves, and where they end up.

I get a little bit teary watching the Joe of the beginning of season 4: broken by so many things that have happened, smaller and subdued. But, quickly, it becomes clear that in some ways, he is happier and healthier. Watching him finally find ways to be happy but not at the expense of others; watching him work out how to be kind (and also watching others finally trust him, having understandably not trusted him for so long); watching his relationship with Haley, is a delight.

There’s a mirror to that in Cameron, too, who – once she escapes the lazy writing of the early episodes – takes off as a character. Cameron drives me absolutely spare for much of the show, and this is why I like the character; she is brilliant and frustrating, and the point of her character is that she cannot be one without the other. She drives me mad, and I love her nonetheless. I like seeing her win, feel for her many vulnerabilities, and hate seeing her hurt. She’s wrong (practically, but not ideologically), I think, about the inevitably terrible IPO, but I never forget Mackenzie Davies’ guttural scream when she’s voted down, and thus out of her own company. I never stopped hating that she had to feel that way.

The common thread for all the four leads is how terrible and unhealthy their relationships can be, and how much work it takes for them to even understand this, before they fix it. They think they can fix it through divorce, or estrangement, or destruction; what it takes is grief, and forgiveness, and acceptance, and time.

I rewatched because I wanted to watch the knot come undone, and then watch the characters tie it back together again. There is an unnameable pleasure in watching Joe work out how to be friends with Gordon, how deep his love for his business partner ultimately runs, after years of working together unhealthily. I love watching Cameron work out that she actually really likes Gordon as a pal when they don’t work together. I love that Cameron learns how to have the solitude and independence she knows she requires but also how not to push friends away. And I love that these are not things they earned through the twists of a few weeks that return them to where they began, but changed; I love that these are all-consuming changes, that take years to land. At the end of S4E10, it feels like so many of them are finally beginning.

And of course: it’s notable that their personal relationships reflect their work. Sat with me as I watched the end, my partner – who hasn’t really seen the show – asked if Comet was going to be another failure. And I said: “sort of, through no fault of its own. And Comet isn’t even the most successful company anybody runs during the series, or the best idea, really – but it is the healthiest, and that feels worth something“. Joe and Gordon make a place that really does work, for them, and everyone inside it, and they both learn that that perhaps beats being first, or best, or richest.

(Incidentally: I really like how the show manages to make its characters look ahead of their time and still fail. They exist in our world, but the reason you’ve never heard of them is they got beaten to the punch. All that drama in S1 trying to build a computer for the masses, a computer with personality, and getting it almost right, is neatly undercut by the moment Joe sees a pre-release Macintosh at COMDEX, and Lee Pace just sells a man seeing the thing he’s been talking about for so long made flesh, made better than he could ever have conceived, and made by somebody else.)

I’d never have put money on Halt being the show that made me feel these ways back in the dark days of a first watch of S1. Some shows are comfort-viewing because they’re about people who ultimately, feel like friends; they are nice to be with, they reassure you, any threat is short-lived. Halt is a deeper comfort, that is not always comfortable: the comfort of family. Family (the ones you have, the ones you choose, it doesn’t matter) are not always perfect, conflict is not always easily resolved, and people dear to you can still be entirely infuriating: but these feelings and conflicts are real because of how deeply they are felt. And that means that a comfort-watch about familial comfort is not always feel-good: by the end, I am watching not just to spend time with these characters I’ve come to love so deeply, but to support them; to hurt with them.

I wanted to feel all those things again, and I wanted to earn those feelings. The time-jump in NIM; the end of Who Needs A Guy; god, all of Goodwill; those moments land more because of everything invested. But most of all, like watching a plant grow, I wanted to watch people change, to be reminded that they can, and to see them learn to love themselves, because by the end, Halt and Catch Fire makes it clear exactly how hard that can be, and exactly how worth the effort to do so it is.

Δεντρολίβανο says the packet on the table. And I, of course, know that this says DENTROLIBANO, pronounced in my head in a clear southern, English accent, every syllable delineated.

I do not know what Δεντρολίβανο is, and have to look further down the packet to realise that it is ROSEMARY.

I studied dead languages at school. (And, for reasons, a bit at University too).

Most of our peers didn’t understand why we’d do Greek. It seemed pointless, even more dead than Latin, and there was the hassle of a whole new alphabet to learn.

To me, it seemed obvious: someone gives you the chance to read words written over two thousand years ago. Wouldn’t you say yes? Wouldn’t you at least be curious?

Here is what I am left with:

• ten years of Latin lets me stumble through gravestones and churches around the world, just enough vocabulary to decipher a decent amount (bar the eccentricities of Church Latin), and I can probably still scan poetry if I had to. It is exciting to look at stone, and see something come to life.
• three years of Greek leaves me with a mere handful of words, practically no grammar, but I still know the alphabet.

What this translates to is: I can read road signs. It takes me longer than I’d like, which can be distracting when I’m driving, and there’s usually a romanisation underneath. But: I can read road signs!

I can read lots of other things too, speak them out loud, say them excitedly as we walk by or browse a menu.

I can speak the letters, and for every word that I recognise, either through old muscle memory of vocabulary, or, more likely, because it’s pretty similar to something in another language, there are a hundred more that I have no idea what they mean. (Like the Latin in churches, I fare better at the ancient sites – a few words in the stone at Messene, but mainly names, gods, goddesses, and my favourite of all, the long list of all the wrestlers at the Palaestra. At the pace I read it, it sounds like a classroom register).

And I definitely, absolutely, cannot pronounce it, as shopkeepers and restaurant staff across the Peloponnese can attest.

It’s not really DENTROLIBANO; it’s ‘dentrolivano’, spoken softly, with that beta becoming more like a soft ‘v’ in modern Greek pronunciation.

In my head, Greek is pronounced with the lugubrious tenor of my classics teacher. “ζῷον”, he says: “zdaw-ohn”, that omega extended with the lips in a perfect oh. (Zoon, “animal”, and off into zoological and so forth we go).

Dead languages read like history, but they sound like your classics teacher; all these ancient men and women (but mainly men) thousands of miles away, speaking in a plummy classroom accent where you can hear every letter and especially the endings of the words to catch their declension.

This is not what Greek sounds like any more, because Greek is not a dead language.

I knew this in theory, but I was really not prepared for how pretty it would be: those same characters spoken by tripping, delicate, mediterranean voices, breathy on the chis (but less on the breathings which I can’t see any more), all manner of rough edges smoothed, all those syllables neatly danced around. “ευχαριστώ!”, “thank you”; we get the Eucharist, the giving of thanks, from this, but here it is “ef’hristo!”, an everyday word that I find myself saying a great deal, somewhat apologetic at my lack of the rest of the language.

(We go to a chemist for some eye drops, which we manage to acquire between us, the chemist, the people in the queue and the chemist’s friends who hang out in the shop. I hear the old lady grumble something about Ελληνικά, and I want to say “Yes, I know! I’m annoyed I don’t speak Greek, you’re annoyed I don’t speak Greek, we’re all annoyed I don’t speak Greek!”. What I really say is: “ευχαριστώ!”)

Betas have become soft vs, upsilons are somewhere between an english “f” and “v”, the etas I say like “air” are now “ee”. It all makes sense when you think about it, but it is upside down to me. (My partner’s Greek colleague at work sighs when she tells him I studied Ancient Greek – “we had to do that at school, I hated it – it’s all backwards!” So we both agree on that, then).

But it’s alive, floating, bubbling. I think back to Xenophon’s Persian Expedition – Anabasis IV, my set text at 16, written around 2400 years before I was taught it – and imagine all those men standing in the snow, marching on the spot in bare feet to keep warm (and in preference to the un-tanned sandals that froze to their colleagues’ feet), chattering in this rolling, living language. I have to admit, it makes more sense now.

I know better what their faces look like, and what their tongues sound like.

I loved this ~45m documentary from Peter Hoving on shooting 16mm on a wind-up Bolex.

It delicately combines a technical overview of the Bolex camera (and, later, the editing process and sound sync systems)… with a look back at Hoving’s own first films from the sixties on it, the story of a life shooting moving images, a brief glimpse into social history of America.

All at a delicate, leisurely pace, with time for the images to breathe. No rushed cuts, no heavy edits; quite a lot of Milt Jackson on the soundtrack. Practically no attention paid to the conventions of the Youtube era.

Just a gentle, thoughtful film about making moving images.

Don’t leave writing to writers. Don’t delegate your area of interest and knowledge to people with stronger rhetorical resources. You’ll find your voice as you make your way. There is, however, one thing to learn from writers that non-writers don’t always understand. Most writers don’t write to express what they think. They write to figure out what they think. Writing is a process of discovery. Blogging is an essential tool toward meditating over an extended period of time on a subject you consider to be important.

Marc Weidenbaum on the value of straight-up blogging, in a place you own yourself. All of this. I’ve been quiet here – less quiet at my work site – but not absent, and knowing that this is mine, and that slowly, what I’m thinking about was always present – even in the Pinboard links – has value.

I recently had a problem with my Sony RX100 mk3: it wouldn’t automatically swap between displaying in the viewfinder and on the LCD.

If turned on with the viewfinder extended, the viewfinder alone would work; if turned on with the viewfinder shut, the LCD would work. But if the viewfinder was on, raising and lowering it to my eye wouldn’t swap between the two. I spent a while faffing with this, convinced it was broken, and failing to find anything on the internet to discuss this.

Anyhow, then I found this video which explains the problem, and takes a full two minutes to get to the point. So I’m re-iterating that point, in writing, for everybody using a search engine!

Long story short: if you’d guessed that the sensor that detects when it to your eye is playing up, possibly, because of dirt, you’re entirely right. What you might not have worked out is where that sensor is.

It’s here:

It’s not in the viewfinder; it’s to the right of it, on the lip above the LCD. Mine didn’t look dirty, but I wiped it down a few times and sure enough, everything worked fine again. Problem solved, and one of the most useful features of this little camera worked properly again.

Quick note for the RSS crew: I’ve overhauled the design of infovore.org the tiniest bit. I think everything works Well Enough™.

Why? Primarily, because every time I look at it, I realise my eyesight is tired of 12px typefaces, and it was all a bit cluttered. So: something simple, a bit more spread out, none of that two-column nonsense, and a face I find readable. All of which was a good excuse to practice my Sass and learn a few new tricks.

And now, back to your regular schedule of endless Pinboard links and the odd post about something or other.

Over at my home-for-work, I write a bit about Week 16.

A new location for weeknotes: I’ve overhauled http://tomarmitage.com and will use it as a professional portfolio and outlet (whilst continuing this site as my primary home and blog). To that end, weeknotes will get published there, and I’ll make sure I link to all developments from over here. But you might like to check it out.

To that end, here’s week 15.