Hangovers and headwinds

A simple question. Why is it in the midst of a glorious summer under a sun kissed sky and riding on baking tarmac does an unruly headwind whip out of the annoying cupboard and beast you on the way to work? This only happens when you’re hungover. Trust me, I’ve done extensive research and my liver has suffered enough to definitively prove the hypothesis.

Thursday night after a couple* of beers and the odd healthy Malboro light (the diet of the true athlete), I literally flew home surfing on a heady toxin of endorphins and Amstal. Come the morning, the meteorological phenomena laymanly known as that bastard headwind” was in full force pushing me backwards and reminding me of what I’d eaten the previous night.

Not even the introduction of a Bacon Sandwich and a pained expression stemmed the flow of wind. In fact, one could probably effectively argue it increased it. Hangovers you see, they fire up the wind generator and mock you in a temperate fashion.

* Note: this value has had the Dimension Transitional Wife Adjustment applied. Usually this ratio reduces the original value by a factor of 3. Therefore comments such as Yeah, I just had a quick one with the boys and hurried home” have clearly been modified by DTWA.

The folders’ folder. They said it couldn’t be done.

And yet clearly bonkers British Inventor has lowered the bar even further with this.

Riding the A-bike

It’s wrong on a whole range of levels. Those wheels belong on a child’s scooter. Haven ridden my kid’s two wheel death machines, I can confirm they are essentially a fatal accident waiting to happen. Their only saving grace is it’s not far to fall when the inevitable wobbly wheeled shrubbery incident occurs, normally about 2 seconds after mounting the thing.

Clive’s monstrosity ratchets up the terror by precariously positioning the pilot “ although I prefer the word victim “ way up there on some dodgy space frame. It’s going to either drop into a London pothole and disappear into the Earth’s crust or wheelie like a cocaine fuelled Lippenzipper stallion and dump the idiot that bought it from the back pages of a Sunday Magazine on his arse and probably under a bus.

Still Natural selection eh? The mail order Dodo was made extinct under the no.93 bus to Crouch End. Shame.

Laughably during the launch (oh what an appropriate term that is), it was comprehensively burnt off by a Brompton. Yes, my hinged nemesis was seen as the sensible” solution to folding cycles. The world has gone mad. Sir Clive didn’t feel the urge to ride it but then I guess he wants to enjoy his old age down the shed creating solutions to problems nobody “ except those voices in his head “ has. Remember the Zike Bike?

Still it’s a proper singlespeed. Pointless, dysfunctional, unlikely to be ridden more than two miles and latterly abandoned in the back of the garage, crouching embarrassed in the shadows.

Full story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5173612.stm if you must.

I wish it would drop off..

The second part in my odd weekend was visiting the local witch doctor masquerading as a “Massage Therapist and Holistic Healer”. Sounds a bit hokum? Agreed but with a neck full of pain and a pair of twitching shoulder blades, one must cut ones’ cloth appropriately. Even if it’s cheesecloth in a sixties psychedelic style.

I’ve tried Physio on it and all that does is move the pain about. The doctor is convinced it stress related and offered useful medical advice such as “don’t spend all day in front of a computer” which would be fine if “don’t pay the mortgage” was a feasible option.

I used to frequent a massage therapist who having retrained from being a baker has shovel like hands, a frighteningly bald pate and a countenance most resembling Blofelt’s no.1 thug. Nice fella though although I used to leave the session feeling as if I’d paid thirty quid to be worked over by a baseball bat.

This latest incarnation is rather different. Motherly, fiftyish and apologetic for causing me pain and skilled in arts other than massage. We’ve had Reiki (which I honestly believed was a drink and I didn’t begrudge her it after 30 minutes trying to unknot stressed muscles), Indian Scalp Massage (is it just me who worries about that? Indians? Scalps? You know where I’m going with this) and some other treatment that I don’t even pretend to understand.

Has it helped? Well obviously I can type again. Not sure that’s a good thing. The Jury is out on the long term effects but if things don’t improve soon, I’ll be attacking the offending area with a hacksaw.

Anyway beer is medicine isn’t it? Full of natural ingredients. Thought so.

It’s dropped off!

It’s been an odd weekend “ not totally fulfilling nor entirely without incident but odd none the less.

Firstly “ and you may wish to imitate the sound of a one person’s ego trumpet being sounded here “ I managed to limp off that total mind fuck that is the log drop at Chicksands. It looks a bit like this.

For those of you who don’t ride bikes, think of the challenge as essentially riding off a small cliff with no ground visible whatsoever as you fly blindly into space. For those of you who do, I’ll just lightly bask in your adoration.

There are a few caveats though. Firstly it’s taken a year of non progression to get this far. June 26th 2005 was a date neon pinked in the ride diary as I conquered the qualifier for the log drop. Once you’ve done the large ladder (drop 5-6 feet, carry about 10-12 feet), you’re ready for the log.

Well not me obviously. Six more visits, six times it never looked likely. There’s one bigger obstacle that the log drop, and at this rate I’ll be 192 before attempting it based on this level of progression. Secondly I was talent compensated in terms of the bike. A kindly soul lent me a six inch travel full suspension sort of trail bike that a proper rider could launch off Jupiter and land smoothly in Milton Keynes.

And for most of the day it wasn’t really happening. This super sprung bike mirrored my normal chosen steed for Chicksands only in that had two wheels. It was longer and heavier which made for some quality nose first dives off the ladders. Big forks saved me but didn’t really give me much confidence nor did lending it to a mate who rode it off almost everything with consummate ease. So not the bike then. Like that was a surprise.

The run in to the drop is a fast downslope downgrading to almost flat before the log appears large in your focus and the rest of the world disappears. The phrase A leap of faith” could have been specifically coined for this drop. I’d never really tried it before “ oh I’d rolled up to the end and stared down into the abyss but at all times both hands were locked hard onto the brake levers. This time though when I took a sighter, I knew it’d have to go the next run or it’d have beaten me for the day. Maybe forever. Lots of my riding buddies, who I don’t think are beneficiaries from of my death in service insurance policies, repeatedly point out that there’s no reason I can’t ride this. Except that I’m shit scared of course “ I’m not sure they’ve taken that into account. I was twitching nervously, sweating from glands I’m sure don’t exist in any medical dictionary and breathing like Darth Vader having sex with a vacuum cleaner.

Top of the slope, clear my mind. And I mean clear, think of nothing at all, not technique, not consequences, just release the brakes and be a happy passenger cleared for take off. Half way down my brain rebelled and attempted to wrest control of the brake levers but by then it was far too late. Failing to stop at the edge is akin to falling off the edge of a waterfall. The first thing to hit the ground would be my head closely followed by an all body impact from a 40lb bike. That was even scarier than just “ as those who understand the nuances of such things riding off the fucker

I just rode off the fucker then. It was fine, no big deal, dunno why I’d made such a huge fuss about it. Certainly the seconds of silence between take off and landing were mildly perturbing but really there was no excuse for the emotional celebrations that followed. I threw the bike away and high fived complete strangers smug in the knowledge that I was now in the log drop club” and other people weren’t. Yes, I really am that shallow. No I don’t intend to do anything about it.

Riding off it looks like this for those with cahoonies the size of village show root vegetables. I was having it somewhat more medium verging on the small.

But to own” any drop (frankly I’ve never owned a drop, but I’ve rented a few on a good day), one has to survive three times at the scaffold of fear. Only then are you admitted to the club and can cheekily ignore it for a while on future visits claiming fork issues“, inappropriate tyres” or bad fish the previous evening“. But now it wasn’t messing with my head, it was just another thing I knew I could do. Not well, not that quickly and certainly lacking in any style, unless hanging on for dear life and gurning has come back into fashion, but serially and without too much fear.

A little faster, a little more committed and little further out before falling back to earth cushioned by my borrowed big springs changed my state to log ownee”. I’ve never been so proud “ no honestly.

Nobody cares though. All my friends did it ages ago, my wife and kids don’t understand it and “ rightfully “ care even less as long as I’m back in one piece and even my ego shudders against the prospect of shouting it from the rooftops of an Internet forum.

I tell you what though, it sure beats hell out of putting up fence posts. I should know, that’s my reward for playing silly buggers yesterday.

Other Rants.

There have been a few articles in the papers lately regarding Cyclists abusing the highway code, an increase in road deaths and a possible link between the two. Rather than waste my own energy rubbishing this nonsense, I’ll leave it to a couple of fellow ranters who do it rather better.
First Bez makes Nigel Havers look rather silly.
Oh, good grief. Look what happens when you mix Nigel Havers with erstwhile fanzine of middle-English bigotry, The Daily Mail. You’ve guessed it, Havers is on a roll this week clocking up as many column inches as he can, devoting each one to the usual blinkered crap about cyclists.Continuing the hypocrisy set by his earlier comments, Havers moans:

It was our greatest modern writer George Orwell who, in his 1941 essay on the English character, conjured up the evocative image of old maids cycling through the mist on their way to Communion¦

Gentility and modesty have been replaced by aggression and arrogance. Brimming with hostility, utterly indifferent to those around them, they appear to think they are above the law.

Of course, they” refers to cyclists, though anyone less retarded than Havers (a Teletubby, for instance) might note that it could equally – if not more equally, if Havers will pardon me briefly hijacking his Orwellian imagery bandwagon – refer to motorists, or indeed the public at large.

Havers is clearly having a bit of a blood pressure problem (well, it is for The Daily Mail after all – the poor readers can’t possibly read anything unless it’s bilious tripe, bless ˜em) – he continues,

Normal rules about red lights, pavements and one-way streets are treated as a matter of supreme indifference by this new army of Lycra-clad maniacs, whose every action demonstrates their contempt for pedestrians and motorists.

Let me paraphrase that: Normal rules about speed limits, mobile phones and parking restrictions are treated as a matter of supreme indifference by the incumbent army of tin-box-clad maniacs, whose every action demonstrates their contempt for pedestrians and cyclists. See how it works, Nigel? You can generalise about everyone. I’m sure you don’t abuse the speed limits and parking restrictions – although we all know about the mobile phone thing now.

When a cyclist bangs on the roof of my car or scrapes my mirror without even bothering to apologise, I sometimes wish for the good old days of Edwardian England, when young men would be sent to jail for swearing in the streets, causing a danger to the public or cycling without a light.

Oddly enough I’ve never had an experience when a cyclist bangs on the roof of my car or scrapes my mirror without even bothering to apologise.” Havers conjures up a ludicrous image of a cyclist riding through the streets, wilfully hammering away at cars for no reason; but then there’s the rub: Motorists who get their cars hit by cyclists believe these things happen for no reason, and that’s because they have either just nearly mown down someone they didn’t even see, or they simply believe that nearly mowing people down is perfectly within their rights (they – allegedly – pay more tax, goddam it, it must buy them something).

And oddly enough, rear cycle lights weren’t always compulsory (the reason being that it was the responsibilty of the faster vehicle to sufficiently illuminate its way ahead) – I can’t seem to find when this legislation was introduced, but it might make an interesting point – not that Havers will give a toss about the facts getting in the way of a good gobshite.

Havers really flails wildly in his ranting, pulling in seemingly random generalisations, assumptions, suppositions and pretty much anything he can to spit blood about anyone on two wheels.

They probably go on regular cheap flights overseas to hip new locations in eastern Europe or Africa, feeling very good about themselves as their planes emit huge clouds of noxious gases.

They do not bother to question whether their garish Lycra garments were made by children in the Third World, or, indeed, whether their bicycle was manufactured in some exploitative, low-wage factory in China.

Now come on, Nigel, let’s see your air travel schedule and compare it to mine; let’s see where all the bits of your car were made. Have you really gone and checked out the working conditions in the cycle factories in Taiwan? Of course you haven’t. Do you really buy your clothes from firms such as Howies? Of course you don’t. No-one buys all their stuff from unimpeachable sources even if there are any. But there you go, it just wouldn’t be Daily Mail to take look in the mirror (pun not intended) now and again, would it?

And after this rather splendid spleen vent, it seems an appropriate moment to let Nick let rip at the latest oh so simple solution to the Death to all cyclists campaign supported by almost everyone in London.

The Times Online today reported that cycling deaths are on the rise. Partly this is a result of more commuters taking to their bikes in London.I can’t agree with this simplistic response from Brake:

Mary Williams, Brake’s chief executive, said: It is no surprise that cyclists, one of the most vulnerable groups of road users, are dying in increasing numbers. Britain’s roads are still plagued by speeding drivers, as well as law-breaking uninsured, unlicensed, drunk and drugged drivers.”

It’s that kind of obsession with speed instead of educating car drivers about the needs of other road users that achieves nothing. Cars infringing into my local cycle lanes mostly do it at a crawl, well under 10mph. I’d put money on none of them being drugged or drunk either.

This childish thinking has led to a policy of enforcement, enforcement, enforcement” instead of enforcement, education and engineering”

We cyclists are the ones who pay the price for that shortsightedness.

Both top fellas who write interesting, well researched and sometimes downright funny stuff. Check them out.

Proper RLJ’ing

Last week I ran a red light. No change there except this time there was a train coming. I have to cross the little commuter line on the way to the station and if the barriers are down when I get there, there’s little chance I’ll make my train because I’m late.

I didn’t want to miss the train and it was only when I’d decided to stupidly ignore the flashing red lights and was sprinting for the other side that the barriers started to drop. It was about this time that I saw the train hurtling towards me in the not so far distance. I sashayed between the dropping barriers in full view of the now ooooh that’s really quite close” speeding train and popped out the far side with a heart pumping at 200 beats per minute.

I’ll not be doing that again. A wheel dropping into the track is the stuff of nightmares. I should know I’ve been having them.

Someone one said better 30 minutes late to the office than 30 years early for the next life”. He was talking sense.

That’s me told then.

Education, Education, Education” Tony Blair was prone to hurumph when we still believed, and you know he may have had a point. Not a coherent policy obviously but his point was that “kids are our future” could have had a slightly deeper meaning than appealing to core voters and being the right size for a soundbite. Then again, maybe not.

Not our kids, anyway.

Random and Verbal have taken their new playroom hostage and parental negotiation has had little part to play. They are five and seven respectively so it’s not like this mini rebellion to authority should come as any suprise is it? We’re lucky to have got this far.

Here’s their version of the constitution (since as a country, we never bothered to create one) and it’ really rather sweet.

The spelling isn’t good. Neither is the punctuation and the less said about their inability to conjugate the verb, the better. This has brought a rye smile to us as all powerful parents but guess what? We do respect it, knock and even take off our shoes and in return the room stays amazingly tidy. Compare this to the rest of the house where if I’ve not tripped over a roller skate or been decapitated by a skipping rope, I’ve assumed we’ve been burgled, this is a major step forward.

So no shoose and please nock before entering – that’s me told then.

Women to the left of me, women to the right…

.. Yes honestly I’m surrounded by women. But regrettably not in a petal laying, grape peeling, brow wiping kind of way. That fantasy remains sadly unfulfilled and it seems rather unfair that’s this situation has only finally unfolded so late in my life. My God, when I was studying for a degree in Computing when we had 4 women, 2 not sure and 1 definitely not in a student population of 250, I’d have happily hacked out a kidney for such an opportunity..

This has come about after a reorganisation (I wanted to say at this point that our team motto is Reorganise now! Create the illusion of progress” but since my boss reads this and cravenly I’m actually in agreement of the latest shuffle, I’ll not. Oops, bit late now) which redistributed bodies in a kind of random Brownian motion except with politics replacing physics and proper cat fights over window space.

I know you’re keen to know how this has affected me. You’re not? Well I’m disappointed “ you should know by now that’s what’s coming. So on the surface, hardly at all, our little enclave occupies a rather sought after corner of the top floor with splendid views of the London Eye (if we crane our necks) and the never ending building works opposite (if we don’t). Somehow we’ve managed to scam a wobby table, a couple of extra chairs and a large whiteboard (another motto; He who fails to clean the board shall suffer painful death by paper shredder“) so it’s no surprise that there are many who covet our comely corner.

However, the musical chairs of the office move has passed us by except to usurp our immediate colleagues and replace them with almost infinite number of the fairer sex. This presents us with a problem. We’ve passed many pleasant hours debating Sven’s midfield formation, the importance of powertools in a non secular society and the most effective root vegetables for farting (sub divided by volume, key changes, octival offset and lumpiness). Almost all of these discussions have been improved by proper swearing and the odd non politically correct comment. Odd as is every other word. This clearly is going to have to change and already I’m suffixing slam down conversations with the helpdesk using the fuck pseudonym poot�?. And rather than referring to an esteemed team member as a brainless dickhead who couldn’t find his arse with an atlas AND a copy of gray’s anatomy�?, we’re reduced to the rather old school Damn His Eyes�?. It lacks a certain something.

It’s a trial I can tell you.

And it get’s worse. Oh I can see you shaking your head and mouthing Poot, Damn His Eyes, he’s nothing more than a Charlatan’s shadow of a gentleman” “ well read on, dear reader, read on.

At one point in the unpacking process, one of this myriad collection of besuited equality warriors exclaimed with some excitement Panic over, I’ve found the Xmas decorations�” Ladies turn your back for a second WHAT THE FUCK?”. Christmas decorations? You may as well garnish the hanging scaffold with a bit of holly. Jesus (point taken), come end of term in December, all we want to do is get drunk, avoid the office, and try oh so hard not to amusingly photocopy our arse in what can only be thought of as a career limiting move.

Pretty soon it’ll be chintz monitor covers and conversational gambits involving potty training, the calorific value of fish paste and below ankle fetishes. Although hopefully not at the same time. The last one scares me the most; straight blokes tend to own three pairs of shoes, a sturdy set of sensible blacks for work, a pair of trainers for 5-a-side football and almost anything else and a pair of sandals “ annually retrieved from the dusty innards of the wardrobe “ for going on Holiday. This seems to be exactly the same amount that most women buy in a week, all of which have been specifically designed for the single purpose of murdering an innocent foot. And even when they talk about Men’s shoes, I’m wandering barefoot in the land of Imelda Marcos. I mean what the hell are brogues” Anybody?

There’s a level of background chatter that may push me over the edge. Remember Michael Douglas in Falling Down”. It’ll be like that only I’ll find a proper use for those Christmas decorations especially the spiky tree.

Through the safety of the Internet Looking Glass, I’ve insulted the Scots, The Welsh, Car Drivers, Fellow Cyclists, Scooter Riders, Folding Bicycle Misfits, Americans, train operatives, trains, train companies, 4x4s and Ken Livingstone. Now my rantings have encompassed the stereotyping of my female colleagues.

But look on the bright side, I’m going to hell anyway, you’ve only been watching.

Changing Rooms

Since I’ve been reduced to quoting rubbish formulaic TV based nonsense, here’s another: Life Laundry�?. That phrase pretty well encompasses the transformation of my old office to the kids playroom, except with far more angst and less floppy hair.

My approach to room clearing follows a basic principle that if an object “ whatever it’s value “ hasn’t been used for a period of twelve months or more, it becomes charity or skip food; no arguments. This clashes somewhat with my wife’s alternate hypothesis that at some undefined point in the future, this pointless trinket may well hold the key to world peace. Kleptomania is a harmless enough hobby I suppose (hello Pot, Kettle calling) but it feels like we’re preparing for a nuclear winter. We’re barely staying afloat in a sea of the unnecessary and the more useless and cluttering the item, the more we argue over its’ efficacy.

Here’s a sample conversation to illustrate the point:

Me: We already own four phone charges and this one waves dismissively at electrical ner’do’well doesn’t even fit anything we still own�?

Her: We can Ebay it then�?

Me: On the surface, that’s a rational argument but you and I both know that it will still be here in a years time, secreted away in a forgotten corner waiting for me to tread on it, because something more important got in the way of selling it. Like anything�? And breathe.

Her �?Well if you think that, you can sell it yourself�?

Me: I don’t want to do it remember? I’m all for skipping it, that’s its’ natural habitat now, let’s put it out of its’ misery. At no point is keeping it my problem�?

Her: But it still works, it’d be a waste to just chuck it away�?

Me: Throws hand theatrically in the air and sighs heavily Fine! Whatever! But if it’s still here in a month, then you have to eat it�? Crosses arms, Mexican Stand off

Thankfully we have ACAS personified in that much maligned room; the loft. Should there ever be a world shortage of useless shit we’ll be in the money but I fear for the roof.

Still, after this small fracas lasting a only couple of days, it’s worth noting that the kids love their new playroom almost as much as I love my new office “ the reason is similar; none of us have to tidy our room up and we get to keep important stuff out of sight of the hoover. That’s not the same as the kleptomania described above in case you were in any way confused.

We’re reacquainted ourselves with much of the house previously buried under Doll’s Houses, Decapitated Barbies and randomly stuck stickers. At one point I discovered something that may have once been a carbon based lifeform but was now essentially coal. I wonder if we’re missing a cat?

The much ignored fact that they kids want the playroom painted in a contemporary style known as beery vomit�? is really a small price to pay to getting a bit of our life back.

See what I did there?

Losing Ugly…

Last week I wrote this:

Normality will resume; flags will quietly be binned, Tim’ll lose at tennis, Andrew will lose at Cricket and the Rugby team will forget that once they were quite good

Do I get a prize? No? So it seems me and the other 10 million people who predicted the same will be disappointed. Still we can at least assuage our disappointment by drinking deep from the fountain of I told you we were rubbish“. If it’s good enough for the media, it’s good enough for me.

Watching the game, buffered from its’ awfulness by a bucket load of beer, it rapidly became clear that neither side deserved to progress further. The Portuguese play in a playground style of mum, he’s hit me, he did, he did, he did, honest” and after one particularly petulant incident, I fully expected them to collectively blub, before taking their ball home. Our team was separated from greatness by exactly the same gap which separate the hype from reality. For the first sixty minutes, we seamlessly transferred our dreadful, laboured form from the first four games into this one. And then their was the small matter of Shrek and the Groinal stamping. For which he was given his marching orders.

I dunno. In my day, playing at a level which generally involved drinking before the match, an opposing defender attempting to violently harvest your bollocks through a scything challenge, grudgingly engendered a little professional respect. Aye, he was hard bastard but fair” you’d wince while examining the stud marks marching up the inside of your thigh.

Still with Rooney in the changing rooms presumably laying into the kit man or chewing on the benches, those left on the pitch did their best. It was almost enough with a Canadian who thinks he’s a German playing with a verve and passion that best defines an Englishman. I know I said he was rubbish but this was merely a clever motivational strategy.

And then the inevitable penalties. Martial law was declared in our house and a media blackout followed in the barn. Children were banished as were any electronic devices that could broadcast the inescapable nay predestined outcome. For want of anything better to do, my time was occupied polishing a set of wheels and pretending I didn’t care. When I finally returned to the house and the glum faces surrounding the TV, I found I still did.

Everyone knows sport is just nationalism dressed up in a tracksuit but we’ve been so comprehensively stuffed this last couple of weeks, we’re reduced to supporting a Scotsman. Oh he pretends to support the English and talks of British Sport” but the United Kingdom was just a crappy marketing Brand nearly four hundred years ago, and it’s fooled almost no one since. You only have to listen to the second verse of the national anthem to see that.

Maybe we should change the Anthem to something more uplifting. Land of Hope and Glory perhaps although Land of Mope and Snory seems more appropriate (the first post result, the second post result hangover). Or maybe we should just set more realistic expectations. No, /Sven mode/ *sorry, sorry, sorry*, I’m just being silly.

Still, it’ll be good to see the end of the flags though. Patriotism is one thing; exploding children cooked in the back of window locked cars is quite another.

UPDATE: So Murray lost. Never mind eh, misery loves company. I have it on good authority that we’re in with a sniff of a medal at the under 13 allcomers tiddywinks competition.