No, the picture does not lie. Our garden now has a two foot trench excavated all the way up to the barn. The poor bugger (that’s the builders mate, not the mole) has been digging it for about three days. I think he was getting flashbacks to the Somme. I’m expecting a firing step and barbed wire to follow.

The cat hasn’t been seen for a while and the only way to get into the garden is by donning a pair of seven league boots. Now you may wonder what kind of construction project would require such a hugely costly and major piece of civil engineering. Well let me tell you. It’s a sink.

Yes our version of the channel tunnel has been horribly over-engineered to take a single water pipe. There was going to be a shower and bog as well but once the words “cess pit” and “a shit load of cash” were mentioned, we spent our entire life savings on this trench instead.

In other news, the waste pipe for the sink has been installed using a “heritage building” technique known as hammering a big hole in the well. This well is the only thing I’ve ever owned which is deeper than this trench. We may have to knock down next doors house to create sufficient rubble to fill it in.

That’s my office. What you can’t see is the lovely floor they’ve laid. What you also can’t see if how they had to take it up after we found the door was in the wrong place. Yes, really that’s the level of client professionalism our builders have come to expect.

As with every project I’m even peripherally involved in, it’s lurching from crisis to crisis intersecting only occasionally with building regulations, correct use of dangerous power tools and sanity.

… apparently. Spring has arrived and with it ickle lambs, unhindered by any brainpower whatsoever, flock and gamble all over the railway tracks. They were – as the driver explained in deadpan tones – the wrong type of sheep because even his ASBO graded horn failed to shift them.

Eventually a bloke turned up with a shotgun, a vat of mint sauce and a butchers van and we were soon on our way again.

That’s a lie. Probably.

Before I start, let me be absolutely clear this could happen to anyone. The fact that it happened to me, refreshed by a couple of beers and head firmly in home mode, is nothing more than a cruel coincidence. I’m a bit hazy on the train timetable after about 6:15pm, since my arrival at the station post this time has normally been preceded by medicinal libations squared or possibly cubed. So when this evening, the big red station clock offered an Aylesbury train leaving in exactly two minutes. I thought That’ll do me nicely”, wrestling the bike past “ and sometimes through – the human Brownian motion experiment that is the Marylebone concourse.

Woooaaah, that train of thought has been shunted into a convenient siding while this random express takes control of the editorial line. The London Marathon is upon us and the warming rays of spring sunshine has tribbled* the Paula wanabees disgorging them and their pointless technology into cycle lanes everywhere. And where did all this technology come from? In my day going for a run” involved a pair of retired , smelly and slick soled 5-a-side trainers, garish beach shorts and a once white t-shirt. This is somewhat at odds with the critical mass of the rasping and sweating, sporting watches the size of clocks, shoes designed by computer and bought by idiots and moulded drinking vessels handily sized for punching passing cyclists. And in a post modern ironic twist, Mark Knopfler white headbands. When they do finally get past their body biometric” stretching programme and pre-exercise preening mirrors, most of them actually run like the title sequence of the Six Million Dollar Man. It’s like slightly speeded up Robotic dancing, accompanied by a menagerie of electronic chirping. I’ve seen faster trees.

I apologise for the 70s and 80s references in that last paragraph. For those of your under the age of thirty, what I’m referring to is¦. no actually since you were conceived after Jimmy Hendrix died, it’s just not worth my time explaining.

Shunt. Right back on the slow train of drivel heading nowhere. The ticket inspectors are, by now, so attuned to the sight of my heavily perspiring, glove wrenching, ticket losing self, they just give me their smile saved for those of special needs and waft me through the barrier. The apparently insurmountable problem of no spare bike racks was easily solved by shoving some other poor unfortunates’ out of the way while simultaneously grappling the on bike lock. Fumbling velcro cost me a little time as did the slight worry that I was abandoning my bike to five days of possible Easter scrote molestation with only a twenty quid lock for protection.

But the getmehome gene was in the ascendance and I beat the closing doors by thirty seconds. I’m getting good at this last minute train malarkey” I congratulated myself while idly noticing the passenger information system was actually working tonight. Seer Green? Beaconsfield? High Wycombe? What the f*ck is going on” I wondered considerably less idly as the train mocked my confusion by accelerating away from the platform. About twice every ice age, Chiltern Railways run a service that can’t make it’s mind up where it’s going. It heads confidently off in a Birmingham direction before taking options on splitters rights at Princes Risborough and depositing the unwary at the Aylesbury Terminus.

Yes gentle reader. I was on one of those trains. My other bike waits patiently at Stoke Mandeville while the train doesn’t go anywhere near there. I almost had the ignominy of a ten quid taxi ride between stations so I could then ride home. Pride coming after my wallet, instead I called Carol who was forced to schlep up to the station avec small, animated and amused children. Daddy why did you get on the wrong train” they asked in that sing song voice which secretly hides the prefix you great bloomin idiot“. I think they get that from their mum. I told them the other line had been destroyed by an alien slime death ray from a UFO and I’d be instrumental in saving the entire population of the South East through unspecified but significant heroics. I’m not sure they bought it though. You can’t lie to them like that”complained Carol (this from the women that tells them babies are created through some kind of complex cold fusion) it’ll mess with their little minds”. Yeah right, leave me with a few shreds of dignity even if it means group therapy in a few years.

The problem is “ or so I’ve been telling myself “ that my mind is too highly trained for the minutiae of life. The option (or truth as it may also be known to those whose cruelty knows no bounds) will blow away those final combed over shreds of dignity I’ve been talking about.

One of these days, nothing odd, irritating or downright bloody outrageous is going to happen. But don’t worry, I’ll just make something up instead.

*Worse than seventies references, I’ve now been reduced to quoting trekkie mulleted gerbils with a shagging fetish. I used to think I was a bit strange until Google zipped me over to the parallel universe of the card carrying trekkie. Jeez they are ODD.

Because frankly this would bolster my motivation whatever the prevailing weather conditons.

“Yes I’ll have a single to Cockermouth and who’s working the platform today?”

Pinched selflessly from an email from my boss Andy. I have no idea where he got it from and was mildly afraid to ask 🙂

A weeks holiday had dulled the daily mindf*ck that is the Chiltern Railway alledged timetable. This morning though they made up for lost time by suffixing a passengerless train blasting through the station with the announcement that the next service is cancelled due to a shortage of drivers”. Or possibly shortness of drivers. Can’t they use a cushion or something?

When a train felt able to stop at our station, it was on the understanding that it’d had somehow shed the majority of its’ carriages on the epic three mile journey from the Aylesbury depot. Our extended journey to the capital put me in mind of those first world war pictures showing weary soldiers crammed into slam door trains on their way to France. Only with more crowding and a smoking ban.

We fooled even the old station hands at Marylebone as the entire population of the south east exited on platform 4. They must be going round again” a Butlin’d uniformed railway service operative” muttered, with the platform disappearing under an angry mob of aggressive briefcases and irritated overcoats. I went bike hunting which occupied five spare minutes I didn’t really have but that’s the price of early onset Alzheimer’s and a bike the same colour of the platform. Having finally located said steed, a further ten minutes frustration and advanced stupidity failed to crack the complex code of a single lock key. This new German lock (Abus) was clearly keen to dig in to secure it’s position on this latter day Hindenburg Line and even the magic opening phrase willyoujustfuckingletmein” failed to shift it.

Entire epochs passed before the realisation that my key ring holds two Abus keys finally dawned. Obviously I’d got the wrong one; less obviously I’d failed to check my key ring instead engaging single tasking bloke mode and stuffing the wrong key harder and harder into the lock.

It’s a skill there’s no doubt about that.

If this wasn’t enough “ and after a weeks holiday and a shrivellingly cold commute, it really was “ they’ve only gone and changed the bloody milk shakes. Yes, I can see you shaking your heads in disbelief that the one small station based pleasure has been ruthlessly snatched away from me without even the slightest consultation. Ever since my rigorous health regime of a single milkshake per week, I’ve had a sad but serious Pavlovion longing for sugary based milk product. After a ˜fitness curry’ [we left the after eight mint] with a mate, I arrived in good time to indulge in a Strawberry Milkshake desert.

We don’t do Strawberry anymore sir”

Why the hell not?”
Nobody wanted it”

See this body? It wants it”
Sorry sir, you can have hint of apricot or noisette of lamb instead”
[So gasted was my flab, I may have misheard that]

Rather than removing my custom and starting a platform based campaign to reinstate the much missed Strawberry Milkshake, I grumbling settled for ˜Wild Cherry”

Predictably it was bloody horrible. It tasted almost healthy for Gods Sake! If I hadn’t paid for it with my own money, I’d never have finished it. Honestly, it was that bad.

The tourists are back and just as airheaded as before. The blossom is on the trees and spring is nervously pushing back winter’s bleak curtain. I just knew things were going too well.

Apricot milkshakes I ask you? Surely there is someone I can sue?

Okay, one more. Although this site is worryingly bagging 300+ individual hits per day, no one dines to leave a comment. It’s not that I’m vain or anything (well ok I am but that’s not the point here so stop pointing at the screen shouting “you are, you bloody are“) but it’d be nice occasionally for someone to comment “thanks, your transparent attempt to boost a shallow ego through the medium of vanity publishing has made me realise why the Internet is such a pointless place to spend my time, and I’m off to save the world instead“. Or something.

I suffered two cab journeys last night, the combined mileage of which would have easily ushered me home without the tedious intermediary of a train trip. The first ride was from a restaurant in East London to Marylebone. Well that’s what I thought anyway but due to a little cultural confusion, the driver instead motored round in ever decreasing circles before attempting to deposit me at Mile End.

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