Flying is good.

There’s much in the papers today about living on the edge. Whether that’s chucking a Rugby ball about, or facing terminal cancer with a cheery smile, or winning in business by playing odds no one else dares – it’s all about being something that others are not.

Life on the edge is “ naturally “ edgy. It’s about making dangerous choices while fully understanding the precarious consequences, but doing it anyway. It’s the self confidence to fight against the tide, be a sheepdog in a field of sheep and never, ever accepting that what you are doing is even close to being enough. Religion speaks to us that our short life is merely a precursor to something better, but those peering over the abyss believe that there is nothing penultimate about life on earth.

So it’s really not a nice place to be.

Sometimes I get a glimpse of what that world must be like where now is everything and you are one cowardly decision away from normality, regret and safety. And the older you are, the line between pushing it or faking it becomes increasingly blurred. Parental responsibility and physical fragility are the waves drowning your youthful impulsiveness and washing you away to a conformist shore.

And that’s a shitty place to be as well.

Life without risk is no life at all. With my mortality fear looming ever larger, each day is a test of your bravery, your commitment, your closeness to the edge. So you must steel yourself to step forward, to look the drop full in the face and feast on the rush of spitting fear in the eye. And then running away quickly.

A friends’ parent bravely piloted a Lightening jet fighter for many years, but now stutters through his remaining life twitching on phantom adrenalin and craving the rush. But what a life – suspended between terror and greatness never counting the cost of a junkiesm that holds you hostage to stuff you can no longer do. It’s the same but worse for those who chase the dragon in every raised vein, or grab their kicks from a bottle. You may reasonably question their willpower and social responsibility, but even they must dimly toast Dylan Thomas and his raging against the dying of the light.

It distills to this “ better to live to forty, fifty maybe sixty years old rather than waiting for God while dribbling into a hospice pillow, forgotten by those who were once the centre of your world. Your lie broken in a bed that’s waiting to be a coffin “ at best a responsibility and, at worst an embarrassment.

So there should be none of that embarrassment if you mainline your twenty something old self and remember that sometimes Who Gives A Fuck?‘ is an entirely appropriate way to greet adversity and accountability. I used to think I hated being scared for myself, or frightened for my family. You know that stomach churning revelation at 3am that maybe your best times have gone and you’d blown what little talent you had.

But I don’t anymore “ because even pretending to be on the edge rocks like a hurricane and while the lows are lower, the highs fly “ Icarus like “ to the Gods. And here’s the thing; the singular joy of being a coward is every time you carve a fast, sketchy bend or confront a scary inner demon, it fills your heart up with life stuff and makes you seven feet tall and invincible.

And that’s a fantastic place to be “ even if it is only for one minute in a thousand.

Life on the edge is not a choice. But sometimes you’re lucky enough to be aware that you can choose to shuffle sideways into conformity or, take a deep breath and jump “ hoping against hope you can learn to fly.

Flying is good.

Video Killed the Radio Star.

I’m sat on the train encased firstly by the lowest cost bidders steel shell and, secondly by a squawking aviary of electronic Christmas presents. To my left Video I-Prods, to my right manically tilted Sony PSPs and up front the irksome warble of Mario on steroids forced out of tiny Nintendo speakers. This cacophony of polyphonics is nutritionally accompanied by Resolution Salads prepared for those desperately exercising with all the effort a blistered thumb can offer.

Give it a month and the disagreeable smell of second hand vegetables will be replaced by the warm fug of Ginster’s pasties and half eaten Mars Bars. But right now I’m feeling worthy having endured my first visit to the pub since I gave up.

Gave up what I hear you ask “ surely not the Al-defining beer that is an essential component of a complex, but often misunderstood, athletic dietary plan? Well no, of course not “ I’m talking of the drinking equivalent of the Scottish Play; the cigarette. With the Government flipping smoking from social to antisocial at the start of July, this seemed an opportune moment to abandon the cheeky fag, or cancer stick as I’m increasingly coming to think of it.

I’ve never smoked properly “ well you wouldn’t would you as it’s unhealthy and potentially life threatening. But I started early at about eighteen, unbelievably believing it was somehow cool and, more importantly, adult. What followed was twenty years of packing up for long periods interspersed with a hardcore twenty a day habit in that happy twenties phase when you believe yourself immortal. I stopped for good once the birth of our first kid belatedly delivered maturity and parental responsibility in equally unwanted measures.

Well sort of. The odd cheeky cigar or a drunken assault on a packet of twenty doesn’t really count especially if one is vested with the willpower of a moth answering the siren call of a thousand watt lamp. But as a diagnosed asthmatic, smoking is pretty stupid if being around to watch your kids grow up forms any part of your life goals. So I counted this as stopping for a given value of quitting.

And then I sort of started again but “ as you would expect “ this is in no way my fault. We’re kind of the Arsenal of the Professional Services firms with an embedded drinking culture. And with a beer came the offered cigarette that soon became two, three and then ten. This habit never really extended beyond opening hours but a habit it was and self loathing followed me home after every cigarette.

So I was already determined to stop even before mono-lung bullied squatting rights, insidiously pushing out my previously working oxygen chambers. And it’s a perfect irony that my breathlessness coincided exactly with the quitting date of December 19th, 2006. But whatever, that’s a date going down in stone so they don’t have to inscribe one for me too soon – if you get my drift.

From this I surmised one of two things; either it was too late and “ to take a phrase from a respected medical dictionary “ I was fucked or that this was a warning, a bullet just dodged, a simple truth that this level of bodily abuse was in no way carbon balanced by a bit of cycling.

I haven’t wanted a fag since but tonight I needed a beer and so horns with locked with the nemesis of the quitters. The inaugural meeting of Smokers Anonymous (Strand Chapter) dived deep into a therapy session admitting to weight gain, increased appetite and an increasingly desperate yearning to smoke a beer-mat.

Leaving after a couple (of beers, not barely combustible beer mats), I jumped on the bike donning the guise of an untroubled commuter. Racing was now a jolly jape for younger men “ I would instead perambulate with all the haste of a man heading to the dentist’s chair to face painful root canal surgery.

All was good, my progress was serene, the weather unseasonably warm, my lungs unbothered by any of that sprinting nonsense and my legs turning easy circles. And then “ because God hates me “ lurching past was nothing less than Lucifer’s folding chariot. Arrange these words into a well known phrase or saying. Bull. Red Rag. To. A.

I wanted to dump the bike in the middle of the road and scream an wretched entreaty to the sky FUCK FUCK FUCK “ WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS? WHY WHY WHY HAVEN’T I SUFFERED ENOUGH?

But I didn’t, I did this instead: brain uninvolved with the kraken like awakening of twitching muscles, I was instantly out of the saddle snicking a couple of gears and straightlining the entrance to Hyde Park. The race was on.

I locked onto his plethora of red LED’s which put me in mind of the emergency ward I’d probably end up in. But to my intense surprise, the allegedly problem lungs oxygenated frantically gulped air to the power of my competitive gland. Muscles suffused with pure o2 span ever bigger gears and he was gone, gone, gone in the beat of a rampaging heart.

But this wasn’t enough and because there was more, I sprinted on even though a small accountant process was screaming that I probably shouldn’t. But I was high on how it feels to be fast; the unadulterated joy of working your body hard, pushing swift circles while perfectly balanced between pedals and bars. Sometimes your heart takes flight and you have to bottle that feeling, guard it carefully and only let it seep out in your darkest hours. It’s the stuff of life.

Sadly this metamorphis didn’t last long and on locking up the bike a few minutes later, I was suffering a bit. But that’s ok, because in that glimpse of something I’ve always taken for granted told me more than any shocking advert or government warning ever could that the time has come to stop. For good. It feels like crossing the last river to adulthood. Gulp.

Oh and the title? It popped into my ears when surrounded by the emperor’s new toys on the train. A small prize if you can name the artist. And no Googling because I’ll know 🙂

Today is the shortest day

Except it isn’t. The planetary tilt and the elliptical arc of the sun combine to shorten the days from the front, while sluggishly extending the daylight past four o’clock. But the facts are unimportant here, the Winter solstice is the cyclists’ poster child for lighter times ahead and represents the diametrically opposite emotion to the longest day.

But this day of little daylight has heralded the onset of winter which got in on the act a couple of days earlier. Outside of my window, Mandelbrot spirals are iced into spiders webs and a windless sky clamps the country in dense and freezing fog.

According to the Met Office, this is officially a good thing after an Autumn dominated by heavy rainfall and worrying temperatures. Apparently this was the warmest pre-winter season since records began, so in search of statistical satisfaction, I trawled through my own ride diaries for the last two years.

Abridging the raw data shows 2005 as bloody cold” and 2006 as bloody wet“. So we’re either facing a abnormal meteorological spike or the planet’s about to explode. Either way, the results are all around us with normally snow capped alpine peaks barely dusted with the white stuff.

I was proud of our stunningly proportional response to the devastating environment impact of human colonisation on a once unbroken world. Rather than showing one second of humility and searching for something in our life that stays our voracious appetite for destruction, instead we jump on the winged nemesis of polar ice caps and fly to North America where the snow is still falling.

Stewardship of the world for the next generations? I think probably not then. So maybe that’s what the airport closing fog is all about “ the planet has decided to take the matter into it’s own hands. If there is some precise smiting of the environmental disaster that defines many of the leaders of the free world, it could just be onto something.

Naive Nativity

Random and Verbal attend a proper Church Of England School. Proper in that it shuns any of that modern multi-denomination malarkey, instead brainwashing pliable minds and demonising other faiths. Okay, it’s not quite that bad but the annual nativity play is straight down the line Christian dogma with a few hedgehogs (honestly!) thrown in to provide amusement.

The intake is predominantly white and while that feels like a bad thing, there is no way I am getting into an argument about it on here. But in what must have been an inspired piece of casting, the little Muslim fella was cast as a King from the East. He did look a bit confused though when, twenty minutes in, he was surrounded by farm animals, a small baby doll and not even the slightest mention of Muhammad.

The kids are amazingly precocious – all aged between five and seven-“ able to recite dialogue from memory and sing many songs all in cute harmonies. And their accompanying hand actions are a joy to watch, especially when it all goes wrong and Rebecca from class R inadvertently pokes the teacher in the ear.

Random was a Star (literally) this year pirouetting around the stage while marshalling the first year kids. She looked remarkably assured and rather tall which came as a bit of a shock really – I mean are they meant to grow up this fast?

Verbal on the other hand has not inherited her Dad’s “Everyone! Look at ME” persona and so last week’s piano recital was met with much pre-angst and blood draining worry. I was watching through the steepled fingers of the truly terrified because I so wanted her to be ok. Not good you understand, just not stage frozen and traumatised. She gave me a look, that belied her tender seven years, which translated to “Dad, I’m shitting the bed here

But she was great. Sure she missed some notes and so it was a contemporary take on Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, but it was worth all the naked terror to see how rightly proud she was.

The problem with the school hall = other than the smell which transports you back thirty years and has you wondering if you’d done your homework-“ is the dust and grit that flies about. On both occasions where the kids have been performing, something’s stuck in my eye and caused it to water. Odd that.

Still It’s the Christmas Disco tonight. Which allows for me to smuggle in a couple of cans of lager and check out whether the poor bairns do in fact dance like their dad.

The Office Christmas Party….

… was this week and I didn’t go. Having never been to the firm’s bash, I’ve no idea if it mimics the social car crash of almost every one I did attend. But I decided not to risk it.

And this is almost entirely due to my ground state of ˜grumpy bastard‘. However it also breaks Al’s Life Rule #1 which, while complex and erudite, can be simply distilled to Life’s to short to drink with arseholes?. It’d be plain wrong to suggest everyone who shares my workplace – especially those who are privy to the scribblings of the hedgehog and to you I extend a wavey hello, nice to know we’re all in this shit together eh?? “ is an irritating nonce with the social panache of a special needs gerbil, but you know how it is.

You don’t? Ok, Christmas parties pay direct homage to their clichéd stereotype, where a largely dysfunctional flange of those battered by a year of sneering, bullshiting and lying are liberally doused with alcohol and flung together in a seething mass of petty rivalry, sweat and imagined slights. Is it any wonder that every sane man would light the blue touch paper before running away at top speed? Slipped of the leash of corporate responsibility and rendered fearless on gassy lager, it’s only a matter of time before a testosteroned swagger across the dance floor ends in a slurred Hey mate, you’re such a useless wanker and annoying little shit. I’ve hated you for ever and at last years party shagged your other half. What do you think of that then eh? Wanna make something of it??.

Insults are screamed; first pushes and then punches are traded. Security are called just before someone slings a drunken arm round the protagonist and offers that most anodyne of beery advice not worf it mate, just not worf it?.

And that’s just the women.

Continue reading “The Office Christmas Party….”

It’s almost enough to make you vote Tory.

Have I taken leave of my senses? Or are the Conservatives handing out suitcases of cash to all impoverished mountain bikers who have recently grown a beard, and can demonstrate double jointed thumbs? Maybe they’re advocating a new transport policy where BMW X5 drivers are all injected with leprosy?

Disappointingly, it’s none of those things, however Tim Love Child? Yeo, representing what the Conservatives amusingly refer to as their liberal, cuddly side, actually made some sense. It’s rare that the S word is associated with the self important, stuffed shirted sound bites that feed off our deluded cravings for democracy, but in this case it’s well earned.

You see, he wants to abolish GMT. Initially I was aghast at yet another historic British institution being abandoned, pensioned off or “ more likely “ sold to the Americans. But no, he’s talking about making the evenings’ lighter at the expense of extending darkness further into the morning. Since we spend far more time awake “ unless you’re a student “ after lunch than before, this is clearly a winner. As a man with something of the night about him?, the prospect of staving off Lygophobia* for a goodly number of planetary rotations gets my vote.

Oh there’ll be some nonsense talked about Scottish farmers having to plant in the dark and children north of Manchester risking almost certain death when walking to school. I refute all these arguments with the simple response that they don’t affect me at all. And tractors now have lights and so do cars, which is precedent since nobody walks to school anymore.

Obviously, it’s never going to happen because it doesn’t fit in with the Government’s stated priorities of invading oil rich countries, introducing a CCTV controlled nanny state and lying.

Actually I’ve changed my mind, I’m not going to vote for any of them “ it just encourages the buggers.

* fear of the dark apparently. I found this and my other interesting phobias here. I discovered I am also suffering from Ombrophobia (fear of being rained on) and probably Xyrophobia (fear of razors) considering my currently hairsuit facial grayness. Now with a hint of ginger “ it’s all I can do to stop kissing myself, so attractive has this made me.

And who could miss the irony of Sesquipedalophobia which is “ wait for it “ a fear of long words.

Down but by no means out.

Simon Barnes of The Times is a great Sports Writer. I always to turn first to his page because he’s so even handed with the raw emotion and the actual occasion. He writes beautifully about the pointlessness of sport while still held in its’ magical thrall. A good read every day, trading adjectives and verbs in the volatile market of what distills to grown men kicking a ball about.

But today he wrote about his sons’ condition of Down’s Syndrome. Any parent who can read the article without wiping their eyes is kidding themselves. One statistic that stuck was the stark reality showing that 94{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} diagnosed with the pre-born condition results in termination. I’m not sure what this says about parenting in the 21st century but it’s nothing with any obvious merit.

There is nothing I can add to his honesty, but I do remember when our second child was growing in the womb, we too had the test to detect what medical science calls an abnormal foetus. We talked about the long term consequences of a Down Syndrome child with all the seriousness of those faced with decisions guided by nothing but a moral compass. But silently I prayed hard “ for the first time since being confirmed as a lifelong atheist “ that our baby would be fit and healthy.

In public I would never have called for termination, but in a sleepless night before the test, that may have been my preference. And now it’s brutally obvious that any such decision would have been plain wrong “ you cannot deny a child life because it doesn’t fit with your view of how life should be. We can no more play God than those choosing designer babies with their blue eyes and Cambridge intelligence.

It made me realise how lucky we are to have two healthy kids whose lust for life validates our own. Take the religion out of it and you are still truly blessed with children even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I’m going to send a donation to the Down Syndrome Trust once my blurry eyes run out of tears. Not because I feel sorry for the kids “ they know no different “ but because if they pass the stigma exam of what children should be, they deserve all the help they can get.

And if this seems like sentimental nonsense without an obvious point then welcome to being a parent.

Well, that’s a bit of a worry.

A study today “ researched with all the rigour a single train journey allows “ shows a key finding that I’m sharing the carriage with a bunch of bloody Nazi’s. This hypothesis is based on a random sampling of those performing the three handed trick of coffee, briefcase and newspaper. And the newspaper of choice was the Daily Flail.

This is not some statistical anomaly, over 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of these suited and jackbooted city types were nodding away at a politically correct version of Johnny Foreigner starts at Calais and that’s where he should bloody well stay‘. Cautiously I peeked inside an abandoned copy to check whether my prejudices were as bad as those reading the Mail. They are, mine aren’t “ it’s all sneering at liberalism, and spiteful vitriol at an all encompassing moral sub class defined as Anti Britishness“. All the history you’ll ever need to learn from the Union Jack and a copy of Biggles.

So aside from those commuting to the London offices of the Gestapo, what were the remainder of my esteemed travelers reading? Around 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} were struggling with the full size but comparatively moderate Daily ToryGraph, a few more checking the size of their portfolios in the Financial times and the rest plotting world domination on that crucible of the modern communications age; Lucifers Notebook. Known as the Blackberry by those who own them and oh for God’s sake, turn the bloody thing off will you” by the rest of us.

A friend of mine perfectly places it at the centre of all things stupid with this comment: I sat next to a bloke with a Blackberry on the tube the other month. He was beavering away spinning his little jogwheel and pressing buttons, giving every impression of being a vital informational hub in his critical enterprise. Actually he was playing Tetris.”

Anyway I digress but for good reason because train journeys should be for sleep, reading or slack jawed looking out of the window. Not balancing every electronic item you own on your knee and then looking horrified as someone accidentally spills coffee all over them.

So that accounts for most reading material in the carriage. Of those left, one bloke was getting excited reading an article on how to install bow thrusters�? and exactly one other was reading the Guardian. That’d be me then. I expected, at any time, to be asked for my paper and possibly my papers before being ejected from the train. Go and live in a nude commune, you bloody tax dodging hippy‘ would have been their derisive farewell cry as I plunged down the embankment.

So all in all a bit of a quandary; as a self confessed hand wringing liberal, I feel I must vigorously defend everyone’s right to be intellectually closeted and mean spirited. But does that include those who read the Mail? Talk about pushing the limits of democratic acceptability. Surely I should be allowed to harm one of them if only to set an example?

What to do? Maybe I’ll source a copy of the Sun or Daily Star in the spirit of comparative experimentation. This may be troublesome as the station café offers only right wing ideology and copies of Mein Kampf. But I think it’ll be worth the effort.

Right now that’s off my chest, next up is the story of a bloke with “ literally “ a rocket up his arse. The kind of story the Daily Mail would approvingly headline Illegal Immigrants on fast track home”

Well that™s breakfast sorted then.

I see from the Torygraph that you can now digest the daily calorific limit with just a single meal from Burger King. Sounds good to me, get out of bed, drive to the nearest SuperSizeMe outlet and tuck into an athlete’s breakfast. On the downside, the rest of the day is a bit of a write off since your bloated stomach will demand heroic efforts are made to break down a pound of saturated fat. A process that is best approached from a horizontal position while exercising lightly with the TV remote control.

In the same way that alcohol makes people appear thinner and more attractive, burgers have the opposite effect adding chins, dribble and nailed on certainly heart failure to a list of existing mental defects including limited willpower. Ostrich like though this behavior is, it does mirror what passes for chocolate eating rationale while on a slimming diet.

You know the kind of thing; It says I can have a glass of wine and a bacon sandwich for breakfast followed by an entire bison for lunch as long as I include too oxygenating vegetables“. Even with only sufficient nutritional knowledge to barely separate green beans from baked beans, even I can see this for the nonsense it so obviously is. How can dieting be a multi million pound industry when anyone with a pair of friendly braincells knows the basic truth that if you eat less and exercise more, you’ll live longer.

You may not even lose weight but it’ll be distributed in such a way that you stop giving off the shifty impression you’re attempting to smuggle a bowling ball in your stomach lining. I’m not being fattest here, I’m just trying to inject a sense of reality into the extremes of so called professional advice on offer. At one end you’ve got those fat fucks (ok I’m being fattest now, it’s not like you can outrun me) who can barely walk a mile without keeling over and damaging the earth’s mantle, and at the other the body Nazi’s to whom a microgram of fat is analogous to anthrax.

If we’re going to chuck around worthless statistics and pointless diets, then let me add this; well known fact that below the age of thirty most of us have hummingbird metabolisms and can eat and drink our own bodyweight daily with non trouser shopping required. Hit thirty one, wake up, you’re a fat bastard. If that’s a body shape you’re comfortable with then you’re entitled to tell anyone who smokes, drinks or partakes in recreational pharmaceuticals to mind their own bloody business. Otherwise, do something, anything but don’t subscribe to the stupidity that is diet marketing. And don’t blame big bones or the ruthless buggers that tempt you with burgers/chocolate/crisps at every turn.

Oops, turned into a bit of a righteous tirade that did. And that’s pretty hypocritical as I’m hardly the perfect physical specimen what with a fluid intake that’s basically hops lightened up with a splash of water. My own advice would suggest cutting out the beer and instead getting down with the abdominal crunch crowd.

But now you’re just being silly. And that’s my job.

A question of degrees.

At the arse end of four educationally untroubled years, I was surprisingly awarded a first class honours degree by half of one percent. My perennial roommate was a swotty top of our class and received a£50 merit prize. I received partial liver failure and a late night Snickers habit.

A year later, the polytechnic invited me back to address the undergraduates. Their less than subtle subtext was to convince their drunken charges that if only they’d stop fondling each other long enough, they’d realise a little bit of application now maketh a successful career.

My less subtle state of undress “ they really should have twigged my refusal to wear a suit or to provide a copy of my speech likely hid a fifth columnist “ directed a rambling monologue on life in the real world. It can “ and I’m sorry to report, it was “ summed up with a single piece of robust advice Have as much fun, sex and booze as you can now, as it’s properly miserable out here”. Surprisingly, I wasn’t invited back.

Continue reading “A question of degrees.”