Month: November 2006

Well, that’s a bit of a worry.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense5 Comments

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”

Gone tomorrow, hair today.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

I’ve decided to grow a beard – although if one was striving for complete accuracy, this is merely a hairy symptom of not shaving. It’s a little known indicator of Ebola/Flu/a minor cold that your upper lip becomes anything but stiff when serially assaulted with snot and ˜soft‘ tissues. Soft my arse or possibly soft as my arse, these barely disguised sheets of weapons grade wet’n’dry turn the under-nasal area into a no shave zone.

So on finally staggering valiantly into the office, only 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of my professional associates burst into violent fits of laughter. The other 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} either held that laughter in long enough to make it to the bogs before collapsing in unconstrained mirth, or are so brain dead they failed to notice a wizened old rat clamped around my jaw.

Still I believe in all it’s goaty greyness it adds a certain gravitas and dignity to an otherwise undistinguished fizog. I may be tramping alone in the word of facial fashion on this one but it’s keeping me warm on cold commutes, providing a repository for emergency food and “ in extreme circumstances “ may offer a full head of hair if I can merely rotate the old spud 180 degrees.

So I think you’re all with me here; a bit of a winner all round.

Sadly the addition of a weighty facial hair and the loss of a lung to asthma in no way crimped off the competitive gland. Having been removed from the traffic biorhythms for the last week, I was out of sync with a three light set and he sneaked past without any respect for my bearded and snotty countenance. A bit of a cycling conundrum was he with a worthy but elderly race bike, a pair of fierce looking calves and bicycle clips. Had it not been for the old diorriha preventers, I’d not have raised what little game remains but honestly BICYCLE CLIPS.

Not only was he terribly confused about the acceptability of these seventies anti-icons, he also was pretty damn nifty through the traffic with his narrow bars and suicidal approach to closing gaps. I strapped on the metaphoric tortoise shell and played the long game, catching him on half remembered light sequences and sprinting past up Constitution hill having taken a lengthy draft up the mall.

He wasn’t happy. I could tell as we circled each other like wary stags waiting for release up into Hyde Park. Nobody was clipping out of pedals here but I broke first opting for a lengthy trackstand while still maintaining eye contact. I’m not sure he was impressed but I certainly was, and when the green fired off instant sprints across the traffic, an impromptu wheelie marked my determination to be first into the park.

This is my personal Mount Ventoux. Oh I can hear you mocking but put the world’s finest riders on crappy commuter bikes after a day in our offices and let them attempt to sprint past the local dogging club and suicidally black clad pedestrians, and I’m heading for a podium. So a desperate 200 seconds followed where Al just the one available lung” Leigh revved up his biggest gear and manfully resisted the strong urge to throw up.

Looking back is a sign of weakness and I had enough of those already so it wasn’t until the Bayswater road stuttered into my personal geography did I steal a glance. The perfect commuter win is when your assailant is still in sight, far enough back for it to be clear to everyone he’s a broken man but close enough that your gloating cannot be mistaken for constipation.

He was nowhere in sight. I can only assume he turned off some distance before. To say I feel aggrieved is akin to wondering if the French ever felt slightly piqued that we nicked all the best bits of Canada once they’d colonised it and named it new France. I nearly went back to find the ungrateful bugger and demand an explanation.

First bicycle clips and now this. Honestly, some people have no idea at all.

It™d be great to be five.

On By AlexIn Other stuff5 Comments

Not five o’clock when my the maritimely authentic, personally installed barn mounted yardarm dips below the sun, rather a physical age where mental conundrums are verbalised without ever passing through any kind of appropriateness filter.

Let me source you a representative example; to my left Random, five years old and cheerfully unconnected to the workings of the world, to my right a copse of wind blown autumnal leaves latterly connected to their host trees.

Dad, I know why those leaves are falling off the trees”
Why’s that Hon?”
Because it’s Autumn and the tree has to go to sleep for the winter”
That’s right”
So, these leaves, they all die do they? Doesn’t the tree love them anymore?”
Thinks for a bit, death is a minefield that kids simply navigate whilst you explode on moves they’ve planned three moves ahead

They’re not dead Hon, they’re just going into the soil to make new trees”
I’m pretty happy with this, most angles covered
They still die though, they don’t even live a year and even our hamster lasted longer than that”

Bugger, that bloody hamster, it didn’t die of natural courses, it’s genetic drive for an out of cage experience ended fatally during an in a cat experience.
Well yes I suppose so but the tree goes on for ages, come and have a look at how old it is”
It’s an old oak, stretching arthritically for the sky throwing limbs akimbo around a fat and knarled trunk.

Wow, that looks really old? changes verbal direction Is the bark like skin then?”
Prods next sentence with minesweeper. Comes up with a clean tone
Yeah I guess it is”

Wow, looks even more wrinkled than Grandma and She’s ANCIENT”
Grandma is in attendance. Now not looking quite so fondly at her previously loved cheeky granddaughter. Change subject rapidly before she gets really personal.
Anyway, why didn’t you want to walk home from the pub, you’ve only been swimming, you’ve had a huge lunch, you got up late, you’re only five, what’s wrong with you?”

Pensive expression spreads on her face like clouds on a sunny day. Fastens finger to lip and mentally strains for the right words. Clouds turn to rain as she’s clearly upset she can’t express herself properly
Well Dad, you know, you know, I’m, you know¦, you know…..”
Come on, have a go at the words, what do you mean”
Honestly?”
Honestly”
Dad, I’m bloody knackered”

Grandma de-wills youngest daughter whereas I have to be collected off the pavement due to hysterical convulsions. But this is the kind of thing that happens all the time with Random “ she’s just loose change in the vast mint of real life.

A couple more to cement the argument – When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, she responded with a huge smile and I’d like to be a big house which we could all live in”. And only last week she asked me Daddy, if I was a baby elephant, would you still be my dad?”

Biologically tricky to answer that one. But I tell you if they grow up any faster, I’m having ˜em down the hospital to check for Genetic Modification.

Well that™s breakfast sorted then.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

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.

Oh how jolly, we’ve set fire to the cabbages.

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Guy Fawkes – obviously the sanest bloke ever to enter Parliament and look what happened to the poor bugger. All he ever wanted to do was explode the king into a thousand non identifiable pieces, and add significant collateral damage to the stuffed and hair shirts pontificating on the future of the country; to whit how they, the landed and ruling classes, could stuff everyone else to make more money. Ooh that chip’s hot on the shoulder today.

So here we are four hundred years since the poor sod received a state hanging for his republican zeal and many thousand bonfires bridge the gap between history and reality. Although political correctness dictates we no longer have a Guy” pyratically reliving the events of 1605 and quite right too; if we’re going have the whole Sealed Knot nonsense, let’s do it properly with ˜hanging from the neck until dead’ followed by a jolly butcher’s quartering before assorted organs are flung at face height through the power of four horses and an insane form of protestant justice.

Probably frighten the kids a bit that, so instead we’ll fire up a bonfire of the vanities possibly miscoded as the village firework do. While the current government continues to reject the use of rockets and other firepower “ except in the pursuit of some lame and tired foreign policy – we risked third degree burns and possible censure through the firing of a few low orbiting projectiles over the allotment.

Neighbours, who I know only from a friendly nod, come together with a good burn of right-on non recyclable rubbish and a legion of unruly vegetables, accompanied by mulled mine, rubbish fireworks and a perennial feeling of community. It’s all sentimental nonsense of course and considering my previous tirades at the middle class pretending to care, it had more than a little potential to be bloody dreadful.

And guess what? It wasn’t. We’ve been doing this for ever, bucking the trend of Englishman’s Castle isolation instead chucking in a tenner, a few beers, and whatever Tesco could offer in terms of premium sausage rolls. Did you make these yourself? They are FANTASTIC”/”Yeah, sort of, made the money to pay for them which is almost the same thing”

The allotments opposite our house are rather impressive both in terms of acreage and pointlessly oversized root vegetables. They also provide the annual hotspot for a swift burning fire, small talk based on guesswork and night vision and a fireworks display that “ with twenty plus kids present “ would soften the heart of the most cynical arsehole. Trust me on this, I have almost all of the credentials to validate that statement.

I turned up with a the Bastard Cold That Will Never Leave, a crate of beers and an aloof expression. Maybe it’s working in London that’s hard wired a cringing shudder when kitsch is on the menu, until a shadowy neighbour proffered a plastic cup of mulled wine clearly simmered on Lucifer’s crucible. A single gulp suffused a nuclear reaction of warmth from head to toe evicting the virusy squatting of what I believe is Ebola. You may notice it’s quite strong, we tried boiling off the Brandy but I’m not sure it’s worked”

After a brief enquiry into the ingredients of this liquid sun, I felt qualified to explain that a two week period would be required to boil off a pint of Brandy. Apparently they got it cheap which makes me worry that somewhere Austria may be missing a runway de-icer.

Food exhausted, once the locusts of children had devoured the dessert selection, fireworks began begat by two headtorches representing sober parents. Amusingly, someone “ in a fit of inspired urban planning “ had set Aylesbury on fire some four miles distant which somewhat put our£10.99 selection box to shame. So we ooh’ed and ar’ed as the dwarf lit fountains and orbitally constrained missiles briefly took flight before expiring with a final long spark, putting paid to any remaining cultivated vegetation.

But everyone loved it. Including me which considering I’d intended to bring a camera with a long exposure and an aloof expression was a bit of a surprise. So while the excitement hardly raised a heartbeat, my smallest child ran around happily shrieking until she ran out of positive electrons and was dispatched homewards with Grandma. The other one inserted fingers earwards and refused to accept her friend’s entreating arguments that fireworks only hurt the sky.

Go tell that to Mr. Fawkes.

Anyway, I wanted to write how rubbish and stupid and pointless it was. But you know what? I thought it was great, it reminded me of Charles’ and Di’s plates, bunting in the street and the notion that someone other than those in full view of a mirror actually matters.

I loved it 🙂

Mud in your eye.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Other stuff3 Comments

The other day, some cheeky bugger accused me of being a card carrying Daily Flail reader. So shocked at this defamatory slur and so sure of my own hand wringing liberal credentials, I got all mung-bean on his arse. But, obviously only in an inclusive, consultative ‘we’re all in it together donchaknow’ kind of way‘. Honestly if I sat on the fence any harder, I’d get splinters but this one off affront to my wishy washy tenancies soon became a two off when someone lent me a book by Jeremy Clarkson because they honestly believed a little of my style matched his.

What? Middle aged bloke ranting at easy targets to an appreciative audience, chucking in just enough contention to preserve some kind of hipness rating. Can’t see it myself, although clearly he’s made a decent living out of being a pretend-radical arse and has verb conjugating off to a fine art. Not that I’d ever prostitute myself on the altar of commercialism because a. it’d go against everything I believe in and b. I’d be there along time echoing “hello” into an empty void.

Still it’s better than being lumped in with the “who should we hate this week” mob of the Mail and maybe one day somebody’ll say “you know that Shakespeare, there’s an odd bloke with a blog who’s a little like him….“. I’m prepared for a long wait.

Anyway the backside of these perceived slights fired off a righteous article on Daily Mail readers with a focus on their little englander mentally and the paucity of the sports pages. So here it is then – except I brought the wrong writing book home and no-one deserves either the Spanish Inquisition or a lengthy discourse on the inner workings of the firm. So instead, I’ll talk about mud – of which here in the Chilterns we have about a thousand words to describe it. Eskimo’s* would recognise our characterisations of sloppy, thick, wheel arresting, wet, oggy, face splattering and cowshit with further subdivisions of elasticity, flingable range and smell.

And in another thriller like twist, that’s not the mud we’re looking for here. This is what my expensive bike looked like earlier.

That’ll be Wales in the Autumn then; the grass is that green for a reason, it rains a great deal to the point where it’s hard to distinguish between reservoirs and flooded fields. I’m not big on cleaning bikes mainly because of the intense dullness of any job requiring the outside use of a toothbrush but also because my one pristine bike is channeling ScarFace. It looks as if the bloke off the Texas Chainsaw Massacre has briefly moonlighted with an anglegrinder and gone to work on America’s finest.

Never mind, it’s over eighteen months old which makes it the elderly bull elephant in the bikey herd. I could keep it for ever, learn to ride it properly and practice non passive-aggressive maintenance techniques, or I could punt it onto the electronic graveyard and see what new clothes the Emperor is currently modeling.

If two anti ego strokes weren’t enough, a further blight to the crop of self esteem came when posts of non bike denomination were demanded in some kind of multi faith love in. You’ve got to appreciate the limited resources I’m working with here – my last dalliance with attempting to become erudite led to me gluing my fingers together. But the snoop cocking Mail article will follow assuming I didn’t write it up as a set of meeting minutes. In which case I’ll be revisiting the commercialism thing 😉

If you like your mud up close and personal, welcome to the word of the macro

* Yes, I do know that Eskimo’s actually have only a few words for snow. I believe most of their vocabulary is made up of phrases to cover “fuck, it’s dark”, “fuck, it’s cold” and “fuck sorry, I thought you were the husky”.

What the hell was that..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

… that, my friends, was the sound of Winter rushing in early to claim squatters rights in Autumn’s house. Somebody clearly told the planet about global warming since the local response has been to dump about thirteen degrees from the ambient temperature and ice frost onto every flat surface.

My pre-ride analysis of the weather could be summarised thus:”Cold and Clear, good. Minus one, loss of feeling in extremities, bad“. Not quite sure which expensive winter specific cycle clothing to don, I simply wore it all. The first five minutes were still really quite unpleasant, as a chilling northerly sought out and froze any uncovered skin. Since this included my nose and ears, a frantic gloved rearrangement of apparel bolted the stable door but the horse was gone. It also gave me the appearance of a vagrant, festooned as I was with all manner of inappropriate extremity warmers

Dog walkers hastily crossed the street with a desperately whispered “Stay away from that man Zoe, he’s got a handkerchief on his head and a pair of spare gloves taped to his nose”. All that was missing was a shopping trolley and a can of Special Brew.

But cold muscles finally cranked sufficient revolutions to start the body furnace, and a lovely warmth spread across my body and brought a smile to cracked lips. Amazingly clever really; feeling a bit hot, just back off the pedals, now a bit cold? Just leg crank the bellows for a minute and toastiness will return. I was put in mind of Val Doonican, a warm fire and a very poorly chosen jumper.

It’ll be less fun in the dark going home. Warm train to cold platform is something that’s giving me panic attacked flashbacks to last winter. I would have taken the car this morning but I really couldn’t be arsed to defrost it. That task was undertaken about twenty minutes later on my testicles, through the almost forgotten art of a vigorous crotch rub. Still we don’t want any more kids, or, come to that, people to sit next to me on the train.

If it’s this cold now, then summer must just be around the corner. That’s right isn’t it?