Month: December 2006

The Office Christmas Party….

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense2 Comments

… 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….” →

Leading from the front.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

I thought a good way to spend a weekend would be to go and ride with a complete bunch of strangers. Clearly giving little thought to how this could affect my wallet, what little self respect remains and possibly a vital internal organ. Here I am:

Flickr Pic of ride

Bristling beard to the fore, hungover limbs and alcohol sweating countenance somewhat further behind. And all those following riders consulting their internal Debrett’s to clarify the appropriate phraseology to elucidate get the fuck out of the way you great ladyboy mincing queen“. This is tricky because we only knew each other through the grooming of Internet forums.

My friend Dave has written the definitive work on forum cliques and there’s nothing to add other than to paraphrase the hoary there’s nowt stranger than people“. On the Internet you have the luxury of time to think before you speak and edit if you change your mind. Real life is a little more shop front and all the better for it; in the transition from virtual to physical, these faceless posters became amusing and, mostly, drunken companions. They were all properly odd though but since some of them live almost in Lancashire, that’s understandable.

I learned a few other things as well. If you ride with 30+ people with mountain bikes in various states of mechanical distress, the statistical probability points to much faffing and fixing. This happened exactly as predicted except with the slight anomaly that it all happened to me. 34 riders sailed though the ride with nary a mechanical whisper of complaint, while my bike exploded in a catastrophic chain reaction of expensive components.

Well sort of – the chain did anyway and rather than share out the breakages, instead it took it on itself to serially snap under the power of my awesome thighs. Okay that’s not quite true either, firstly the chain bent itself in an interesting manner around the chainrings and, subsequently weakened, snapped during the most inopportune moments.

This left me with a chain so short, I was almost reduced to the horror of singlespeeding and a added injury via a bruised testicle impaled on a cruelly sharp stem. My new non virtual friends wheeled tools with a quiet confidence while I slunk away for a much needed bollock rub.

Proof, if further proof were needed, that Mountain Bikers are true athletes was ably demonstrated during a much needed food stop. Half of the mud encrusted riders salivated over to the pie shop where the poor old dear running it was almost overrun in the stampede for life saving pasties. The remainder haughtily dismissed our pie fetish as unworthy of their personal training goals and instead decamped to the chip shop.

I also learnt not to mix Stella with “ well “ anything really. Certainly not White Russians served in full size coffee cups and clearly containing dangerous fluids banned under the Geneva Convention. My education was further enhanced by an alternate view of the humble sleeping bag. This became the staying awake” bag as the bunkhouse dormitories trilled to the whinny of accomplished snorers and rumbled alarmingly, as partially digested energy bars made a noisy exit via the low notes of the bowel trombone.

So all in all, it was fantastic fun although I sincerely hope the next one is in summer. My year round t-shirt attire and hard Northern attitude to weather has been distilled to almost nothing by living in the South for too many years.

It’s almost enough to make you vote Tory.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

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.

Five things I love about commuting

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding9 Comments

Love is an emotive noun and a dangerous verb. Unless you live in California, it’s almost impossible to suffix any apparently significant verb with “I‘m lovin it man“. Try that in Halifax and they’d beat you to death with your own self parody and sell you to the kebab van..

I mean “yeah, I railed that berm and pulled a no handed fruit bat reverse into the hip and I’m just lovin it man”. You’re kebab stock and quite right too.

And yet, for the last eighteen months, great swathes of my life have been erased by a twelve hour day of which four of those hours represent actually getting to work. This is clearly bonkers because what kind of mentalist would exchange a sixth of their day traveling to the office ? Well this one because I’d rather bring my kids up in Baghdad than London and even short circuiting the parenting reflex, our great capital is essentially ten million fucktards wrapped in some interesting history.

The clever bit is to treat these four hours as an interesting life slice, ensuing cracking out emails or slumbering in a dribbly manner. There’s more to life and here are my top five reasons for carrying on:

1:Riding my bike
For those with a high boredom threshold who’ve endured a year of this blog, it’ll be eminently clear that I’m a grumpy bugger. Being a card carrying Yorkshireman, this is essentially our regional identify and I’m powerless to resist our Borg-like state of mind. But I bloody love riding my bike. In any weather, with weary legs or a thick head, and always facing sapping headwinds. Oh it’s crap for a minute but great forever doing the only thing I ever applied myself to and maybe, just maybe whisper it in a dark room, something I’m good at.

I love fighting with the traffic, flicking a “V” after an outrages move, zipping down the outside of fifty grand cars locked into a congestion grid. Making bold moves, stretching every muscle and straining every sinew to win a race, make a gap, staying alive. The worst weather system you ever rode through doesn’t even begin to rock like riding a bike.

When I’m too old, too ill, too broken to do it anymore, then I’ll be properly miserable.

2:Not being you
Donning the corporate cloak and checking in your “fuck you” gland at the door is somewhat at odds with my eighteen year old self. At that age we’re all different and yet double that age and only the chemically displaced still believe we’re not all the same. So we search for differentiation and on a bike I find it in spades. I’m the guy with an informal train seat reservation system as sweat evidences my gloriously fast ride to the station. Shorts and a T-Shirt delineate me as a guy who rides his bike every day and, as a careless aside, spends a few hours in the office.

I could be almost anything else; a bike courier, a high alpine trekking guide, a circumnavigating two wheeled hero. I choose this because I’m planning and I’m dreaming but it’s not my life. What can you in your fat suit and tunnel broken communications offer instead of this?

Go check you’re Blackberry for answers. I win.

3:Feeling fit
Not properly fit you understand. The realm of zero body fat, nutritional plans and exercise schedules are for those with almost nothing better to do. It’s with some wry amusement that I enter my fortieth year knowing that however much I ride, it’s not the exiler of life. At no point will the hair regrow from my crown, the thickening of body reduce to barely post-pubescent levels and nervous energy will mainline serial 18 hour days.

But that’s ok, this is enough. A balance between age, beer and exercise has been perfectly attained through bloody minded commuting. One glorious summers’ day, my pace was such that even those on the Auschwitz revival circuit could not best me. Never have I ridden so hard or so fast for so long. Even chasing a falling sun on the way home, sweat and lactic acid became my pace partners and I refused to slack.

Age begets slowness but since I’m only chasing myself, it’ll probably be ok.

4:Racing
Mountain biking is my sport so I’ve tried almost every discipline including racing. Luckily I was rubbish enough never to take it seriously. Almost no one finished behind me unless they’d been accidentally concussed with a pump by a wheezing bloke looking for excuses.

So if you don’t succeed, redefine your criteria for success. And go commuter racing which is just bloody great fun. It’s like Fight Club, you never talk about it, you never acknowledge you are racing, you neither crow in victory or admit defeat. It’s been a while since I’ve been bested although since I have “previous” with Bromptons, Halfords specials, and semi inflated horrors piloted by bicycle clips, my provenance in this area is hardly flawless.

But it is fucking fantastic, picking a victim, cruising up their “six” and then powering past while affecting the carefree actions of a man looking for his cigarette case. I’m not fast, merely furious and have long abandoned aerobic fitness for cheating and death or glory moves. Okay I may be killed and while that appears to have some downsides, the alternative is getting bested by a bloke with 4 PSI in his tyres, so it’s really a small price to pay.

I love racing. Except when I’m not in the mood when it doesn’t count. Just so we understand each other.

5: Displacement theory
Odd one this. Most of the randomness which wastes electrons on this blog is dreamed up while I’m riding to work. My peripheral vision, schooled by eighteen months of not dying, apes the best electronics radar. The route is hard wired and my left brain plays out every possible “stupid manoeuvre” that some lunatic may pull in front of me.

So I’m left with 80 minutes a day to do something else. It frees my mind to freewheel randomly and bind backwater synapses with metrosexual dendrites. The insoluble become porous and a thousand plot lines for six hundred people with nothing better to read than this play out.

Sadly a broken short term memory and lack or writing materials lead to a desperate attempt to lasso fading ideas. Probably a blessing frankly and if you want descriptive prose and correctly conjugated verbs, I can thoroughly recommend the BBC web site.

So bring it on with your hated cars and monsoon like weather. Soak me, squash me and best me in races. Lambast my riding style and devalue our shared community through stupidity. I care not; in simple terms cyclists are right and almost everyone else is wrong – so join me brothers and sisters in our quest for respect and understanding, you have nothing to lube but your chain*.

*Sorry but I’ve been trying to get that line in for bloody ages 😉

Five things I hate about commuting.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding9 Comments

1: Car (and other) drivers
An unsurprising number one but to add a twist to the standard car hating cyclist rant, it’s not all of them. Well not quite “ it a broad church including anyone that drives a SUV (or TWATVEHICLE as I like to think of them) in town, all those apparently lucid humans who believe cyclists were put on the road for bloodsport, the special needs wannabe comics who make feeble jokes about road tax and any form of public transport.

Two types of drivers exist; those who are trying to kill you and those who do it apologetically. To the former, we’re a hated genus, a sub species of human who “ if they possessed any sentient intelligence “ would be bloody grateful to be wiped off this earth. The latter just forgot to look.

A small percentage are pagan outcasts to this visceral church. They are generally 90 years old and concentrating so hard on avoiding those pesky lampposts, to pose us any threat. But beware any person driving with a hat especially anything with flowers. Trust me on this.

2:Holier than thou hippy evangelists.
Hey man we’re all in this together. Don’t bust the vibe running red lights or trading aggression “ if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem y’know. Have a toke on this lentil?. Oh you know the sort, the God loves me or everyone hates you who plaster themselves over the forums bullying those unable to marshal an augment, and lambasting the rest of us that don’t give a shit.

Cyclists aren’t a breed apart. Ok, the ratio of normal to fuckwit is significantly smaller than the itinerant cagers but we’re not short of assholes snootily occupying the moral high ground, mistakenly under the impression that vast swathes of the cycling population flock to their cause.

It’s every man for himself and anyone that tells you otherwise should probably revisit hatred#1.

3:The train
Considering some of my previous missives, the stuffed metal sandwich which chuffs between my two bike rides adopts a lowly third rank. And rank it is, championing a business model where we pay more for less service. I’ll grudgingly accept it’s not all wank when the railway company manages to adhere to their timetable for entire days on end. But when they don’t, we’re marooned outside Harrow On The Hill while chronologically unbroken epochs pass by the window.

It’s similar to being forced to go to for the dentist. You know it’s going to be expensive, delayed and bloody painful but you really have no choice. And the real kicker is that they know that. It’s not even that they don’t care, it’s just they don’t have to.

4:The faff
Managing the transition from grubby mountain biker to corporate clone in either direction is tedium to the power of a thousand.. Slipping out of the office on time in the secure knowledge that “ best case “ it’s two hours before I get home, and in between are changes to both clothes and transport medium. Watching a fun sun dive below the summer horizon or bracing briefly train warmed limbs for significant weather draws a long sigh and a longer face.

Many times in winter, I’ve been gritting teeth into a bastard headwind laced with snow and ice while recent train companions swoosh past in their heated safety cages. And I can’t help thinking you know, I’ve got one of those?.

5: Other cyclists
If I may be allowed a small Ben Elton moment oooh a bit of politics? except not really. But while I applaud the two wheeled heroes and heroines who risk life and possibly one limb every day, you don’t half piss me off. Either with your stupid selfishness (blithely careering into a stroller on a pedestrian crossing), your craven cowardliness (that bloke cut you up, go and fucking punch him, it’s the only language they understand) or your galloping gait (Jesus, slow down, I’m like a dog with a motorbike, I just can’t help chasing you but if you carry on at this speed, you’ll have my death on your conscience).

And yet I still do it because the alternative is too bloody depressing and to this negative Ying is a positive Yang which will form the next entry in my never ending whinge at the world.

Still, it’s better than actually doing anything about it.

Papering over the cracks

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Some people take a book into the toilet whereas I am to be found, in our shrine to the Thunderbox, with wallpaper. I’m neither short of reading material nor pushing the vanguard of the mystical readings of wallpaper runes “ no I’ve been decorating* This is a continuation of a worrying trend; first trellis, then grouting and now wallpapering have spookily accompanied a dribbly descent into my middle years.

We have no wallpaper anywhere else in the house, and neither Carol or I have ever attempted anything legal with a decorating table and paste before. That’s probably why she’s chosen the smallest room with its dearth of natural light and shortness of occupation. It’s unlikely anyone will spend enough time in there to gaze perplexed at the innovative use of Tippex and marker pens. Especially now I’ve removed the library shelf.

There’s a reason we’ve never felt the urge to subscribe to Wallpapering today encompassing Dull As Fuck DIY Tasks?. The apparently simple task of cutting, pasting and hanging is analogous to placing an angry octopus into a paper bag. Firstly shooing the kids off their impromptu hop scotch game as we rolled out the paper, then finding a table big enough to start pasting and then finding you can’t actually paste it without it either tearing or making a break for freedom. Applying the paste with a Creosote brush led to two off table and one on cat excursion. We’ve been onto the Cat Club about our new breed The Pissed Off Tabby now white with blue squares?.

Once wrenched off the table, it then sticks to absolutely everything including, on occasion, the wall. During one moment of hilarity, I wallpapered myself and ran around the kitchen shouting wooooo I am the ghost of wallpaper? which impressed everyone in the house under the age of eight. In my defense, this childish act was performed to relieve the tedium of the whole endeavour. It seemed to take bloody ages to line up, hang, re-hang, swear, re-hang, brush, roller, cut, self harm and scream give me a tin of paint? – I was expecting the Red Cross to be shipping in emergency food rations.

The instructions “ when did wallpaper start coming with instructions? “ insisted, that to maintain the pattern, you were obliged to chop off and discard many expensive inches. We soon saw through this thinly disguised marketing guff, instead applying the paper through the power of random. The result “ as you’d probably expect “ is magnificent. I would not be surprised if passing strangers are directed by guides to our smallest room, as a vignette of the old Grand Tour. It’s almost a copy of the Sistine chapel roof in there only flipped sideways, and with admittedly more paste than Michelangelo may have used. And less angels, but you get the idea.

I’m seriously considering charging admission and selling postcards.

Having completed this decorating Magnum Opus, a rather unsavoury fact has come to light. A depressingly vast acreage of house needs similar treatment starting with the Kid’s room, for which they have a design even Lawrence Flounce about like a great Poofta? Bowen would struggle to create. As ever being a results driven, self starter, thinking out of a box?** kind of guy, a solution immediately presented itself.

I’ll be paying someone else to do it. Some people apparently enjoy shopping for architrave and cricking their necks to paint the ceiling. I enjoy beer and laziness so playing to my strengths seems the way forward.

* That may be overstating my contribution.
** I read this somewhere, I don’t know what it means but it sounds like it may merit a pay rise so I’m giving it a try.

Insufficiently motivated

On By AlexIn Other stuff5 Comments

A while ago I whittered on about a state I’m now thinking of as Schroedinger’s Hamster* while waiting for my appraisal. Kind of not sure what’d happen next and wondering if noxious gasses may be involved. However, the complete strangers that most of you are got me through it, although I’m still not sure if the chicken suit AND chicken were not showing rather too much keenness.

Anyway, connected by the most tenuous of threads to that is this. We’ve all been subjected to those motivational posters with such dreadful propositions such as “There is no I in team” and “To see far lands, you must lose sight of the shore“. I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking why isn’t there a “The Drugs Don’t Work but they get us through till 5pm” or “My boss is a big fat fuck of an arse but I’m licking it as I need the cash“.

Well there is. And it’s here. Welcome to a firm that has spent many hours devising anti-corporate posters of which a goodly percentage will – I promise you – end with your breakfast sprayed over the monitor. My personal favourite, as a man with something of the night about him, is:

Honestly, I could post them all but in an agony of picking just one more, this one had to be the winner:

External Link

They ship them from the US for not much cash and as a Christmas present will provide far more longevity and enjoyment that a rainbow jumper or novelty tie.

Go and support these people. There cannot be a free marketplace that doesn’t allow such genius to survive

* Name changed because I was tempted to do a necrophiliac pussy joke and nobody deserves that.

Back, Crack and Whack.

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Middle age has not crept up in a raging against the dying of the light” kind of way. No, instead it’s come equipped for GBH, bashing its’ way through once flexible joints demanding cardigans and low impact exercise – otherwise there will be trouble. Trouble of the non reversible and ruthlessly painful kind.

So licensed muscle pummelers of various denominations have been working their black magic on my aching bones for the last few months. During this time, the provenance of this rambling pantheon of pain givers has been established though no little questioning and quite a lot of elbow biting misery. Firstly, Massage Therapists are not those angel dressed, ethereal beauties wafting into expensive hotel rooms. Fellas, their soft hands attending to your hardening pleasure centres have almost nothing to do with physical therapy, but absolutely everything to do with prostitution.

Continue reading “Back, Crack and Whack.” →