Author: Alex

Fat. It’s the new fat.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Are you familiar with Hypertension” the Doc asked. I gave this a few seconds of serious consideration before confirming that as a specky student of Battlestar Galactica, intergalactic space travel held no secrets from me. That’s hyperspace” she sighed wearily belying the fact that she was about fifteen years my junior and it was I who should be doing the weary sighing. On the not unreasonable grounds that I was the patient with a diagnostically troubling condition and she was the twenty something on a 100k per year.

There could be something in it though; I was feeling significantly tense having booked at 8:30 appointment which some fifty minutes later showed no sign of ever actually occurring. How can a surgery “ sorry health centre like there’s ANYBODY healthy in there “ open at 8am and be running an hour late an hour later? And, later that same day veins were significantly raised on my forehead as two thousand years of generic stupidity played out in front of me.

The women responsible for my blood pumping angst was an uncanny ringer for Mrs. Overall of Acorn Antiques fame. Three times she stooped to punch in a mathematically troubling four digit pin code and three times she hit cancel instead. Each time accompanied by a little oh get me, aren’t I silly” laugh clearly unaware of six potential bypass operations steaming in the queue behind here.

On finally cracking the Chip’n’Pin code, she then tweaked my own personal irritomitor by chattily extending her stay at the counter. She wondered if it would be ok to have her cash dispensed in unmarked small notes, brown coins and ration coupons. Why this wonderment had to wait until she’d painstakingly opened her cavernous bag, rooted round the boiled sweets for an ancient purse and deposited the money in its’ black heart I shall never know. And neither shall she, because I was forced to beat her senseless with a rolled copy of the banking charter before the NHS had six emergency heart operations on their hands.

Since the doctor was unimpressed with both my phantom symptoms and a treatment regime based on the healing power of beer, it seemed a good time to try something else. But that’s not going to be the Turbo Trainer on which five sessions has convinced me that only people with a boredom threshold of “ say “ a goldfish can endure them.

I tried spinning to MTB DVDs, favourite films, interesting porn sent to me by people I hardly know and finally staring at the wall. At the end of each session my worthiness at a personal creation of an inland lake palled in the face of such intense boredom. I was forced to down about 10 beers to compensate which someone bypassed the benefit.

So instead I’ve abandoned food and eaten the turbo.

But something must be done and in the dusty recesses of my DVD collection is a pirated copy of a horror cringingly entitled Beach Body“. It’s made up of pain segments focusing on abdominals, muscle sculpture and aerobics which could be better described as you’ll never sit up again“, you’ll never walk again” and you’ve died horribly“

The main protagonist is an ridiculously healthy American named Tony ably assisted by Dan and Julie both of whom are only slightly less honed than our Tone. Never will you see any three people so desperately in need of a good pie and a few pints. They don’t need exercise, they need framing with their cheesy smiles and perfect form. Tony performs a million arm curls before “ with not a hair out of place or a bead of sweat on his brow “ demanding that you feel the burn“.

I am not only feeling the burn but also the possible permanent damage of an old bloke attempting complex exercise routines. Honestly the aerobic section is lethal “ already the computer has felt the power of my vigorous arm rotation and a couple of times I’ve over rotated out of control and dangerously spun into the next room. I shall let your imagination roam free as you consider my wife’s response to a gasping, twirling beachbody wannabee as he crashes elegantly into something fragile and expensive.

Maybe it’s time for a stomach staple and a friend recommended that they staple it to my head so at least it’d improve the level of thatch. Kind words indeed.

I think I’ve glimpsed the future and it has cardigans in it.

I have entered a parallel universe

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

And it’s a wonderful place. After taking my lunch in what we’ve started to call “Meeting Room 5” should anyone ask awkward questions, I returned to this missive from Corporate Services:

“I am very sorry that this has taken so long but am pleased to inform you the shower on the RH side has been repaired and is now operational.”

So an apology AND a working shower – surely not in my lifetime? I ran downstairs to see if this could possibly be true and stunningly it was.

My life of cynicism is over. After a mere three months of asking, the vast engineering undertaking of repairing a single shower has been successfully completed.

I have had quite alot to say about showers so this development has done much to restore my faith in uncaring, faceless bureaucracy.

That is all 🙂

Depressed. You damn well should be.

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Some pointlessly funded research tells us that January the 24th is the most depressing day of the year. This so called extensive analysis of all things that makes you scream “aaarrrgghhhhh, I can take no more” and switch your diet to any liquid best shown off by a brown bag, has clearly been nowhere near our house when the relatives pitch up. That’s a day which starts with a downer and is grimacingly subterranean by the time some twisted individual suggests a game of Charades. An entertaining pastime, I’ve come to think of as a cheery alternative to disemboweling yourself with a blunt soup ladle.

And back in 2006 that research was wasted once an unwanted pantarectemy reminded me of the huge importance of packing items to clothe your nether regions. Since then, not a day has passed without a frission of excitement as the commuting bag of doom gives up its’ bounty of hastily packed laundry.

Not that I’m actually doing much commuting at the moment what with the medical predicament that only I can see, and a plethora of fine reasons to avoid travelling to London. Last of these was a fun packed two days with those suppliers of computer software whose corporate motto goes something like “fuck the competition laws, we’ve got better lawyers“. These may not be the actual words but I think I’m pretty much at the heart of it there.

I cannot begin to discuss what we talked about; firstly because under the Non Disclosure Agreement they get to do the ladle/internal organ thing if we do, but more importantly because it’s of similar interest to a slideshow I was once forced to endure cheekily entitled “Tomato Propagation – the Inter War Years“.

But I can tell you about the Hotel although that’s a word I’d not normally bestow on a glorified B&B trading expensively on faded glories. Located in a twee village itself rather interested in permanently staring up its’ own fundament, this rambling collection of drooping buildings appears to have expanded through the simple expedient of buying up the neighbouring houses. And then doing almost nothing to them other than polishing up some naff brass fittings and changing the locks.

My room was just about within the blast zone of the steaming kitchen although reaching it did involve a suicidal road crossing and an extended battle with an entry system dreamt up by a man understanding neither Entry or System. A dark and dank corridoor closed in around me and only the dirty light cast by the emergency signs provided any distinction between door and wall. Passing through ever reducing doorways, it took an audacious limbo move to crash through my door crazily swinging my luggage for balance.

Continue reading “Depressed. You damn well should be.” →

Hello Sir, is that your shed causing a disturbance?

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Hot news on the rumour mill just in. The supposedly inseparable trio of Wind, Rain and Cold have sensationally split only a month into their Winter tour. Wind and Rain have formed a new group going under the working title of “Global Warning” citing meteorological differences. Cold is looking to pursue a solo career by leaving the UK and retreating to the shrinking markets of the poles where there’s still an icepack to freeze.

It’s been a balmy week in more ways that one. The wind yesterday ripped through leafy Bucks like a wife through a joint account. We’re calling it the day of a million splinters as trees, fence panels and entire sheds have rolled down the road with barely a nod to the highway code. Driving back from Reading last night was rather more bark-y and diversionary than I remembered, and the car has suffered a light battering from low hanging branches and previously earth bound garden products. As the fifth watering can crashed against the windscreen forcing me to emit a small scream of terror, it was clear this was no ordinary storm.

I was relating – in detail – my long and event filled journey home to my friend who stopped me mid flow to explain he’d never even got home last night. That epic Pennine crossing from Reading to Leeds terminated abruptly in London which was both the wrong direction and logistically tedious. I sympathised as much as possible for a man facing the prospect of ordering eleven new fence panels. This makes me feel partially responsible for the deforestation of the what remains of the Amazon rainforest.

Aside from the gaping holes in what used to be a structurally sound, if rather weathered, fence, further evidence of the storm can be seen on the roof of the barn. Or – to be more accurate – not to be seen since some vital weatherproofing component (flashing? Tiles? Cosmic Filter? I dunno, something like that) has not only left the building, but seemingly was last seen accelerating over the county boundary.

There was a very real prospect of yours truly having to scale a rickety ladder and have a painful accident whilst attempting to fashion a repair. I considered instead sending the kids up tied to a very long pole but once my wife had applied the power of veto, we called in a professional. Which considering the fact that ownership of a chainsaw and a mobile phone is a three day route to permanent financial security is likely to cost me more than the arm and leg I’d have lost, had I attempted it myself.

Still, could be worse. I was intensely gratified to discover that the beer fridge has been undamaged during these worrying times. And after a hotel experience broadly in line with Psycho, the contents of that fridge were in great demand.

But that’s a story for another day until which I shall leave you with this: Considering the chaos dispatched to all corners of the UK by it being a little blowy outside, what do you think will happen if the forecasted snowfall (or “Cold Revival Tour” as I’m thinking of it) dumps a couple of inches next week?

I’m formulating a strategy around a good book and hiding under the duvet until spring.

Kids, Morning, Arrrgghhh!

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

The aftermath of a complex transaction involving my bike lock keys, my wife driving to the station with two sleepy kids and my inability to navigate around brain fade saw me on kid duty this morning.

Springing out of bed like a coiled sponge, I woke the kids through the simple medium of walking into their door. The whole light switch / door handle/ spatial awareness thing is way beyond my meagre cerebral resources before an infusion of spicy Java. A single step into their room was rewarded by a shooting leg pain triggered by a cruelly abandoned spiky toy selection.

The carpet had been properly mugged by every toy they own and “ unless I missed a Christmas “ quite a few they don’t. Only the occasional flash of purple reminds me that we paid good money for a bloke to cover the nail ridden floorboards. Hard to see why we bothered. Tidy your room” has about as much chance of success as opening the door and shouting World Peace, Today” at next doors dog.

The morning routine of making breakfast, preparing lunch, retrieving lost story books and weaving complex Mandelbrot hair patterns generally passes me by. Either I’ve left hours ago to go and play with the London traffic or I’m safely ensconced in the barn with a steaming cup of coffee and an aspirational to do list. A sidebar here: this to-do-list may as well be carved in stone such is its’ intransigent nature. At the end of each day, I hopefully circle it with the red pen of task completion but it’s nothing more than a weary gesture. I may as well append Put your toys away and don’t hit your sister” to the bottom of this fantasy list. Still if Finish Christmas Cheese” doesn’t see some action soon, I fear for the fridge.

But today this was my routine and easy as that may sound, without the navigational map of motherhood, it proved rather more troublesome. I managed to make Carol’s breakfast although risked the wrath of the Mumminator” -as we like to think of her when she’s in full Arnie mode “ when enquiring to the possible location of sealable lunch bags. Of course they’ll be under the stairs behind a poster warning beware of the leopard“. How silly of me not to realise.

The ticking clock spurred me into action. I shouted upstairs Are you dressed yet” to which the pleasing response was Yep, got my trousers on“. And then a pause. And then on my head¦.”

Barge upstairs, sort inappropriate headgear, shoo children downstairs, endure brief argument over appropriate breakfast ingredients. Refuse to accept that Mummy feeds them chocolate and smoothies regardless of innocent pleading. Dispatch them back upstairs for teeth cleaning and hair tidying “ a job so far beyond me it’s whooshed by and is accelerating towards desperate haircut with kitchen scissors“

Finally co-locate children, schoolbags, shoes, hats, gloves, lunch, reading books, essential furry animals and front door. The rain is lashing down but I ignore the wistful glances at the car from all those under the age of eight. Waiting for the school bell, I’m surrounded by people I sort of know who look even colder and more damp than I. Kids don’t seem to notice at all which is clearly unfair.

Eventually, they become someone elses problem and I stride home at top speed to deal with some important e-mail. Or to put it another way to get back to what I’m meant to be good at.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone on this – morning multitasking does not come easily to the ball scratching side of the genome.

Sore

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

The problem with beer (and that’s a phrase that I’d wager you never expected me to utter) is that it’s not a socially appropriate beverage at 8am. Except in Scotland, where I’d stumble off the first flight from Heathrow to see some jolly jocks quaffing a couple of pre-breakfast McEwans. Outstanding effort there fellas.

So my pain management regime has been downgraded to Nurafen with every meal and not making any sudden moves. Actually it’s almost been a disappointment that the post crash injuries don’t really hurt at all. It was a pretty big off at a fairly high speed and aside from a neck with articulates about twenty degrees either side, nothing really hurts much. I realise this is twisted logic but even I’m struggling to offer myself any sympathy.

Still the ongoing chest infection / head cold / unknown virus / Spanish Flu Mutation has robbed me of my voice. Wages of Sin probably but while I start the day in fine voice, by the close of play I’ve been reduced to punching people to get my point across. A cross between Joe Cocker and a constipated poodle represents the most printable description of my current vocal output.

If it doesn’t get better soon, I’m going to open myself up with a spoon and have a good root round. Honestly I give up smoking and this is my reward ? Who says God doesn’t have a sense of humour.

I’ve told my wife for my Birthday present, I’d like a CAT scan 😉

Man Down!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding6 Comments

Remember this?

Al not falling off

And all my manly posturing on how easy it was on the new bike, and how all that was lacking in my mighty toolbox of skills was a little more style? Today, I tried it with a little more style and rather than receiving the plaudits of my peers, instead I received a helmet full of dirt and a full body battering.

But rewind a little. On a lovely winters day, full of the sunshine and light winds that have so forsaken the South East for the last month, we arrived in the middle of a body armour convention. I’ve never seen the place so rammed with play bikes of all description and a riding community ranging from young Gravity Dwarves to elder statesmen like myself.

The GD’s are born to ride in three dimensions launching small bikes over huge jumps while performing complex yoga moves, such as tapping a grubby ear with a Nike trainer while calmly flying at fifteen feet through the trees. Others of an indeterminable age but sporting ungrizzled stubble and motorbikes without engines were winding them up over the big jumps and drops that define the area. Well that and the air ambulances and broken bodies.

Trying to build on the previous festive ride of absolutely no style, I attempted to ape the skills of those who weren’t method acting a sack of potatoes velcro’d to a fridge door. The main aspect missing from my riding – other than the permanent absentees of bravery and commitment – was, and I’m writing this carefully, Hucking. To huck, one must perform a foolhardy firm compression of the bikes’ suspension to instigate a stylish, salmon like leap over the drop. This is best created by driving your body downwards and then allowing the bike to spring back by lightening the sprung weight. Which is this case means you and in my case is quite significant nowadays.

Now think about this – what we’re talking about is flying off a ledge with around twelve feet of thin air between you and the rather thicker ground while taking the weight off the pedals. There an integral part of what we mountain bikers call “the things that attach you to the bike and stop you getting horribly injured“. And yet, it was all going rather too well until, in a moment of unconsidered bravo, I attempted to go large.

As the ledge approached, I pushed vertically down – hard – with both hands and feet , feeling the tyres digging into the dirt. Then as the bike rebounded rather rapidly, I unweighted everything and flew gloriously into space. It was at this exact point that the total wrongness of style over substance overwhelmed me, as my feet and the pedals became pen pals. No longer were we connected by anything other than memory and as the bike landed hard on the downslope, I remember thinking “well I’m hucked now“.

Apparently you can ride this type of thing out. If you’re any good and don’t instantly stiffen up with the type of rigidity associated with rigor mortis. The “Leigh alternative” is to crash painfully down the slope, with feet acting as buffeted outriggers and bollocks bouncing on the top tube. And just when a small slither of survival gloating shafted low through the trees, my attempts to stay upright went sideways. The bike hit a lump and by the power of kinetic energy I exited sideways in a flat trajectory. Luckily, rather than a pleasant dirt surf down the slope unencumbered by stumps or pointy rock, my velocity was rapidly reduced by the shuddering impact of an earthen wall. The whole painful episode could be summed up with the simple phrase “Deceleration Trauma“.

“At least my friends didn’t see that” was my first thought as they ran over the hill to see if I’d trashed the bike. A short period of grunting followed while the full body systems check ran as a priority process. Aside from very sore ribs, a stiff neck and battered pride, the initial damage report was encouraging. Only later did I realise that the stabbing pain in my thigh was a perfect mirror of my car keys. These normally harmless items had burrowed deep into the limb in some kind of futuristic organic/mechanical fusion.

The bike was thankfully undamaged. Which gave me no excuse not to limp back on and ride the drop again. The Icy Hand Of Fear was clamped hard over my nether regions but it really had to be done. And it was, with no huck but a silent “thank fuck” as I landed happily still attached to the appropriate staying alive components.

I rode a bit more, but then it stared to hurt a lot more as befits an old bloke doing a young mans sport. So I quit whilst I still had a head but on driving home, my overwhelming emotion was of bloody annoyance that I’d failed to conquer this simple skill. And it never occurred to me until I began writing this that there will be a time when I break rather than bend. But that’s some way off I hope and through the power of Nurafen Plus, cold beer and hot baths, I’m already planning my triumphant return.

And this time, it’ll be so stylish even the GD’s will whisper “not bad Grandad, not bad“.

PS. Never again will I feel silly wearing leg/elbow pads and a full face helmet. They all took a proper bashing and without their protection, I would undoubtedly be enjoying an extended stay at Bedford hospital.

Whoosh, ah that’ll be a tree flying past then!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff4 Comments

I’ve got a proper post about this but unfortunately I also have a proper beer in my hand, so instead let me just say that’s about the windiest weather I’ve ever encountered in soft Buckinghamshire. Never before have I been able to trackstand by merely turning into wind and gurning.

And at about 4pm this afternoon, the sky turned inky black and rain battered the office windows. It was – frankly – rather frightening when contextually joined with having to ride into or through it. So I hid in the pub until the nasty weather had gone away which left a mere 30 MPH headwind to struggle past. In vein I looked for a fat bloke to slipstream but they were all inside eating healthy pies so I broke my own “don’t try this, you’ll die” rules and hung onto a bus for a while.

That was also quite frightening in an invigorating my life’s about to end kind of way.

Still apart from the 11 new fence panels, half a roof full of missing slate and the unknown whereabouts of a less than aerodynamic cat, all is well.

Because I have beer 🙂

London Lyrics

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

Since it appears to be odd song and lyric week here at the Hedgehog, it seemed appropriate to share this. It seems to sum up exactly the kind of little sick world brooding inside the M25. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t like London – well not all of the time anyway. But in the winter, it’s horrible.

London never sleeps, it just sucks
The life out of me
And the money from my pocket
London always creeps, showbiz hugs
The life out of me
Have some dignity honey
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly

My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
London never sleeps, it sucks
The life out of me
Show some dignity honey
Sushi bars, wet fish it just sucks
The life out of me
And the money from my pocket
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly

My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
I come alive outside the M25
I won’t drink the poison Thames
I’ll chase the sun out West

Londinium
Euston, Paddington train station please
Make the red lights turn green
Endlessly
My black cab rolls through the neon disease
Endlessly, endlessly
I come alive
I come alive

I found the lyrics first and then the song which is an odd way to add music to the I-Prodder, but that’s the topsy-tervy technological world we live in nowadays. And of course you’ll know who it is because you got Buggles for God’s sake and this is far easier.

I also came across a fantastic quote to test a city “No city should be so big that a man cannot walk out of it in a morning.”

Quite right too.

Video Killed the Radio Star.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

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 🙂