Author: Alex

Fashion crime

On By AlexIn Other stuff7 Comments

Stereotypes are terrible things – intellectually lazy, socially derivative and the last refuge of anyone who believes anything they read in the Daily Mail. But as a heterosexual bloke of over 40, I cannot be alone in caring absolutely nothing for fashion. “Oh Yes Indeedy” I hear from anyone who’s every seen me clothed* – if I wear anything costing over about twenty quid, it looks like I’ve nicked it. Coat hangers are more debonair than I when presented in a suit.

But this is normally not a problem because after thirty five years of dressing myself, it’s not exactly difficult to effect presentability at work and wantonly slobby at home. Outside of suits for the office, the remainder of – what I’ll charitably refer to as – my wardrobe is generally accessorised with edgy oil stains, custom rips, emulsion paint flashes and unidentified stains which would worry a toxicology lab.

My clothes tend to follow a well worn path from briefly pristine, through a period of uncared for use, before ascending to their true purpose of bike rags. The idea of chucking something away before it has broken down to original threads is diametrically opposed to my approach to upgrading shiny bits for my mountain bikes.

So all is good if not stylish until I was forced to embrace the fashion foolishness that is ‘Business Casual’. Stereotypes again – let me hear a “What the FUCK?” from anyone with a sense of what’s important. My approach was to go with jeans and wing it but Carol refused to send me out of the house in any of the motley collection of chain-ring scarred troons. So with her acting as personal shopper and me acting like a five year old, we embarked on a voyage of fashion discovery.

It soon became apparent that I am not able to pull off a fashionable pair of trousers. The problem begins when I can’t even pull on a pair of said trousers. Being configured for a difficult hybrid of dwarf and cyclist from the hips down, my thighs are too fat, my arse is to big and my legs too short to carry off anything not declaring themselves comfort fit.

Although you’d have to bloody well furtively carry them off under the gloom of night rather than actually presenting them for payment. Firstly because they look bloody ridiculous and secondly because they represent a wad of beer vouchers even I’d consider reasonably significant. Not that I’d ever get that far because I am the Howard Hughes of shopping for clothes.

Put me in a room of my peers and you have to dart me with a tranquilizer to shut me up. But I can get properly self conscious next to a pot plant when interacting with those who are fully trained in the art of pantaloon salesmanship. “Can I help you sir?” is instantly babelfished** into “H’mm 40, poor posture, leg length of similar dimensions to man stood in deep ditch, no real belly but what is going on with those thighs? It’s an experiment gone horribly wrong where some psycho generic engineer has grafted two milk bottles*** onto his arse. Still quite a decent sized unit to work with back there“

So while they gently guide me away from the glitzy marketing of pulling trousers, and on beyond the dusty shelves of slacks, 80’s chinos and dreadful trouseroons apparently hand woven from hemp, I can still hear the shushed hysteria of the other assistants whispering “Have you seen that old bloke? Where are his legs?“

Right here and striding from the shop clutching nothing other than a few remaining shards of dignity. Is it beyond the comprehension of the oh-so-cool designers than a normal bloke requires nothing more from a pair of trousers than to prevent him mooning in the street? He does not require tailoring which prevents circulation and stay presses his knob for all to see. Nor a crutch that hangs low enough to suggest a third leg or a colostomy bag. And at no point do studs, rips, patches, oddly located pockets or buttons ever enter his orbit of needs.

He just wants to feel appropriately and comfortably trousered without resorting to those pants so vaunted by our elderly American cousins. You know the ones which fasten just under the breastbone and speak of golf and upcoming death.

In desperation, I asked my personal shopper at what age beach shorts and mountain bike t-shirts become a bit combed-back ponytail embarrassing. The answer is 11 and apparently they also fail to pass muster in terms of suitability for the problem of business casual. The second point was firmly made before I even asked the question.

This argument went on for some time.

However you will – I’m sure – be relieved to hear I have secured sufficient trouserage collateral to spend the best part of next week in Barcelona. I fully intend to sneak in a pair of shorts and proudly display my stumpy legs to an entire convention of IT geeks. Let’s face it, most of them still looked like they have been dressed by their mum so I’m going to be a vision of sartorial elegance.

Probably.

* There are a few who – having seen me rather more naked – would suggest you can count yourself bloody lucky.

** What do you mean you’ve never read HHGTTG. Stop wasting your time with this drivel and get over there this instant. And no, watching the film doesn’t count. Not even a little bit.

*** this joke only works if you’ve seen proper old glass bottles. Anyone in the prime of their life will know exactly what I’m talking about.

It doesn’t add up.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense1 Comment

Politics and Hedgehog sit together as comfortably as a sadistic cat* and a feisty hamster, as ably proven by my previous bluster on politicians and their arrogance. And yet after a mere five minute immersion into the 24 hours news pool, I find myself again arguing passionately for a benevolent dictatorship.

The problem I have with yet more indirect taxation is that it comes with a smug veneer of social policy attached. And by doing so, perpetuates the myth that by taxing great swathes of the population, actual changes are going to be made in the way people live their lives.

And that is total bollocks.

It isn’t going to stop people drinking or smoking. It’s not going to fix the health problem of the middle class trudging home – after the longest working hours in europe – and downing a bottle of supermarket wine. Granted, it may divert the tiny disposable income of those in very low paid families away from useful stuff like food. But it won’t stop anyone who can afford eighty grand of sports car driving it away because there is an additional£1000 of tax, and yet it may keep older, more polluting cars on the road while the rest of us baulk at the ever increasing tax burden of buying new.

This kind of indirect taxation is nothing short of licensed theft. And it’s not fair because when it’s imposed on stuff 45 million people consume, it is almost completely biased against those on lower incomes. It doesn’t achieve anything except to shore up a level of financial incompetence, that could better manage the public finances by stuffing the tax receipts in a sock.

So I have an idea – let’s assume that these latest increases price most of us out of the market. So now we do exactly what the government is promoting – we abandon our nicatine habit, we drink water instead of beer, we make our own wine from nettles or shuttle cheap booze from French supermarkets. We don’t drive anywhere, everyone rides a bike or a donkey and we bloody well break the link between pious populism and actual economics.

Wouldn’t it be great to see the blood drain from the faces of those stuffed shirts when we actually do what they tell us? Then they’d be faced with the very real prospect of having to stop fighting other people’s wars, abandon fattening up their bloated departments with policies no one cars about, and get back to distributing wealth from the rich to the poor, and making the bloody trains run on time.

I’ve given myself dislexia by proxy irritation writing this**. Therefore all I can suggest is we allow this wave of impotant anger to wash over us and remain clam.

* How that failed to trigger the tautology filter I do no know.

** I have also turned into my Dad apparently.

I had a dream

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

But not in a Martin Luther King way. I spent most of last night dreaming of violent plane crashes and motorhomes plunging down steep sided cliffs.

I’ve decided not to share this with Carol as she is clearly already a women on the edge. After ten years of marriage, I recognise the signs – manic house cleaning, packing and repacking the bags, screaming “Don’t MAKE ME GET ON THE PLANE“, that kind of thing. I like to think that empathy is one of my strong suits so I’ve restricted myself to the odd helpful grunt.

And not mentioning the entire family dying in a flaming pyre of wreckage.

We seem to have packed few clothes but many electronic devices which could be the wrong way round, but this would be a bad time to question the logistical planning of my long suffering wife. My contribution was counting camera batteries and googling “Nicest beer in New Zealand”

What’s that I hear? Yes. yes, alright we’re definitely going now 🙂

If the Devil designed websites…

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Site Stuff3 Comments

He would look approvingly on the labyrinth of hell that is American Express Internet presence and declare his work done. After nearly converting the laptop into a discus, I’ve come to the conclusion this is a cunning ploy to ensnare you in a web of vaguely related sites until you’re forced to call the premium phone line. Never have I seen anything so under performing, so badly laid out, so bereft of any usefulness and so insanely hard to navigate. Well, except maybe for Belgium.

Old Lucifer could then turn his horns onto Valentines day which is a real triumph of marketing. Dapper gentlemen with speech impediments machine gunning each other in 1920’s America were magically converted into a multi billion pound love industry. So mainlining that grumpy vain, I decided to send Carol my Valentines wishes by email. That’s almost as good isn’t it? It wasn’t as if I actually forgot*. I mean she’s not going to think I didn’t try is she?**

Work is basically flipping between “ARRRRGHHHH” and “GRRRRRRRR“. All I will say is if you are not prepared to accept the answer, don’t ask the sodding question. It is fine timing that we are going on holiday, otherwise my frustration may lead to mugging innocent members of staff as I angrily vibrate down the corridors of cower***

Are we ready to go on holiday? In a word, no. In a few more words “has anyone invented a time machine?”. Carol is rigorously enforcing the luggage limit by ruthlessly returning what the kids demand are mandatory items. In Random’s case, this includes the house. She’s not totally grasped the concept of a motorhome and seems to think we’ll be sleeping under bridges. Which considering my Valentine faux pas, I may well be. Or with the fishes, if we’re going back to the original concept of the day.

My packing involves hiding money for beer, and unearthing cleanish shorts, sunnies and a novelty hat. And finding a way to decouple the part of my brain that is suffering from PMT ****. And between now and actually arriving in a place where email doesn’t, there are days of travel hell which represent a similar amount of pleasure as passing a hedgehog shaped poo. I expect the pain to last almost as long as well.

And on that happy note, I shall begone to warmer climbs. There is the slimmest chance of some outside broadcast hedgehog should the twin planets of sobriety and Internet access align themselves in my personal geography. Failing that, enjoy the rest of your winter and expect photographs and lies when I’m back.

Which is on March 10th. I cannot tell you how good it feels to write that 🙂

* Okay I did

** She is

*** Like power only with more terror.

**** Post Management Trauma.

Chicks digs scars.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Other stuff11 Comments

I’m sorry to disappoint all you cultivating bloodied puncture wounds, but this statement is a a bit of a porker. Oozing with unpleasant substances, bad for your health and about as sexually attractive as venereal disease. So here’s the truth – chain rings dig scars as graphically demonstrated by the grizzly tattoo on my calf. In fact, the whole leg appears to have gone ten rounds with a lunatic armed with an industrial staple gun.

This was one of the only two downsides of a weekend ride under sunny skies on mostly dry trails. Obviously now we’re off to summer at the other side of the world, I care not if it buckets with hail and snow for the next three weeks. On thinking such pernicious thoughts, a brief glance at the Internet proxied weather tea leaves informed of pissing rain in New Zealand. This is either a meteorological blip during their otherwise fantastic summer, or the start of the monsoon season.

The second downside was more a downsize. Of a chain which mistook an innocent shift to the granny ring to instead somehow escape the front mech ,and wedge itself firmly betwixt crankset and chainstay. After some scratching of heads, dismantlement of the majority of the bike and some keen action on the chain tool, my 27 geared steed was reduced to a somewhat more humble 5.

I’m blaming a combination of Gimp-on-board(tm) cackhandness, rushed builds and bad karma from silently mocking my friends’ singlespeed a few minutes earlier. “Hah when it gets hilly, I shall unleash my vast array of easy pedalling ratios” I carelessly gloated.

But this loss of cogs hardly ruined the ride – the Cove is fantastic everywhere; light and quick uphill, terrifyingly competent in the twisties and nonchalantly banzai when heading downhill. My efforts to fall off were easily dealt with until a log based endo saw the spinning chainrings of doom harvest a few inches of skin.

A spot of beer focussed research selected the easy option of throwing some money at the problem. That’s fixing the thuggery of the chainset rather than the bleeding of the leg. Although you could hear the “Cry of the Lesser Haired Wuss” for many miles when bloodied stump hit hot bathwater.

It’s a keeper this one* and I really think the selection of rather lovely bicycles may be complete for some time to come**. This may be for the rather practical reason that our offer on “Cabbage-Land” has been accepted. I’ve no idea what this means, except that I am now funding the Devil’s lawyer and financier to complete the transaction.

This calls for a beer to reflect on what an interesting year it has been already, and to wonder of the experience that decamping to a county where only out of towners have 10 digit hands.

Well not really, I just fancy a beer 😉

* I can hear you laughing. And I’m ignoring you. But taking names come the revolution.

** And don’t chortle. It’s unbecoming.

SOLD!

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Well sort of. As of about 20 minutes ago, we accepted a cash offer for our house. Now being a simple sort of chap, I naturally assumed a van load of used readies would be immediately delivered in unmarked suitcases. Apparently, this is not the case, and it shall be necessary to peruse the entire lexicon of property law between now and a mythical beast known only as “completion”

I know nothing of this journey other than it seems strewn with the kind of obstacles that may well damage my liver and add a double scoop of hair pulling* stress.

On the plus side, we’ve sold it to some friends of ours at a tad less than the asking price, which had the estate agent foaming at the mouth. “We can get the full asking price if we screw them over, lie, cheat and start a bidding war with the other interested parties” was their opening negotiating gambit. “Yes, but that will make me a cock of epic proportions and you’ve failed to factor in good manners and karma” said I chewing a lentil.

Although we have set the snarling capitalists snapping at the financial heels of the estate agent from whom we wish to buy. Because, frankly they deserve each other. Although, as this is Herefordshire, negotiations have stalled over the exact bartering value of a frisky goat. But assuming we can debug the complexities of ungulate to sterling ratio, there’s a ludicrous plan forming to get the hell out of here during the Easter holidays.

However, so many things can go wrong that an entire new field of mathematics will be required to count them. It shall be based on the “every bugger wants their cut” numeracy system overlaid with “Stamp Duty, fucking hell haven’t I given enough already?“. The prospect of dealing with both estate agents and solicitors** during a compressed period of hemorrhaging money seems devil sent to ruin our lives.

Still focusing on the positives for a second, this is a bloody great excuse to get drunk. While i crack open the champagne and open champagne over some crack***, here are a few pictures. The first two show some cheeky riding five minutes from the door and a wintery view over the Malvern hills. And because a few of you aren’t obsessed with Mountain Bikes, a couple more depict the “Welcome to Cabbage-Land” garden aspect, and a picture of the house. Which is odd, but you’d expect that.

Tallot (91)

So we’ve not really sold in the true sense of the word and we’ve currently nowhere to move into. All the detailed transactions over the next month will be carried out using whatever transmission methods are available in a camper van, 12,000 miles away from the action. And the full horror of fixing up the new house is likely to permeate my sober moments.

If anyone has any chickens that need counting, send ’em over !

* And let’s face it, that’s a pretty scarce resource where I’m concerned. Two difficult phone calls and I’m bald.

** Which is an anagram of Clitoris. Okay it isn’t, but it should be.

*** It’s a play on words Mum, ok?. Don’t call the police.

Return of the rant

On By AlexIn Bikes9 Comments

Lordy, I am pissed off. In days gone by, I would have been well within my rights as an angry Englishman to go and shoot some Welsh*, follow that up with a ten course banquet – big on identifiable dead animal and small on cutlery – before launching into an all night carousing session with a dozen floozies of my choice.

Assuming I was Henry the VIII anyway. Instead my vocational bucket is overflowing with a million things all of which have the twin characteristics of a deadline sometime in the past and being – in my considered opinion – somebody else’s fucking problem. I used to love the sound of deadlines as they whooshed by whilst I merely ducked under the desk and refused to acknowledge their existence.

Still next years’ budget is taking shape but what fucking shape I do not know. Joining the dots of our financial planning process would very likely bring the duck billed platypus into being. Or the dodo. I can say no more, so amuse yourself for a moment while I attempt to beat the All-Bucks-Swearing record (muttering darkly category)

Somewhere between a million phone calls (if God had wanted us to have 10 simultaneous conversations, he would have specified decagon heads with an ear on each plane. Not voicemail. People should remember that. And be reminded with frequent beatings if necessary) and the ongoing non sale of the house, a Customer Service Representative** took a jolly tone with me. Apparently it was my lucky day because the mighty Honda would have failed its’ first MOT had they not had a tyre in stock. But not just a pneumatic tube with a few grooves in; on no, I now am the proud owner of a jewel encrusted rotating splendor.

Because one tyre CANNOT possibly cost that much. And, of course, it doesn’t if you’re not being held hostage by the robbing bastards hiding behind a neon sign and shiny showroom. I expect the chippy dog lobber was straight down to “Ron’s Remoulds” cashing in a few extra quid on MY tyre which’d miraculously sprouted an extra inch of tread. Their invoicing system was about ready to explode as reams of paper piled up to about waist height as the bill was printed out. The final total was displayed on an extra long strip to get all the zeros in.

It’s out of warranty now which is good as I’m out of cash. That’s the last time I’ll be darkening their towels again unless it’s under the cover of darkness and I’m acting suspiciously in the vicinity of the safe. With all this and trying to complete some airily promised camp site booking for NZ, it seemed the perfect time to engage on a spot of bike rationalisation.

What this has proven – quite unequivocally – is that I am a bloody idiot. Having adopted a slash and burn approach to my inbox, the remainder of the evening has been a difficult composite of spanners, swearing and sweat as I serially dismantled, packaged, lost bits, un-packaged, banged head on wall, had stern talk about use of hammer, repackaged, tidy and wept quietly in a corner.

I am getting pretty good at buying and selling bike bits. In volume anyway, if not in any measurable commercial terms. For example, the Wanga is standing me at about£50 a ride and it was a shit ride at that. The true worry out of all of this is not the dangerous H&S situation awaiting anyone viewing the barn with bike parts strewn, hung and abandoned in every corner, but the immutable fact that my bike total has been reduced by one.

Sunday night, downstream of half a bottle of wine this seemed a really good idea. This evening, with the barn pictorially describing the phrase “Blast Radius” and my level of irritation reaching danger level, I wonder if it was. I think it is way past the time to try and find the answer in the second half of that bottle.

* My choice of victim for some less than friendly arrowing is, in now way, based on the travesty of justice that was last weekend’s Rugby result. Oh no.

** Ian, suggest you start recruiting, there’s going to be a BIG increase in “Pitters” this month.

Internet searches…

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

… are extremely useful when you need to find something out or make something up. But in the same way that “Converting a Vacuum Cleaner to a Sex Aid” solicits a million responses of which almost zero are useful*, searching for “Things to see in New Zealand” returns only the odd useful nugget. And since that’s about 10 pages behind useless sponsored links, I’ve generally mosied off to the beer fridge before getting there.

So help me out here.

Mappage

We arrive in Christchurch – assuming my limited conflict management skills in customs don’t get us deported – and collect the big family bus for 14 days. 10 of these will be spent on the South Island and four to rendezvous with a hire car at Auckland.

Milford Sound, the Maori museum in Wellington, a drive up the West Coast of the South Island and a stop at Picton before the ferry are all penciled in. I’m trying to keep driving down to a max of three hours a day and there are clamors from the lower orders for Whale watching and swimming with dolphins. Carol wants the whole thing to be as interesting but stress free as possible and – apart from Jet Boating which I have to try! – I’m happy as long as the beer is cold.

So if I search the intellectual might of H(edgeog)Oogle, what am I offered?

* But does mine a rich vein of specialist web sites. Or so I’ve been told.

More norks, less isobars.

On By AlexIn Clic-24, Other stuff1 Comment

Because I am old, the exact time and place of my first adolescent grope of a pert boob is not a fixed memory. Obviously some years had passed between this orb of delight being a source of food and comfort to being a rather more entertaining supply of teenage pleasure*. And some discomfort in the trouser department, for which I place the blame squarely at bollock tight 80s jeans.

Amazing really looking back that girls would bother with us at all. They had all the physical assets and mental maturity, while our idea of sophisticated foreplay was controlling premature ejaculation. When one of my daughters returns home shying showing off her first boyfriend, he’s going to be in the centre of a practical experiment. I’m going to ask her to touch him anywhere and when he explodes in teenage delight, I’m going to shoot him. And then place his head outside on a spike as an example to others.

Sorry Fatlad, my Neocon paternal urges kicked in there for a moment, let me get back to the point. Or points of interest, specifically the joy of poking fun at US “Weathercasters“** when compared to their somewhat more staid British colleagues.

When I worked out there, it was well understood that the Weather Channel was educational, free soft porn. All the presenters were beautiful women who could provocatively gyrate at a moments notice. Legions of gorgeous, besuited women would waft across the screen and describe the weather in a way that certainly delivered some high pressure to my lower regions.

On the downside, as they had their own channel and a whole shit load of biblical weather, it did tend to lead to excited exchanges such as:

“Hi” [Business Suit, High Heels, Size 0 and and a bit, Perfect Smile] “This is Cindy Nosemaker on the Weather channel welcoming you all to” [Toss shiny hair] “on this stormy morning in the most dysfunctional country in the world. Our roving reporter Reisling J. Pineapple the Third” [Wiggle in a way that has every man betwixt the ages of 8 and 80 reaching for the tissues] “is out on the streets of a wild and windy New York. Reisling?”

[Cut to reporter dressed in branded wind cheater against a backdrop of 10 foot snowdrifts, roofs flying past, looting in the background, sounds of murder out of shot, etc]

“Well Cind, it’s dumped another 12 inches last night” [suggestive leer] “no traffic is moving, the trains are cancelled, the airport is closed, there’s panic in the streets and the Mayor is being supplied with his breakfast truffles by Army Airlift”

Cindy [Ignores leer, wiggles again, collective grown from 60 million men] “Well that’s just swell!*** And worse to come, rains of trout are being driven in on icy polar winds and there is an 84.25{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} chance of hailing haddock by midday” [indicates galactic wall sized, interactive weather map]

“And after these messages, we’re going to the International News Desk with a breaking story that France has sunk. That’s in Yew-Rope and so isn’t important at all.”

The UK version of that goes something like this:

Michael Fish stumps onto screen wearing elbow pads, National Health Glasses and a haircut styled by backwards hedge. Removes academic pointing cane from hidden inner pocket, indicates blackboard resplendent with a crayoned version of the UK scrawled upon in.

“Good Evening. It shall be a little wet and windy. The Met Office recommends a stiffening of upper lips, a small glass of sherry and the staking out of any children left outside”

Except of course, it isn’t like that any more. The last two decades have bled us of cultural differences in the unseemly haste for globalisation. Now I watch the weather and crave the days of Wincy Willis and her sticky clouds****, 20p worth of not very special weather effects and the lackadaisical approach to forecasting “tomorrow may be warm, cold, dry or wet. We suggest you look out of the window and form your own opinion“.

It takes a special kind of mind to take an email “I’ve got quite a few American readers, fancy writing something about the weather for me?” and turn it into a discourse onto why US weather women were pretty damn hot. I can’t say it makes me proud but now I’ve finished, it’s sure to make me drunk.

I probably should end by cravenly stating my allegiance to the majority of the people I met in the US. For the first year or so, it was a Grok like reenactment of Stranger In A Strange Land as people who I could see and understand operated like aliens from a different planet. Subsequent to that and on the back of learning a culture through a culture of drinking, I found them warm, open, passionate and funny. And insular, a bit warmongery, occasionally arrogant and as shouldery chippy as a professional Yorkshireman. I liked them even more for the last one 🙂

* I do remember my second (and nearly last) day at my first proper job where a young lady – endowed in such a way you’d consider snorkel and flippers – was mammarily straining in a tight blouse. Every time she bent towards the phone, I was convinced she’d inadvertantly call the emergency services. This is not pervy – I was about 17 and everyone was like that. Probably.

** Calling Ian to the Scorpion Pit please.

*** Americans – in my experience – don’t do irony. I think it was displaced by the bombing gene.

**** Don’t try and find a simile in there. It exist only in your dirty little mind 🙂

Folded over.

On By AlexIn BikesLeave a comment

That’s like being rolled over only with slightly more authority. My frequent tirades at the knit-your-own-hair folding bicycle* owners are well known to those grazing on the lower intellectual slopes of the hedgehog. So your surprise may even surpass mine, when it becomes clear I’ve almost befriended my sworn enemy.

It was with mounting horror that I found myself nodding sagely in the manner of “Well yes Hitler wasn’t such a bad lad really and you’ve got to admire the engineering might of the Panzer“, as el folderado waffled on some rambling cycle related discourse.

My normal response to anything as unhinged as an unhinged owner is to nod sagely as I push them in front of a speeding train. And this particular chap was so stereotypical of everything small wheeled, he was surely the original mould from which the entire unholy tribe were spawned.

He was resplendent in that fashion faux pas of a suit with bicycle clips. Devices I honestly believed were to prevent those of an incontinent nature soiling their shoes. He had a beard, but not just a beard – the kind of hairy growth you’d expect David Bellamy to be climbing OUT of. There were long forgotten foodstuffs in the spiky mass which attracted admiring – if horrified – glances as they were entering a carbonised state***.

Of course, he also had the hated hinged bolt attached to a child’s bike, 1990s mesh helmet and the official handbag these lunatics insist on placing directly over the front tyre. H’mm take 20inch wheels, separate handlebar and axle by a nautical mile, stir in a super steep head angle and garnish with 10lbs of lumpy manbag.

That’s Darwinism at play right there ladies and gentlemen. Turn sharply into to a corner and apex at the afterlife. Bonkers. And he was, bonkers that is but in a very hard to dislike sort of way. He struck up a conversation when he noticed my proper bike and a careful cold war sort of discussion followed. This is the tightrope of diplomacy, one false move or imagined slight from either side and BOOM, immediate escalation to DEFCON 1 and some pretty bloody hard stares to follow.

And possibly some aggressive prodding. But no, we parted warily with him not knowing how close to death he had come, and me worrying that my intolerance gland may be blocked. I mean talking to folders, next thing I’ll be inviting Tory candidates into my kitchen and sympathising that their sons have had to sell one of their Ferrari’s.

It’s a worry as I’m sure you can tell. So if he approaches me on Monday, I’m going to get a restraining order.

This is merely filler anyway as I’ve received FatLad’s (his definition not mine!) charity commission and the next post shall be an erudite and carefully researched thesis on “A theoretical discourse on the Norks of Weather Women”.

* It is with great grudgement** that the friendly accolade of a bicycle can be bestowed on Lucifer’s chariot. I prefer “pointless transport of the terminally stupid” to be more appropriate, but I’m trying to be inclusive here.

** Adjectival deritive of the verb “to grudge“, You heard it here first.

*** Not a cabonised country state such as Chernobyl. If I wanted a lame gag to lament what happens when you mix corrupt socialism with fatal radioactivity, I would have gone with “Don’t spend any time there, Chernobyl fall off“