Author: Alex

Bye Sarah :(

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

Most of you won’t know Sarah. She was the second party in the infamous ChocolateGate scandal and subsequent sugar overload which defused a major diplomatic incident.

Sarah was supposed to be responsible for project governance, but soon turned native and became embroiled in the tissue of lies and web of deceit that passes for our deployment strategy. She was also in charge to blame for creating a spreadsheet of such complexity and depth we’d started to call her Enron. There is more than a mild suspicion that the willies in the current financial markets may be because she’d sold on our budget overrun to a clutch of world banks.

I fully expect, come Monday morning, to be back to our original approach of scrabbling around at the back of the virtual sofa and demanding money with menaces from other project teams. Sarah also was a key part of me retaining my – admittedly – loose grasp on reality by dealing with our insanely complicated room booking system on my behalf, depositing industrial chunks of confectionery on my desk when crap diary management meant no lunch, and making me laugh when I felt like belting someone.

We fully expected her to grow old like the rest of us working on the project that will never end but in a frankly desperate attempt to break free, she decided to get pregnant and move to Lincolnshire.

Anyway, after a beery good bye yesterday, I though she deserved a final send off into the wilds of cabbage country from the virtual immortality of the hedgehog.

Bye Sarah, best of luck and we’re going to miss you. Oh and can you please burn all copies of the budget before you leave πŸ™‚

Maximum.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

Indicative of the traffic insanity that is the London arterial road system, my commute passes 22 lights in a total of 4.1 miles – four of which could be labelled tricky. Especially when clipped in trackstanding generally starts wobbly and finishes either in intense humiliation or death by bus crushing.

So you have to use some of the cruder arts of cycling; learn the phasing, be able to spring like a madman or roll like a snail, scout alternate routes and failing all that, cheat. It’s akin to crafting a maximum break in snooker – except for dressing up like Victorian butlers, the use of a table and any balls, unless you’re including the spheroids of steel required for this maximum effort. 22 lights breaks down nicely into 15 reds, and seven colours.

Foul shots include running reds, using cars as rests and any dabs at all, even if it was only you who saw it. Like a 147, you’re always it planning it but you mustn’t think to hard about it because that way lies failure by performance anxiety. First tough lights looking good, sprint over the Marylebone road, skip through the next two sets and then a quick double off the cushion to avoid a long red at Edgeware road. This leaves a tricky shot that is the shoot into Hyde Park Corner, traffic solid from the right, so slow weave into the left lane and commit to a death or glory to be positioned for the next light. This nearly ends in a t-bone from a desperate Merc gambling on amber.

I acknowledge the internal applause as the break nudges over a 100 but the most difficult part of the break is still to come. A slow filter gains me a green onto Constitution Hill and a split decision β€œ but a good one β€œ to take easy brown over a difficult black bumps me through a slippy dirt track to miss being held up outside Queenies. I’m disappointed not to try out my trick shot to beat the next long hold but another green sees me heading for the crux β€œ Trafalgar square.

I’ve looked at this from all sides of the table and there are no easy pots. Not enough room to circle, off camber makes even the good trackstanders struggle, basically it’s down to luck. And today I was lucky, if narrowly avoiding being stomped by a big ref bus can ever be counted as lucky. Still I had slipped up his inside β€œ so to speak β€œ to avoid the indeterminable pedestrian lights outside charring cross.

My reward was a veldt of green awaiting my charging steed. Onto the colours now and the first three dispatched with a sprint as they made to change. Last tough shot coming up over Waterloo Bridge. Deft, tight filter β€œ oh I so wanted to unclip as I ducked under a mirror between bar wide lorries β€œ put me in perfect position to dispatch the light and I’m away around Aldwych heading for a simple blue-pink-black of three fast lights.

The first two were green, the last may not have been even as I lined it up to punch it into the bottom pocket.; I was ready to jump off the bike, hug random passers by and claim theΒ£1.47 first prize I’d awarded myself. Unfortunately even the most colour blind may have noticed the colour of that light was not a combination of red and yellow, more red and yellow.

In my defense, I never saw it, as far as I was concerned, it was black.

Dark Peak Epic.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, PhotographyLeave a comment

Long post, short geography lesson. The Peak District is essentially split north/south around Tideswell. The South Side (White Peak) is primarily limestone whereas the North (Dark Peak) is a combination of Millstone and Gritstone. All of it has been fiercely eroded by first eons of glacial action and latterly by wind, water and man.

What it lacks in woody singletrack, it makes up for with proper hills, grinding climbs and loose rocky descents naturally created for the best sport in the world. Classic descents such as Lockerbrook, Jacobs ladder, Oaken Clough, Hag Farm and the notrious “Beast” are famous in this little piece of MTB heaven, and I was long overdue a crack at a few of them.

It’s always a proper big ride especially when Andy “Tracklogs” Shelley is planning a summit bagging epic, this in the face of your trembling bottom lip and 35lb freeridey bike powered by jelly legs on flat pedals. First up was a grind up to Cavedale from the Peak Forest side – once there, I managed to stay on the bike for about the first five seconds before picking first myself and then the bike off the floor. My saddle has been fitted with a precision testicle homing device and so it was with some wincing that the steep section was minced mainly by walking.

.CavedaleCavedale

Continue reading “Dark Peak Epic.” →

Sprouts was it?

On By AlexIn Bikes5 Comments

Ask any cyclist what they hate most about being outside and the answer may surprise you. Especially if your interviewee is the autistic nut-job who launches into a breathless lament of the worst day of my life was the closure of the sturmley archer factory, and the ensuing shortage of left hand threaded thrust bearing reducers.

For the rest of us, it’s a toss up between rain, cold, murderous motorists and wind. Yet it’s easy to get warm and stay dry if you’re prepared to spend big on rustley technology, and death by driver is merely a background hum to the seasoned commuter. But wind is a bugger, it takes you up the arse and then throws itself back in your face.

This morning, it felt like Autumn, chilly start, blustery conditions and a sky crucible forging incessant moisture from leaded light and steel coloured clouds. When the wind finally swung behind me, it was worth a good couple of gears and for a pleasant interlude I was a sail.

The problem with tailwinds, of course, is they beget headwinds in the opposite direction, so I’ll be having an early evening cocktail of swirly rain, slippy roads topped off with a 20 MPH front facer.

But in the cheery optimism of the significantly medicated, I’m going to pretend this is good training for when the weather gets really shit. Although, it is of moot relevance as to whether such efforts will help me drive the car. Which is β€œ in a nutshell β€œ my transport strategy post October.

Shapes

On By AlexIn Other stuffLeave a comment

It seems appropriate to start with an old joke β€œ Hey, fatty you need to get into shape / I am in shape, round is a shape. Middle aged, middle English spread is apparently the blight of what used to be known as the ˜middle class’, but is now referred to as ABC-1 two kids, one house, two cars, one mistress, three tvs, two pointless hobbies and an impending divorce by marketing nonces.

You’d have thought being porky would be the least of their worries, and yet Gym membership is the second biggest growth industry after Viagra* for the over forties. Not exactly keen to throw myself in with this fat club, yet physical evidence reveals wobbly bids heading south from an emerging double chin, through a pair of quivering man boobs, flabby under arm hangs and a booming belly that is beginning to throw it’s weight around.

Yet in my tiny little mind, an Adonis like figure strides purposefully across the earth, while the simple mirror reflects a pot bellied stumbler risking asphyxiation by continually sucking it all in.

Much of this unwanted padding is merely long term storage for beer and while this presents a simple solution the issue of being more than you want, it would need to be some kind of medical emergency before I considered abandoning liquid therapy. And even if the best diagnostic minds promised death in a month if you carry on, I’d still need to weigh up the pros and cons.

Realistically I cannot exercise any more because riding bikes already bites huge chunks out of the spare time cake. And this already presents an interesting body pattern with the lower half resembling a rugged outdoorsy type while gazing upwards from the navel projects the image of a fat man living the donut dream.

The prospect of gym membership is an anathema to me; I just cannot bring myself to oxygenate the rarefied air of the narcissistic Body Nazis’. And we all know the fib that is home exercise equipment – a double jeopardy of a usage pattern tapering from every day to no bloody way, in three dreary months, and the ensuing guilt that can only be assuaged by inhaling an industrial block of chocolate.

So instead, I’ve been trying these new designer sit ups where you crunch and gurn, while lying flat and staring at the ceiling. There’s a parallel activity that probably burns more calories and doesn’t get you to thinking that the entire top floor of your house needs re-plastering.

Anyway, that’s probably not enough. I could consider altering my diet but it’s really not that bad, aside from a penchant for fatty cheese and lashings of buttered toast, chocolate and crisps rarely move me from supine slacking on the sofa. Salad is an option but not a good one, it is merely crinkly water over-branded by marketing

But then I thought why bother? Am I actually unhealthy? No. Is their stuff that’d be easier if I was a stone or so lighter (aside from snake hipping into ten year old jeans)? Not so much that I’m prepared to put in significant effort . Am I so cravenly insecure that I think body shape is in some way going to improve how I’m viewed or how I view myself?

H’mm not sure about that, better have a couple of beers to consider my answer.

*I made that up for the purpose of comedic merit. Possibly not worth it.

It’s my party…

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

…. and I’ll have pie if I want to. A contemporary re-working of an eighties classic there which seems appropriate as I lurch unhappily into my fifth decade. Signs of aging were all around this morning – the air felt too cold, the coffee too hot and my stumbling assemblage of commuting collateral finished in broken zip and some choice swearing.

Apparently anxiety and grumpiness are all part of being middle aged according to the venerable beeb. Which is excellent news because a) this means it’s not my fault and b) misery loves company.

And then again, maybe not. Riding to the station this morning, sunnies on, green fields bathed in sky to sky blue, it occurred to me that it was a little chilly and being a klutz is my standard operational model. So maybe age is a state of mind rather than a state of physical or mental fragility.

Try as I might, I could not locate my inner grumpy and my mood improved further after having a rolling chat with the man who built and rides the bamboo bike. Refreshingly bonkers in the “because I can” engineering mindset and soon he’s to add a full suspension woody two wheeler to his copse of all things barking.

A quick inventory shows I still have most of my own teeth, a barnfull of expensive bikes and sufficient money to buy beer. That’s not a bad return for forty years of slacking so if this is as good as it gets, it’s good enough for me.

And to top it all, today was the first day I realised that Elvis’ and I share a birthday/deathday. So on that happy coincidence, Alex is leaving the building (but only to go to the pub). Uh-huh.

Stupidity

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Is there a statute of limitations on stupidity? If not, then I’m going to forcefully prosecute my case in the style of a barrack room lawyer. This lunchtime I wasted a unhappy chunk of what little life I have left, searching the Strand for that simplest of staples β€œ shoe polish.

Having passed 13 themed pubs, a thousand Starbucks and every third shop selling overpriced tourist tat, I stumbled into a foot cladding emporium specifically in business to separate the rich from their money. Once we’d established that even if I’d horrifically lost both feet in a shaving accident, I still couldn’t afford any of their main product line, we embarked on a insanely complicated treatise on the exciting advances recently made in “lifestyle shoe grooming“

At the end of which I wore a glazed expression and held no recognisable polish. Instead I was dispatched streetwards with a polish quick, deep shine applicator guaranteed to improve my sex life, deliver untold wealth and as a trivial aside relieve me of dirty shoes Also relieved my wallet of about twenty quid.

This got me thinking – what happened to the normal rules of selling before marketing went nova? I was eating a yogurt that enthused significantly more fruit; more fruit that what? A sausage? And then this morning brushing my teeth with a paste – sorry formulated cleaning agent – trumpeting 30{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} more cleaning power? Compared to string?

Tell me it is not just me that sees this as nonsense. Marketing is pervasive and intrusive and I’d just, for once, like to buy something I want to buy not something that someone with braces and an overegged view of their own importance wants to sell me. Obviously, pining for halcyon days is inextricably linked with being prodded past the end of the thirties gangplank, but it does give me a fine excuse to post this shop which shall be receiving my patronage should I ever fiscally recover from the debts imposed by modern marketing.

And let me leave you with this. Those of us with a certain wisdom earned through the University of hard knocks and honed by windswept age know that marketing will never affect us. We’re too life-savvy, to clever by half and too old by three quarters to fall into those crudely baited traps laid down by people who lie for a living*. For us, it’s function over form, product over piffle and no one who air kisses and uses finger quotes is every going to convince us differently.

Tell me again, what does Beans Mean?

* this is marketing people I’m talking about. Not politicians. They’d be rubbish at marketing because we know they are lying all the time. It’s the opening of the mouth that gives it away.

Listing

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense2 Comments

I was compiling a list on stuff that a man entering his forty first year should have done, dusted and consigned to the bin of youth. But it was too damn depressing so instead, I’m amusing myself with a virtual cabinet reshuffle of the bikey herd. Maybe the big, old bull has to go to make way for something a little more frisky, crafted in titanium. Or should a couple of the lesser lights be dispatched to a better place where they may get some use.

It’s not very amusing really and I’d probably be out riding if it weren’t for the pissing rain.

I know, I’ll go and have a beer instead. In the meantime, here’s a picture of a cow.

Hamb1208 (3)

I think this may be the start of an expected breakdown πŸ˜‰

Parenting.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Mountain Bike RidingLeave a comment

Parenting was attractive for many reasons, foremost of which was the mainstay of any healthy young male; that is to have as much sex as possible while doing your bit to dynastically supply the planet for future generations.

It’s only when the product of all that count the legs and divide by two action pops out of a business end does the act of copulation suddenly seem slightly premature. Like an uberbitch Wednesday come down after a weekend of booze and drugs; reality bites you in the arse and something immeasurably precious and completely demanding is shoved into your arms.

I don’t ever remember cycling with my Dad. He was always too busy, too tired, too preoccupied with his own life to offer up time to watch his offspring learning how to jump skinny racers in disused quarries. And while β€œ I hope – my parental obligations have been taken rather more seriously, I’ve failed to invest time in teaching the kids anything other than the rudiments of cycling.

There are good reasons. Firstly, you don’t want to be all competitive dad because I’d rather suffer serial parenting apathy over vicarious screaming from the touchline. It’s unlikely our kids are ever going to be first at anything, for which I’m curiously grateful as the human race is nasty enough without trying to win by pushing.

Secondly, trying to make kids do things they don’t want is a constant challenge β€œ there’s some bollocks talked about them testing the boundaries. No, they are just criminally lazy and viewing the world from the opposite end to their parents. When asked to go and tidy your bedroom mostly the reply will be why? and that’s a fair question.

So a deal was struck; into the parallel orbit of playing in the park and family riding came Black Park, a place of easy woodland trails and home made ice cream you’d happily sell a child for. Especially a whingy one. And because the Sustrans is boring (Yes it is) we headed out instead for tracks with a personality – a ribbon of hard packed dirt peopled with baby roots and framed by head high vegetation.

My attempts at teaching (if teaching is a word that can be applied to fetching them, bleeding, out of the shrubbery) was mainly of the instructive come on, pedal, pedal, DON’T LOOK AT THE TREE [child bounces off trunk] You looked at the tree didn’t you? and the motivational Right, stop bleeding, get back on and there’s an ice cream in it for you

Flickr Image

Flickr Image

Flickr Image

They did great as did Carol whose increased confidence was nothing to do with me and everything to do with her having a crack at stuff she finds a bit scary. The summary seemed to be that off road riding is hard, falling off can be painful and braking suddenly is generally followed by fetching ones’ bruised nose off the floor. Amazing, it took me YEARS to learn that.

Mark Twain had it right when he said My father knew nothing when I was 18, now I am 21, its amazing how much the old bugger has learned. In that vein, my mum cut through all the modern self help parenting bullshit with Love them, Limit them and Leave them.

She was probably right.

Forty minus ten.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment

I’ve starting making lists; lists of things I want to do; lists of things I think I should want to do and β€œ much smaller β€œ lists of things I’ve actually done. What separates them from each other, apart from reality and fantasy, is the 22nd anniversary of my 18th Birthday.

And because forty feels like an age where extreme physical tasks may be aspirational at best, this inventory of want should probably be classified as stuff to do before I’m dead.

Bu before that this – kicking off on the younger side of the fence, here’s my top ten of stuff happily filed in a Pandora’s box marked Done and don’t come back.

10. Have Kids
I love my kids, of course I do but Lordy I certainly wouldn’t want anymore. The statistical probability of adding a fourth female to a family of two daughters and one wife is simply too terrifying. I’ve seen blokes burdened with that demographic and they look hunted. And poor.

9. Properly crash a car
Smashing up your car (or, for preference, somebody else’s) is a rite of passage from short trousered road hoodlum to middle aged, elbow-padded law abider who revels in the knowledge his sensible car won towing vehicle of the year in What Caravan? I’m dangerous enough on a mountain bike, soΒΎ of a ton of powered metal battering ram is not really crashing material anymore.

8. Wake up with a stranger
As opposed to going to bed with a sex goddess. You know that terrible waking feeling of spinning sky, intense urge to vomit and geographical discombobulation? It is hardly improved when followed by cruel sunlight shafting your hazy mental image that last night you pulled a super model. Leave your mates number, grab trousers and run.

7. Go on a proper bender
The kind of weekend where you go out drinking on Friday night and wake up Sunday morning on a freezing train platform without any shoes. Still in a suit but otherwise unrecognisable from the young, thrusting professional of 36 hours earlier. A goat has slept in your mouth and left with your cash, you mobile phone is covered in a slick glaze of beer and kebab and some street person has robbed you of your footwear.

And you have a hangover sharp enough to shave with. No thanks, never again. Not after last time.

6. Own a motorbike
Many people β€œ well blokes anyway β€œ trigger a Pavlovian two wheeled urge on hitting forty. It’s best described as squeezing middle aged spread into tight leathers and smearing oneself under lorry wheel some twenty minutes later. I’ve crashed too many motorbikes to ever want another one. Probably not anyway. Well not this year at any rate.

5. Buy a house
We bought this house and subsequently checked into the financial hospital of the monetary crippled. If we tried to do the same now, we’d be making Faustian deals with the devil and mortgaging our souls. House ownership have the weary trappings of repair, potential DIY and a permanent drain on disposable cash. But short of living in a cardboard box under a bridge, it’s hard to see an alternative.

Actually if we had to buy a house now, the box would be the alternative although marketed as Bijou and Compact Residence near major road links and with undisturbed views of countryside

4. Be poor
See above. As a student I was poor but so was everyone. And in those days we had overdrafts, summer jobs and β€œ in the case of the posh undergrads β€œ wealthy parents. While I kind of support the right on theory that money doesn’t make you happy, you have to balance that with being poor generally doesn’t either. I’m a financial train wreck at the best of times but it’s kid of nice to know that such behaviour doesn’t starve the children. Not yet, anyway.

3. Survive a parachute jump
I’m not good with heights and even worse with exposure. Phrases such as plummet to a fiery death instantly supplant airline safety briefings. Jumping out of a perfectly serviceable aeroplane was, without doubt, the most traumatic experience of my life. I didn’t want to be in a small plane, being buffeted around like a storm blown leaf, nor did a single atom of Al see any just cause for chucking itself out into the abyss. I got to know β€œ up front and personal – what terminal velocity looked like and from thereon in, I tried hard to stick to terra firma. The more firma, the less terror..

2. Go Mountain Bike Racing
I was rubbish at 33 and I’d be even rubbisher now. At 40 you qualify for the Veterans’ class and it’s all sinewy, grizzled racers with fitness, endurance and race craft. I’d be lapped on the start line. And while I loved the whole scene, I hated the actual racing. My last 12 hour race was so spectacularly bad, it ended with me grumping in a chair, drinking beer and smoking cigars at 4am in the morning. And that was the best bit by some distance.

1. Being 39
Apparently age is no barrier to progress. Yet being 39 has felt a bit like it was. There’s something transitory that wasn’t there at 29 and certainly never even entered my naval gazing orbit ten years before that. I’m not wild about crossing another one way frontier but I’ll be glad when it’s done. So this is where life begins eh?

Knowing my readers are troubled by a low threshold of attention deficit even when compared to a special needs goldfish, I’ve been ruthless in my selection. The remaining five hundred or so, including gems such as send wine back and understand the art of grouting, shall remain electronically welded to Pandora’s bosom. The lucky things.

Next up, all the exciting tasks I set myself at the age of thirty that I’ve yet to complete. Where the hell did those ten years go?