Category: Bikes

Tens of thousands of words and the odd blurred picture of fast moving vegetation rehashing one of two tenuous threads. Spliced together using random punctuation and alcohol.

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.

A mighty wind!

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding3 Comments

Insert hilarious trumping gag here. On second thoughts, don’t bother.

Ah autumn; the gentle caress of nature’s breeze playfully cascading golden leaves and frolicking softly amongst seasonal flowers. Is that the kind of thing I’m talking about? An emphatic no I’m afraid considering the storm-light accosting me this morning wasn’t so much a head wind as a head, body, leg and possibly toe wind. Accompanied by a light rain and the promise of chilly extremities later.

It’s not the cold limbs that are the real problem though; it’s the level of faff that Autumn and Winter bring. The joy or riding is tainted by the chore of preparation “ no more jump on the bike and go, now it’s all layered process and forgetfulness.

First up is the Big Yellow Jacket. A stout garment so stoic in repelling wind, rain, snow and, if required, borders, it should come with a stiff upper lip. Counterbalanced by a complex layering system elsewhere that can be simply summarised as the rest of my riding wardrobe

If this homage to the Michelin blimp wasn’t sufficient, further weight is added to the bike through a high power Lumicycle halogen powered by a well grouted bottle mounted battery. It’s light in almost every respect except for weight adding over a pound to my already encumbered form.

Added to this are rear lights, backup lights and spare backup lights. A final chapter to this book of paranoid is a second backup set on the helmet. This may seem somewhat overkill but having run the gauntlet of a six mile lightless commute, riding mostly in ditches to escape the main beam of passing cars, it’s not something I ever want to try again. It’s unlikely I’d live through the experience twice.

Mudguards would add efficacy, at the expense of only a little weight, in the area of a dry bike and arse. However, so aesthetically troubling to the eye are these innocent metallic strips, I’ve opted for dirty bike and damp smalls. A decision I’ll probably need to review if a combination of dark and wet leads to a troubling fungal growth.

When you do finally get going, the summer urge to chase the big unicycle across the sky inevitably wanes. Instead, you’re fogged in, fogged up and other phrases that sound a bit like fogged mooching about at¾ speed and shifting uncomfortably under the weight of a leaden sky.

The fair weather riders have long since packed away their summer steeds and from the outbreak of Yellow Jacket Fever on the streets of London, those who remain have shopped exclusively at RonHill and Aldi. Less bikes means the odds of being taken out in a violent and bloody manner by motorised bike killers increase sharply. And if they don’t get you, the wet gripless tarmac probably will.

It’s all a bit dull really, except for tailwinds. Tonight, I stopped being a rider and stated being a sail. The gusting northerly catapulted me unpedalling up hills as recently orphaned leaves threw themselves under speeding tyres. The ride home officially rocked like a hurricane when passing a long line of brake lights snarled up at a busy junction.

And there are other upsides – it’s only 25 days before the Winter Solstice and riding a bike means I’m not listening to the Ashes Cricket. Okay we have the whole cold and wet winter to come and it won’t get properly light for another four months and the bikes will catastrophically succumb to the over-salted roads and and and ¦¦.

So here’s a cheerful number to finish, only 102 days to Spring and yes, I am counting.

Democracy is wonderful.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

Yes I appreciate that this sentiment is not consistent with my oft aired views that the only state run government worth considering is benevolent dictatorship. And while it is equally clear that the majority of politicians are power crazy wankers, democracy does have its’ merits.

Chiefly amongst them is the state opening of Parliament. While Black Rod hammers friskily on the door with his, er, rod, the entire Metropolitan Police force seals off the elected Nut House and its immediate surrounds. Except while cones block cars, bikes are waved through and what followed was two miles of blissful traffic free riding.

Silence claimed the road aside from snicking gears and background rustle performed by the leaf ensemble. Four abreast “ racing “ down Constitution hill and then sweeping around onto the Mall with bored policeman waving us on. It’s the first time I’ve realised what a broadway the Mall is, barely constrained by the great parks of central London. It was all really quite impressive as Admiralty Arch hoved into view, before a final sprint ended abruptly when the snarl and angst of motorised traffic reclaimed the streets at Trafalgar Square.

Still it was fun while it lasted. Maybe we could lobby for a State opening every week. I’m sure that the fella would like to exercise his Rod “ black or otherwise “ more than once a year.

Down but by no means out.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense4 Comments

Simon Barnes of The Times is a great Sports Writer. I always to turn first to his page because he’s so even handed with the raw emotion and the actual occasion. He writes beautifully about the pointlessness of sport while still held in its’ magical thrall. A good read every day, trading adjectives and verbs in the volatile market of what distills to grown men kicking a ball about.

But today he wrote about his sons’ condition of Down’s Syndrome. Any parent who can read the article without wiping their eyes is kidding themselves. One statistic that stuck was the stark reality showing that 94{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} diagnosed with the pre-born condition results in termination. I’m not sure what this says about parenting in the 21st century but it’s nothing with any obvious merit.

There is nothing I can add to his honesty, but I do remember when our second child was growing in the womb, we too had the test to detect what medical science calls an abnormal foetus. We talked about the long term consequences of a Down Syndrome child with all the seriousness of those faced with decisions guided by nothing but a moral compass. But silently I prayed hard “ for the first time since being confirmed as a lifelong atheist “ that our baby would be fit and healthy.

In public I would never have called for termination, but in a sleepless night before the test, that may have been my preference. And now it’s brutally obvious that any such decision would have been plain wrong “ you cannot deny a child life because it doesn’t fit with your view of how life should be. We can no more play God than those choosing designer babies with their blue eyes and Cambridge intelligence.

It made me realise how lucky we are to have two healthy kids whose lust for life validates our own. Take the religion out of it and you are still truly blessed with children even if it doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I’m going to send a donation to the Down Syndrome Trust once my blurry eyes run out of tears. Not because I feel sorry for the kids “ they know no different “ but because if they pass the stigma exam of what children should be, they deserve all the help they can get.

And if this seems like sentimental nonsense without an obvious point then welcome to being a parent.

Well, that’s a bit of a worry.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense5 Comments

A study today “ researched with all the rigour a single train journey allows “ shows a key finding that I’m sharing the carriage with a bunch of bloody Nazi’s. This hypothesis is based on a random sampling of those performing the three handed trick of coffee, briefcase and newspaper. And the newspaper of choice was the Daily Flail.

This is not some statistical anomaly, over 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of these suited and jackbooted city types were nodding away at a politically correct version of Johnny Foreigner starts at Calais and that’s where he should bloody well stay‘. Cautiously I peeked inside an abandoned copy to check whether my prejudices were as bad as those reading the Mail. They are, mine aren’t “ it’s all sneering at liberalism, and spiteful vitriol at an all encompassing moral sub class defined as Anti Britishness“. All the history you’ll ever need to learn from the Union Jack and a copy of Biggles.

So aside from those commuting to the London offices of the Gestapo, what were the remainder of my esteemed travelers reading? Around 10{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} were struggling with the full size but comparatively moderate Daily ToryGraph, a few more checking the size of their portfolios in the Financial times and the rest plotting world domination on that crucible of the modern communications age; Lucifers Notebook. Known as the Blackberry by those who own them and oh for God’s sake, turn the bloody thing off will you” by the rest of us.

A friend of mine perfectly places it at the centre of all things stupid with this comment: I sat next to a bloke with a Blackberry on the tube the other month. He was beavering away spinning his little jogwheel and pressing buttons, giving every impression of being a vital informational hub in his critical enterprise. Actually he was playing Tetris.”

Anyway I digress but for good reason because train journeys should be for sleep, reading or slack jawed looking out of the window. Not balancing every electronic item you own on your knee and then looking horrified as someone accidentally spills coffee all over them.

So that accounts for most reading material in the carriage. Of those left, one bloke was getting excited reading an article on how to install bow thrusters�? and exactly one other was reading the Guardian. That’d be me then. I expected, at any time, to be asked for my paper and possibly my papers before being ejected from the train. Go and live in a nude commune, you bloody tax dodging hippy‘ would have been their derisive farewell cry as I plunged down the embankment.

So all in all a bit of a quandary; as a self confessed hand wringing liberal, I feel I must vigorously defend everyone’s right to be intellectually closeted and mean spirited. But does that include those who read the Mail? Talk about pushing the limits of democratic acceptability. Surely I should be allowed to harm one of them if only to set an example?

What to do? Maybe I’ll source a copy of the Sun or Daily Star in the spirit of comparative experimentation. This may be troublesome as the station café offers only right wing ideology and copies of Mein Kampf. But I think it’ll be worth the effort.

Right now that’s off my chest, next up is the story of a bloke with “ literally “ a rocket up his arse. The kind of story the Daily Mail would approvingly headline Illegal Immigrants on fast track home”

Gone tomorrow, hair today.

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Well that™s breakfast sorted then.

On By AlexIn Other stuff, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

I see from the Torygraph that you can now digest the daily calorific limit with just a single meal from Burger King. Sounds good to me, get out of bed, drive to the nearest SuperSizeMe outlet and tuck into an athlete’s breakfast. On the downside, the rest of the day is a bit of a write off since your bloated stomach will demand heroic efforts are made to break down a pound of saturated fat. A process that is best approached from a horizontal position while exercising lightly with the TV remote control.

In the same way that alcohol makes people appear thinner and more attractive, burgers have the opposite effect adding chins, dribble and nailed on certainly heart failure to a list of existing mental defects including limited willpower. Ostrich like though this behavior is, it does mirror what passes for chocolate eating rationale while on a slimming diet.

You know the kind of thing; It says I can have a glass of wine and a bacon sandwich for breakfast followed by an entire bison for lunch as long as I include too oxygenating vegetables“. Even with only sufficient nutritional knowledge to barely separate green beans from baked beans, even I can see this for the nonsense it so obviously is. How can dieting be a multi million pound industry when anyone with a pair of friendly braincells knows the basic truth that if you eat less and exercise more, you’ll live longer.

You may not even lose weight but it’ll be distributed in such a way that you stop giving off the shifty impression you’re attempting to smuggle a bowling ball in your stomach lining. I’m not being fattest here, I’m just trying to inject a sense of reality into the extremes of so called professional advice on offer. At one end you’ve got those fat fucks (ok I’m being fattest now, it’s not like you can outrun me) who can barely walk a mile without keeling over and damaging the earth’s mantle, and at the other the body Nazi’s to whom a microgram of fat is analogous to anthrax.

If we’re going to chuck around worthless statistics and pointless diets, then let me add this; well known fact that below the age of thirty most of us have hummingbird metabolisms and can eat and drink our own bodyweight daily with non trouser shopping required. Hit thirty one, wake up, you’re a fat bastard. If that’s a body shape you’re comfortable with then you’re entitled to tell anyone who smokes, drinks or partakes in recreational pharmaceuticals to mind their own bloody business. Otherwise, do something, anything but don’t subscribe to the stupidity that is diet marketing. And don’t blame big bones or the ruthless buggers that tempt you with burgers/chocolate/crisps at every turn.

Oops, turned into a bit of a righteous tirade that did. And that’s pretty hypocritical as I’m hardly the perfect physical specimen what with a fluid intake that’s basically hops lightened up with a splash of water. My own advice would suggest cutting out the beer and instead getting down with the abdominal crunch crowd.

But now you’re just being silly. And that’s my job.

Mud in your eye.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What the hell was that..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding2 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay he DID try to kill me..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road Riding9 Comments

.. but then he did sort of apologise. So that’s alright then.

No, actually, it bloody isn’t. Riding past the exact same spot where some old fella parked his Mercedes on my nose this time last year, this guy gave the give way a miss and instead tried to hit me. Well, to be fair, he wasn’t really trying as his attention was focussed on the far more important mobile phone conversation he was having.

“Yeah sorry Nigel, just drove clean through this cyclist, he’s still moving tho so once I’ve cleared his broken body from under my wheels, we’ll do lunch, yeah? Have your people call my people, Capish?”

Had I not taken radical avoiding action involving a traffic island and a sharp intake of breath, they’d have been blood on the tarmac. As I swung in an ever widening arc to avoid the front of his one handed cavalier entrance to the Mall, he finally noticed either my concerned gesticulations or spluttering vernacular.

“Sorry mate, didn’t see you there” he offered in spite of my plethora of lights and reflective clothing. I look like a mobile gas excavation and possibly smell a little like one too after this morning’s one second shower. I had sufficient breath left to quietly explain that if he wouldn’t mind “putting his fucking phone down and looking where he was sodding well going” this may never have happened.

“Oh if that’s your bloody attitude then mate, you can fuck off“. Just to be clear, this anti-apology was from Mr. Knobhead. Yes I was wronged but he still felt he was right – personality defect or caring new century?

He roared off in a frenzy of tyre smoke and testosterone leaving me wondering if apologies speak louder than actions. After grudgingly saying sorry, he couldn’t believe that I’d still be upset – after all, he’d not actually killed me only had a damn good attempt.

World’s gone mad. Time to leave the planet.