Category: Pretentious nonsense

A worrying window into the soul. Take a deep breath before starting any sentence. Sheer restless energy banished the comma and full stop during these outpourings of drivel.

Afan’in a laugh

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

At 10pm last night, I was suffused with anticipation with a bike already packed in the truck, a favourable weather forecast, a meet up early the next day with two old friends, and three of my favourite trails at the Afan MTB centre.

To say I was looking forward to a day of dry, fast riding on flowing singletrack is a phrase laced with understatement. In the same way as saying that Murphy quite enjoys his breakfast. So finding myself on a fourth visit to the toilet at 3am this morning, was a situation meriting more that a soupcon of disappointment.

It is not the worst food pointing ever inflicted on my innocent guts. That would be the night before flying home from South Africa a few years ago, where I completed an entire novel* while pooing out the contents of my small intestine. Determined not to shit my pants on the 11 hour flight home, I overdosed on Immodium which was both a spectacular success and – later – a painful disaster.

It was five days before I could go again. I honestly thought the local A&E crash team were going to be forced to remove the backed up bolus’s of bodily waste using a caesarian procedure. Last night was a mere three chapter experience, although made substantially worse by being undertaken in the outer reaches of the Arctic bathroom.

No heat can live here. You squat in trumpety misery while the icy tentacles of a chilly draught gently caresses your testicles. After one particularly lengthy exposure, my knees gave way and I crashed – head first – into the sink in the manner of a tall tree being chainsawed.

At 7am, I attempted to rise from the pit to begin my cycling odyssey. Such a noble deed was hampered by three not insignificant problems: a) an all over body weakness making even trousers a physically demanding step too far b) a poppin’ and a bangin’ stomach that suggested I’d best get started on the next chapter and c) a certain soreness where a Gentleman would normally insert a saddle.

Because I’m not even close to heroic, the best I could manage was a pathetic moan and a flaccid collapse back into the pit. The next few hours passed in extreme irritation with a perfect autumnal day loomed large in the window. Wisps of high cloud punctuated the blue sky, whisked along by a warm breeze. Weather I could best describe as “perfect for riding“.

Eventually I de-pitted myself due to a lack of hot towels and sympathy from the rest of the family, and took the kids out cycling. They certainly enjoyed themselves, disappearing to worryingly small specs on the horizon as their old-feeling man laboured breatherly behind them.

Tomorrow I’m in the slot for driving Random to a birthday party back in Aylesbury. A perfect opportunity to bag a couple of previously enjoyed trails and maybe a memorial pint. Unless tonight, I’m forced to move onto the complete works of Shakespeare, in which case the central thesis of my existence will be again confirmed.

Life isn’t bloody fair 🙁

* and not a small one at that.

Sad day…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense3 Comments

… one bike sold. Another to be shifted tomorrow assuming email is upgraded to actual person. One may be wrenched from my pleading hands, while the other will glare malevolently from a dark corner for another month.

Anyone in the Ledbury area tomorrow hearing “NO NO I’ve changed* my mind, take the child instead” followed by the dull sound of rolling pin on skull, should just nod sagely and move on.

Move on. Deal with the grief. Accept the passing of frames 24 and 25. Relish the comic irony of believing that the right bike equation has finally been solved. As it has so many times before.

I accept it is a incurable mental disease now, and mine is a chronic case. So it should be no surprise that a quick palm reading shows “shiny things in your near future“.

I’ll stop moping and write something funny** soon. Assuming I can type through a vale of tears and sobbing.

* lost

* ish

They think it’s all over…

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense, Road Riding6 Comments

… it is now.

Yesterday was my last ever London commute. 8200 miles, 421 round trips, 3 winters, 2 crashes and a daily joust with the murderous multitude. It was anticlimactic in the extreme with no fanfares or street parades marking my final passing of burned in landmarks. No final resurfacing of the pothole slalom which tests my early morning reflexes. No genuflection from those who I have bested in endless commuter races, nor gloating from those who have bested me.

No more shall I sequence lights in a three dimensional navigational puzzle, no longer shall the green of the Capital’s parks bring respite from tons of angry metal. No longer shall my ire be raised by unanswered pleas for airstrikes to disperse random roller-bladers. Not for me the obsessional forecast checking, the weary glance at a watch which must zoom round twice more before I am home, or the logistical ball ache of switching between urban MTB warrior and sad corporate clone.

And yet there is already a melancholy, a misplaced nostalgia if you will; sharp memories of soft summer smells, the warmth of the spring sun, the glory of a fitness properly earned, the joy of leaving fifty grand cars – with their brochure 150mph top speeds – in your£100 rat-bike wake. And even the grimness of seemingly endless winters could delight in crisp sunrises slash painted by azure blue, grinning through the rain, and just the simple bloody pleasure of not being completely ordinary.

It’s not enough. The first year was great, although cycling every day through the winter feels like it happened to someone else. My motivation to ride through the wind, rain and mobile death has diminished past the point of pragmatic excuses. Riding a bike – any bike – still defines what I really want to be doing right now, but the faffing, the background hum of traffic cockage, the grooved in rote of doing it again and again is no longer enough to make me do it.

This morning’s bikeless journey was strange. My bag was too light, my mind frazzled by a constant search for commuting collateral, my body showered and unexercised. My shoes don’t cleat click on the station cobbles and my helmetless head feels unbalanced. As I risk a guiltily glance at my shackled bike, I swear it glowers back at my disloyalty.

It doesn’t feel good or bad, it just feels weird. A phantom Al clips in and heads out, as I force a right turn into the peopled sewers of the Underground. Something feels lost and I think that might be me.

But this is not quite the end. The brutal termination of a two wheels to work strategy shall be stayed for at least the summer. I’m childishly excited by the prospect of a hard packed, off-road jaunt to Ledbury station. But no more riding in the big city, no chance of commuting through the winter, no danger of the big accident I know was coming.

But I can’t stop. Not yet. It’s like a Class ‘A’ drug and while I know I can give it up anytime, but not like this. I must wean myself off it slowly, let it be chipped away, sliced by a thousand excuses, a slow death barely noticed.

But when I do, what the hell am I going to write 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.

Morning blues

On By AlexIn Bikes, Pretentious nonsense, Road Riding5 Comments

Step carefully into the darkness. Grope for a frosty door guarding the entrance to the hard transport option. Shiver and fumble, with cold fingers, for riding gear. Add an extra layer and wheel out into the pre-dawn light. Clip in and fire shotgun audio – bang, bang – into the still of an icy world.

Crank carefully on white roads. Imagine a painful future through squirming tyres. Feel the freezing sizzle of 23c of slick on nature’s glass. Then, carefully risk upping the power needed to heat freezing extremities. Watch a crescent of fiery orange imperceptibly ascend over the low hills. Marvel as the layers of primary colours – reds and blues – push back the night.

Frozen water from autumnal storms forms winter crop circles. Long shadows are cast from bovinely stupid but contextually perfect cattle. Stop, dismount, abandon the bike to spiders busily icing Mandelbrot patterns. Marvel at this planetary show of fire and ice, until freezing hands and leaving trains drive you on.

Snick a couple of gears. Pity those unknowing stuck behind airbags and fiddling with heater controls. Sweep into the station and catch a little slide on untreated tarmac. Ignore the warmth of a stuffy waiting room. Grin at a hundred identical city coats and useless patent gloves.

Feel the morning blues. And reds – freezing fingers and hot blood mirror the colours of the sky. Stand on the platform now, savour the feelings of being warm and worthy. Remember why you ride a bike. Smile.

Measurement

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Mountain Bike Riding, Photography, Pretentious nonsenseLeave a comment
Moto Parker, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

The earth may have turned seven times but not much has changed. Another idiotic charge into waterworld, another joust with tractionless roots, hub deep mud and all-body immersing puddles. Still stupid, still fantastic but it got me thinking about how we slice time.

Before global warming, we had 1976. No rain for approximately ever, creepy spires steepling skywards through a glassy Ladybower reservoir, baked earth, parched vegetation and – if you are 9 years old – just bloody fantastic. That summer never seemed to end; oh you sort of knew that at some far future point, a return to school awaited. But you didn’t care because every day was a voyage of discovery, finding stuff, making stuff, learning stuff, bonding friendships. And it felt like it would go on for ever.

That’s not how life works now. I measure stress levels by the weight of the bottle recycling and general job busyness by the increasingly frenzied scrawl, which is beginning to resemble an inky spider performing an operatic death scene.

It’s a far cry from living for the moment, greeting each day as an adventure that has yet to start, and dreaming of how tomorrow might be even better. Age may allegedly bring many things but long term memory is not one of them. Years coalesce into non sequential events, time compresses everything that is important into flickery thumbnails.

Here’s an example – what happened to the summer pf 2007? Except that we never had one. Good Metrological answer but it is not the one I was looking for. I accept the climate of this low lying windswept island is basically different temperatures of rain but that’s not the point.

So what is? Maybe nothing more than an realisation that there is nothing penultimate about this life. And this must be the hazy rationale to why saying Yes is suddenly very important. Yes to riding in all weathers, yes to reading with your kids, yes to finding time to have a beer with your mates, yes to stuff that is contextually stupid but life affirmingly brilliant.

And No too. 10 days without beer made the nights slow like summers of old but lordy how keen was I do say Yes to everything else. Although I accept I may have misinterpreted the amorous signals of next doors dog. I’m coming to a reluctant conclusion that alcohol – lovely as it is – is not a substitute for real life. A bit like computers, blogs and pointless internet surfing really.

It’s funny really – many people try and alter their personal history so they are venerated when they die. That bothers me not at all; all I want is to do everything today and then the same tomorrow and the day after that. I’m absolutely fine with mediocrity but it has to be mediocrity with style.

Look I’m over 40. This gives me rights to naval gaze occasionally 😉

Yes, Yes I know…

On By AlexIn Pretentious nonsense, Site StuffLeave a comment

… I promised to swear my through an accident which bothered me less for what happened to me, but way, way more on the way it was met by a total lack of humanity from those who put the ignore into ignorance. But I’m waiting to see if it may still have a slightly happy ending. Which’ll please my mum who – because all mothers support their kids even when they have forgotten why – reads the blog and finds the swearing a bit offensive.

It would please me too as the incident messed with my version of reality, to an extent that I wonder if I’ll ever properly understand it. And you can judge if this is merely pretentious overreaction when I finally get round to writing it up.

As for the many other articles airily promised, but never delivered, over the last two years, the 22 dusty items in my drafts folder should give you some idea of the chances they have of every electronically coming to life. Snowball and Hell come to mind. I like to think of it as harsh editorial standards but really I just can’t be arsed to finish them.

And there’s something else. In January, the Hedgehog will be limping into a frankly unbelievable third year. In that time there have been tears, occasional laughter and a string of rubbish photographs. And while my ability to carry on writing it is almost as infinite as your patience for reading it, there are things afoot. Or possibly apaw.

But I’m fairly certain – for a given value of certain – that we may have to pickle the old fella for a while. And it’s odd that I care because long ago, I convinced myself stuffing the ‘hog was written for the enjoyment of trying to be clever, rather than any reflected ego in all of you reading it.

Might have been kidding myself then. Anyway – even by my loquacious standards – I have rambled enough tonight. Fear not, I’ll provide a plethora of links to funny people who will amuse you for far longer than I can. And while you’re doing that, I’ll burrow on with the secret project to see if it can ever crawl out of the burrow.

And no, it’s not a collection of mixed metaphors. But thanks for asking.

EDIT: The reason this post was pulled a couple of times – for those utilising the magic of the RSS feed – was because I was concerned it was self referential BS. In face, I’m still pretty sure it is, but if we’re mixing those metaphors on the great decks of pretension, it seemed important to draw an electronic line in the sand. Or something. Right, glad that’s cleared it up 😉

Play Misty for me*

On By PhotoIn Bikes, Other stuff, Photography, Pretentious nonsense, Road Riding3 Comments
Misty Commute, originally uploaded by Alex Leigh.

From the 21st of September, night displaces day and dark replaces light. Autumn, with all its’ decay and death, symbolises the changing of the guard between bright colours and inky blackness. Chasing light away, as the wounded animal it has become, is the switch flick of GMT plunging this seaswept Atlantic island into perpetual darkness for three long months.

Something to look forward too then, along with the commercial parody of the long debased religious myth that is Christmas, wind, rain, gloom, doom and – to bottom it all – trails below the water table. And yet before the storms lies a windless lull of a two tone world – impenetrable and moist as daybreak pushes feebly westward, and then blue, crisp and really quite agreeable as weakening sun rays burn away the fog.

This makes commuting a bit of a bugger.

4.1 degrees is not motivating weather. But set off we must, uncomfortable in heavier clothes and half blind from refracting light beams dissipating against a nebulous but impenetrable wall. Today a bike piloted by memory and internal gyroscopes is quicker than meandering cars, and their too powerful headlights groping at the darkness. But it doesn’t feel safe; if they can’t see the road, what chance they notice a one foot wide by six foot tall mobile statistic, whose dimming lights emit nothing more than a ghostly halo.

Riding scared, I ran away onto unlit side roads where looming dog walkers – zombified by the fog – lurched in late surprise as the hiss of damp tyres warned of my approach. The fog tamps down sound as well as light and little of each escaped to stimulate the senses. I was reduced to 3/4 speed, straining eyes and ears for pain giving obstacles and cranking peripheral vision to separate the murky green edges from greasy tarmac.

Soft rain sizzled off clothing, sweat beaded under now a too warm jacket and still cold breath merged instantly with the clamping fog bounding my world. But only once did the journey go bad, when frontier stones – guarding a tended lawn – loomed large like dirty ogres teeth ready to chew up this knight in shining lycra. A fast shimmy, as wet grass plucked away traction from slick tyres, and a desperate course change saw us plot a lucky line back onto the blacktop.

I fear there may have been collateral damage in terms of carefully planted perennials. Certainly as the station emerged fromunder fuzzy streetlights, it became apparent that the bike was considerably more shrubbery accesorised that it had been twenty five minutes previously.

But there was a feeling of worthy which is not earned during the summer. A flapjacks’ worth of extra effort, a coffee double-shot of not taking the easy option, a warming winter pint coming back the other way. Still a thousand times better than taking the car.

* I hope Seb doesn’t see this photo. Technically it’s all over the place. Compositionally it would blow a randy goat. In my defense, the camera was on my phone, the temperature was still bloody chilly and the bloke on the platform thought I was stalking him.

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.

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 😉