Category: Other stuff

Pretty concise and snappy title eh? Yes I do have a life outside Mountain Biking. No, it’s no better written or researched.

Buried

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

That’s me. Not physically, but hold that thought while I mentally prepare my list of people who should be. This week I have mainly been firing up the motivational chainsaw, while adopting a coping mechanism built around edged weapons.

Things have not been going well.

I’ve missed out on riding, and almost everything else other than sitting in front of a phone and shouting. The phone is carefully placed so to leave me room to beat my head repeatedly against the desk. Again, I categorise such action as “coping”.

This morning, the light finally filtered into my train journey at Reading. I am sure you can imagine how disappointing that is. Whooshing through the Cotswolds – identified by the smell of twee – in the inky blackness of the pre-dawn, only for light to illuminate the architectural disaster area that is London West.

I do not expect my day to improve. Although tonight I am separated from the hedgy burrow by an evening in London. I expect most of tomorrow to involve some form of hangover cure. Possibly hacking my own head off with that chainsaw.

Until then, I must away. Things to do, people to see, desks to damage through the management tool of hysterical headbutting.

Interrupt Driven

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

There are many scientific studies postulating the theory that men cannot multi-task. I am here to tell you today they are absolutely right. But you can keep your expensive research and large group studies, because they are not needed to illustrate this essential truth. All that is required is to ask a bloke to perform a simple task, and then continue to interrupt him until he explodes.

All that stood between me and something far more interesting was schlepping a few barrowloads of earth from one end of the garden to the other. I was ignorant of the logic behind such soil redistribution, but happily so – engaged in that manly, physical act of the rude mechanical.

However I had barely turned my spade in anger, before being informed my selection of soil was from the wrong pile. Since our garden currently has the landscaped aspect of a set from “attack of the giant killer voles“, this is an easy mistake to make. So moving onto a second pile of brownish, parched dry, rock hard ground – that looked EXACTLY THE SAME as the one I’d be shooed away from – I applied some pent up energy to the job.

Half way through the first barrow, no.1 daughter sidles up and wonders if progress can be made on the “Menace Sledge“. A quick review of the languished project signals some creative work required before further painting can commence. Verbal is dispatched to the barn to do her worst with a roll of masking tape and a copy of my last appraisal.*

Barely a further spade had been turned before no.2 child demands some bike based action. Grumpily downing tools, I release the ickle pink one – steady – from its’ hooked prison, furnish Random with gloves and helmet and wheel her out into the garden.

Believing now that nothing can divert me from my primary task, I attack the pile with gusto only to be told that in fact it is stones that we need, not soil. So – grumbling darkly – I upend the soil back from whence it came and begin to replace it with rocks strewn into our garden’s moonscape. On presenting these, I find they are the wrong type of stone.

Beginning to sizzle gently, I am not even allowed to correct my mistake because suddenly a sledgehammer, some nails, long bits of wood and an owl** were now gazumped onto the critical path. Now as a bloke, I can deal with multiple tasks, but only in serial form. Whereas this kind of multi-threaded scenario turns me into a cross between a headless chicken and one of the extras from the movie Scanners.

Finally I’m back where I belong on the barrow. For about two seconds before Verbal wants me to approve the paint template – which I hurriedly do -before declaring that she’s been promised a pound if she washes Carol’s car. Fine, just get on with it. Oh you can’t? No, because muggins here is suddenly 2nd Helper assigned to hosepipe duties.

Deep sweary sigh. Drop Spade. Find hosepipe. Find bucket. Fill Bucket. Send child to turn on hosepipe. Stomp around garden looking for spraying attachment. Receive admonishment regarding lack of correct soil/rock/hammer/owl. Begin to rotate on spot in manner of organic drill turned up to 11.

At which point smallest child demands some satisfaction on bike related problem. Deciding this is a job only I can do and so be freed from minutiae of family life, grab spanners and skulk in workshop cursing the non linear world I live in. Fix bike, feel the happy, blokey glow of finishing something before being drawn back outside by sound of swearing.

Verbal is one of only two people in the world who can make Carol swear publicly***. She’s a bright kid, but sometimes has the legendary stubbornness of a mule crossed with a camel. Convinced she cannot actually turn the hose off – having turned it on some ten minutes earlier – a cross garden debate ensues focusing on exactly which way anti clockwise is.

The last couplet went something like this: Wails” I don’t have a watch” Shouts: “Oh for FUCKS SAKE“. I decide to step in before social services to, only to find myself involved in another maelstrom of requests. I very nearly put both kids in the barrow, threw the bike on top, chucked in the hammer, nails and wood, filled the lot up with dead birds and wheel them outside to the cry of “FOR GOD’S SAKE I AM A BLOKE, ARE YOU TRYING TO DRIVE ME MENTAL?”

I remember watching those endless sitcoms where hen-pecked middle aged men would listen wearily to the incessant requests from their spouse, and answer only “Yes Dear“. I used to think this was spineless and stupid. Now I’m seeing it as some kind of coping strategy.

I did eventually – in case you’re even slightly interested – finish the task I’d started some hours before. At which point I locked myself in the barn and muttered my way through some pointless tasks. All of which I lined up behind a large mug of tea and in an order that could be quickly and simply worked through. At no point did I think “tell you what, I’ll put this bolt down and go and refelt the roof“.

I’m coming to the conclusion that men, like life, are simple. It’s the women that make things complicated. My next step is to try and explain this to them, for which I’ll need to understand them first. I’m 42 years old, and I’ve no idea where to start on that one.

* it got off lightly. I had it earmarked for chicken shitting duties.

** I made that up. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if such a request had been followed by “Oh come on, I’ve TOLD you why we need the owl loads of times”

*** Obviously I am the other one.

The menace sledge

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

A few points of order before we start. The sledge in question is not finished, so descriptive language and a few choice lies shall paint the pictures that this post is so sorely lacking. And before you ask, with understandable incredulation, why I am sweating over a hot powertool on a beautiful, warm blue sky day entirely lacking in snow, let me shunt your line of questioning onto the branch marked “Children”.

I’m not sure I’ve ever owned a proper sledge. Even back in the middle ages when I was a lad and six foot snowdrifts mocked global warming for at least three months a year, winter sliding was done on old tyres, black bags and other random stuff nailed together*

Although my dad made us a sledge once. Being both a proper Yorkshireman and half decent engineer, he acquired a pair of two inch thick metal runners and grafted on top a downhill tank with no time for that sissy-Santa look of graceful arcs and elegant lines. No, this long slung snow shark combined ship thick steel with no nonsense 4×4 hardwood, topped off with Boadicea tribute outrunners that’d reduce a shop sled to splinters without any discernible loss of velocity.

It was properly mental. Obviously we called it “Killer” and it became the terror of the local slopes, with at least five confirmed kills and a number of additional blood injuries to be taken into consideration. In our defence, even with three kids on board, steering was all but impossible, and once it had ruddered onto the hill’s fall line nothing could stop it. We should have renamed it “The Lumberjack“.

I know it outlasted our childhood, and can only assume it was finally destroyed in a controlled explosion after it ate through a log cabin or something. Anyway these are the kind of design cues that stay with a boy, so when Verbal announced she’d like a “Menace Sledge“, I was soon on the hunt for a couple of bridge supports to get us started.

Two things went wrong immediately. Firstly I left Verbal responsible for the design process which eventually spat out two paint cans, a not very scale drawing on the back of an envelope and a hopeful smile**. Secondly I’m not half the engineer my old man was, and the only thing I’ve built of note in the last twenty years is a wobbly workshop table. And I’d not be keen to race that downhill.

Did this deter us? It did not. We did, however, lose the envelope so dropped back to the standard “rapid prototyping” model which sees me manically powersaw random lengths of wood, which Verbal attempts to create something sledge like with the offcuts. It’ll not be a surprise to you, that this has led to some compromises.

Firstly the track is too narrow, the ski(wheel?)base too short and the seat too high. It’s built from project off cuts which are neither square nor light. It’s also been hand finished by a girl who’s never had a spray can in her hand before. Being a “Dennis The Menace” tribute, the colours are red and black, and the best I can say of the brooding carcus before me is it resembles the cleaning up operation after a pretty heavy crucifixion.

Assuming it ever hits the slopes, I’m fairly sure things shall not improve. Although I’ll chamfer*** the skis so it doesn’t pitch our first born head first into a nearby snowbank, I’m don’t feel this is necessarily a good thing. Because if it ever does reach a fast slither, there will be no way to steer it, or – and some would say this is even more important – to stop it. I expect it to be both insanely fast and desperately twitchy based on the weight/materials/geometry.

In fact, it may well be the first equipment in the entire history of winter sports to be fitted with an airbag. Still three months to refine the design before the ignominy of the inevitable rubbishness of its’ first run.

Tell you one thing though, I’ll not be testing it.

* for about as long as it took to say “no, you have the first go, I know exactly how it was built”. Generally five seconds was reckoned to be the median time for such creations to return to their component parts. Funny for us builders, relatively terrifying and occasionally limb breaking for the maiden pilots.

** In our family, this passes as a pretty qualified design brief.

*** A fine woodworking term, someone demeaned when it is being performed with a jigsaw.

Alcohol dependancy

On By AlexIn Other stuff1 Comment

Breaking my own avowed radio silence this evening, I was again rendered dashboard thumping with rage as two idiots vigorously debated both sides of the wrong argument. Representing academia was a stern doctor type grouping alcohol advertising and drink related illness as Satan’s killer cocktail. Smarming from the sidelines sloped a suit declaring that£800 million pounds a year bought the drinks company’s nothing but brand awareness.

They are both wrong, but that’s largely irrelevant because the whole argument is dumb. And here’s why – we have lost the ability to apply perspective to any discussion. Rational analysis has been sidelined by the non listening classes preaching at the extremes of the argument, before packaging 30 seconds of doom mongering for our sound-bite generation.

There is no respect for the other view, no attempt to persuade or influence, no chance of listening or even educating; no it’s just preachy bollocks that assumes the audience is unable or unwilling to weigh up subtle nunances, and then let them decide how they’d like to live their lives.

If we draw a straight line from cigarettes kill through alcohol kills, then let’s spear obesity with that linear progression shall we? Obesity must kill more people than alcohol, put more strain on hospitals and lose more hours of the working year. So come one, be properly radical ban all food advertising as well. No scrap that, go a bit further – because clearly we cannot be fucking trusted with anything – take all the food off the shelves and let the state decide what we eat.

Where’s the downside? Okay we’ll all be eating gruel three times a day and the Flora London Marathon’ll be looking for a sponsor, but we can switch funding from people dying by their own hand to keeping them hanging on a few more years thanks to our caring government.

And what pisses me off even more is it is just bad science. A recent report linked bowel cancer with Ham by correlating what people ate with confirmed cases of the disease. What it totally failed to account for whether these same people drank a gallon of wine a night, smoked themselves wheezy or shoved a live rat up their arse.

You cannot airily make a link – as our tweed jacketed chum did earlier – that every alcohol measure you imbibe is another irretrievable step to cancer, nor can you brush off an 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} increase in alcohol sales in fifteen years as insufficient data to spot a trend. But you can have an informed debate, and then let people make their own bloody minds up.

I despair sometimes I really do. You know what? I’m going to have a beer.

No Shit Sherlock.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

I should have ridden in today for many reasons. One of them being I would not have been forced to suffer the unending tripe of breakfast radio shows. Hunting around my normal Radio 4 frequency – having had my fill or terrorists and public service cuts – BBC Hereford and Worcester promised much in terms of mindless music and pointless chat to speed me through the early morning traffic.

But it couldn’t even manage that. The dopey presenter regaled the torpid (it was v. early) listener with a story of how teachers had identified the “naughtiest children by their names“. On reading this list, I was struck by a number of blindingly obvious facts, and one major concern.

1) All the naughty kids read out spookily correlated with the most popular children’s names since the year 2000. One could persuasively argue that the probability of a child called “Jack” being a bit cheeky has a slightly higher statistical possibility than one named Murgatroid.

2) I thought teachers were busy. Why would you spend one second creating this list? It’s not only very bad mathematics for a educational establishment, it’s probably also got paranoid parents flooding the deed pole help line.

3) How the hell have Brooklyn, Dwayne and Jade crept into the top 10 most popular names?

I know this stuff shouldn’t bother me. I appreciate that intellectual rigour has been superseded by look-at-me statistics and poor science, but surely even dead air is better than spouting such bloody nonsense?

On my return trip, my listening experience will be the aurial delight of road noise.

Keep Calm and Carry On.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Nearly seventy years old, but still as punchy and concise as the day it was first displayed. I’m feeling rather punchy after the concise message from the garage that all is not well with the Love Bus. Apparently they’ve never before found a fault with the steering caused by someone not driving it. You may be shaking your heads in the time-honoured warranty fashion on hearing “I was just riding along and my frame snapped in four places“. But I tell you, Friday fine, undriven till yesterday, last night: broken.

This is distracting me from two other rather pressing issues. The first being a tent being handed over by a friend of mine with the mischievous narrative “Oh it’s really easy to put together, just follow the instructions“. NOTHING is easy to put together if it has instructions. I can quote at length from flat pack furniture through children’s toys to mountain bike components accompanied by a manual translated from Chinese to English, via Urdu by a man who only knew enough of both languages to sell a camel.

But erect* it we must, because the second Elephant In The Room is holding an umbrella and scouting about for a very large dingy. Yes I know camping at the Autumn end of August isn’t very bright, but neither is attempting such lunacy with four members of the family who’ve never done it before. One of them which smells and snores even worse than I do. Hard to believe, but sadly the ear perforating, nasal hair shrivelling truth when one considers the aural stinky disaster that is Murphy the Labrador.

Our camping experience is a light one. Well not really as we have nothing more than ten quids worth of dim electric candle and some head torches of similar, dubious quality. And a very small – yet potentially lethal – stove. And a kettle. And that’s it. So if it** rains, that’ll be four people and a mad dog confined in a small canvas dome wondering if “I Spy” can be classified as mental torture under UN rules.

Still assuming the car gets fixed before we’re meant to leave, then at least I can sleep in it. The last two occasions I’ve created a tentage experience, someone else has had the pleasure of sleeping in it, while I shoe-horned myself into the back of the truck. Unlikely to get five of us in it – primarily because the doors will be locked and I shall have ear plugs in. So deaf to the entreaties of my family who may well be shouting “WHOSE BLOODY STUPID IDEA WAS THIS?”

Ah. Well. H’mm. And on that salutatory note, I shall bid you farewell, only to return in a few days with tales of trenchfoot and emergency B&B’s no doubt.

* I’m too fraught to offer up my normal stable of giant erection “nobody thinks they are funny but you” missives. Be thankful.

** When

Dog flies, I bleed, welcome to the weekend.

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

I am only writing this because nine nails are bitten to the quick, and the other one is encased in a very large plaster. Cricket you see; a logical part of the mind chastises “it’s only a game, there is nothing you can do to alter the outcome, you should care this much” whereas the other part – that bit that goes aarrgggthh ever time a gloating Aussie scores 400 with the bat stuck to his head or something – just wants England to win back the Ashes.

Other way round, we have to make 550, they have to bowl us out, it’s over in 50 overs with a batting average reading capitulation and humiliation. They bat and the buggers just think “550? Pah, we’ll be done by tomorrow lunch and have the rest of the day off“.

And who says recycling saves the planet? It may well do but it didn’t save my finger which was surgically sliced by an unseen broken glass. Probably lost in all the wine bottles. 10 minutes of bleeding and no sympathy later, it was off to the community hospital in Ross to lie about my last tetanus and be bandaged up yet again.

It’s almost as if I’m clumsy or something. Whatever, blood loss must have been the trigger for an all expenses raid on the local camping shop, from where we left staggering under the weight of “essential” equipment. Yes, next week we’re going to try camping for the first time with the kids. Not to save money as the cost of all this kit could easily have paid for a nice hotel, with a snug little bar.

Instead we’re borrowing a tent, and heading out to the wilds of Cardigan Bay. To spend three or four days marooned under stormy skies with only a moist, smelly dog for company.

Sounds ace doesn’t it? But if the inevitable cricketing tragedy plays out, at least there’ll be radio silence. In the meantime, here are some more levitating dog pictures.

Murphy - August 09 Murphy - August 09

Murphy - August 09 Murphy - August 09

Anybody wants me, I’ll be whimpering under a blanket with only radio 4 and a hip flask for company.

Dog-Gawn

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

Strange phone call the other day, starting: “Have you got a black Labrador?”. A swift review of my personal inventory showed a worrying absence of stinky mutt. “Not right now I answered” wondering what this dog obsessed stranger wanted, and how he’d got my number.

The answer came quickly; the number was on Murphy’s collar which was co-located with the mutt on the main road between Ledbury and Ross. An arterial trunk that carries much in the way of heavy lorries and dopey tourists – both of which are piloting vehicles that would deliver much squashage to fur and flesh. Especially if it’s wandering about in the middle of the road attempting to lick bumpers.

We retrieved the dog – much chastised – and even though he knew he was being pointlessly bollocked, his little brain would not have picked up that those very bollocks were in line for an expensive operation with a couple of house bricks. Dog Lore says that wandering mutts are generally chasing *ahem* ready ladies, and the best way to nip that in the bud is to nip the poor bugger in the nuts.

If that wasn’t bad enough – which let’s face it if you’re any sort of bloke, it’s way more than enough – the Hound of Smell is on starvation rations. A review of his bi-daily snout experience suggests that now he’s stopped growing*, his bowl should be filled to a mere 3/4 of the previous amount. Still Murph’s having the last laugh with supper augmentation of smelly cow shit.

And while recent visitors have accused us of replacing the lovely puppy with a crudely reshaped horse, this is not the animal that is giving us the most gyp. After nearly three months of bulking up, fighting and failing to lay any eggs. At least one of the useless fluffies spent that time creating some kind of rifling system up it’s bottom as the much-awaited first egg appeared to have been fired from a cannon. Very odd shape.

That was the only egg. We haven’t seen so much as a yoke since. One key reason behind this is the bloke selling to us was clearly a Grade-A liar. Because two of the chickens have started crowing and performing technical rape of the other three. I have a feeling they may be boy chickens.

I might send Murphy in there to go check them out. Still if he can’t shag it, he’ll probably eat it.

While I have been writing this the England cricket team are attempting to lose the ashes by chucking wickets away with the kind of gay abandon that has any avid fan chewing the keyboard in frustration. Never has the phrase “Snatching defeat from the jaws of Victory” been so apposite.

* Thankfully. He treads on your foot, you go to hospital for a new one.

Ask a silly question…

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

Remember the first time you tried something new? The mental vertigo experienced while teetering over the scary chasm of much unknowing. The gap between what you know now and what you need to know is both exciting, frustrating and occasionally terrifying. This holds for many activities explored in our younger years – learning to drive, going to work and the sweaty, fumbling of sexual experiences*

At almost pensionable age of 42, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think those days – like so much other stuff – are far behind me. But that’s just not the case, the pie chart of all-knowing still has at big old cake slice marked “How the fuck do I do that?“. A second, and larger, section coloured in a deep angry red reads “Why the fuck am I doing that?“. Another reason for this yawing gap between what I need to know and what I don’t can be simply summarised by this conversation with the small random child.

“Daddy, what was it like when you were 30? Was it much different” to which my considered answer was “I can’t even remember what was occurring when I was 40, only ghostly mists of largely concealed hinterland are visible before then“. Probably a bit much for an eight year old, and last time I looked she was googling for exactly where in the world “Hinterland may be located”

But the point – and yes there is one in case you were concerned I’d descended into incomprehensible dribbilisaion** – is a combination of fading memory, inability to learn new skills and an enlarged impatience gland do not offer the succour of a sanguine middle age. Yesterday extensive experience of crashing brought forth some structural changes to a much loved model glider. Some would celebrate its’ new easy-to-carry design with a detachable tailplane, and a few hundred balsa shards that can be simply transported in a spare pocket.

Others – myself included – may shake an impotent fist at the unseen meterological forces that makes landing four pounds of wood go something like “missed the ground, missed the ground, missed the ground, shit where’s it gone, HIT the ground, crraasshhhh“. My inability to close the knowledge gap takes many forms, one of them being a God given ability to ignore the advice of those who clear do know what they are talking about: “Don’t go that far behind the slope, you’ll crash” they said. “No I won’t” I said “Need a bag to carry the remains?” they then said.

Anyway it wasn’t my new glider and I can probably repair it with such skill it might even fly again. Assuming it’s carried off by a passing bird of prey with poor eyesight. But one facet of this repair splash landed in the custard of doubt***, and I inadvisedly “leveraged the power of the virtual expert” by posting a very simple question on an Internet forum. What I didn’t get was a simple answer.

The first ten replies told me not to start from here. I gently pointed out that decision had been somewhat taken away from me about the time that soft wood hit hard dirt. The next slew of responses marked out the tribal boundaries of the Flat Earthers and the New World Men. From there, an increasingly embittered argument descended into name calling and cyber-cage-fighting. When I last looked, the moderator had stepped in and a tense calm had broken out.

I don’t expect this state of affairs to last. They may need to call in ACAS or possibly the UN.

At no point, did anyone answer my question. This proves to me the Internet is rubbish, and my original approach to wield fast revving power tools in a whirling circle of woody death was clearly the right one. I may still be misinformed, cerebrally undercooked and darkenly unenlightened. And I’m sure to bugger up the repair with my normal klutzy incompetence. But – and this is huge ladies and gents – I am not sat eating my keyboard and offering to slice someone open with a balsa saw because they had the temerity to question my all-knowing craft skills.

I’m thinking we should go back to chisels, slates and shouting.

* Certainly was for me. Those sheep were FAST.

** Long term Hedgies will understand the nuance, newer readers may struggle to notice the difference

*** In the Pie Chart. Try and keep up.