When Ben Elton used to be funny, his stand up routine included a sketch lampooning the great British public. He pinpointed our fierce protection of personal space by mimicking the mantra of the desperate commuter – “double seat, must get a double seat”. Various tactics were discussed but the premier seat reservation system seemed to be the strategic placement of a plastic dog turd, almost guaranteed to preserve ones’ anonymity in the face of other fare paying passengers.

Twenty years on in a new millennium with new rolling stock, the practice is still the instinctive reaction of any self important cheeky bugger. This evening I witnessed a brazen embodiment through the physical medium of a stuffed shirt transformed into an arse. Neat trick I can tell you and here’s how it works.

Middle management, middle aged spread swapped the novelty turd for a plethora of vocational accouterments including his silly briefcase, a collection of allegedly important business papers and what he laughably considered to be his best “bagsy this seat” stare.

And only under extreme duress did he give it up, firstly feigning deafness and then grudgingly shovelling his stuff elsewhere with the expression of a man who couldn’t believe nobody else realised how important he actually was. It reminds me of a World War II anecdote were a German SS captain pushed his way arrogantly past a Frenchman whose country has been recently occupied. When asked to apologise, he responded with a haughty “I am a German Officer” to which the ever so brave French replied “as an excuse, it is inadequate, as a reason, it certainly is“. Probably got the poor bugger shot.

Train etiquette is even less obvious in the morning with the Alpha Males all playing materialistic “Risk“, fighting over the battle zone of the shared table. Empire building takes the form of depositing laptops, PDA’s, phones and diaries at the exact centre of the table. Border skirmishes see the armoured reserve of newspapers and monographed papers probing your enemy’s defenses.

Eventually trench warfare sets in as they flit impatiently between unconnected devices pretending not to notice the opposing belligerents, but secretly attempting to outgun their foes with the trills and beeps of their rambling pantheon of electric weaponry.

Me? I am stinky in shorts and long in amusement, launching unilateral biological strikes with each stealthy lift of a sweaty armpit. Occasionally – if I find myself annoying drawn down to their level – out comes the astonishing electronic do it all the firm furnishes with me for testing. This is akin to introducing a stealth fighter to the do battle with Sopworth Camels (or in the case of some of the niche tat on the train, just camels) and their barely checked envy clearly means that I have won.

This counts double if I’m paying Tetris rather than pretending that I am at the eye of some informational tornado. Although I’d rather win by involuntarily ranting some spittle flecked diatribe on what a sack of shallow wankers I share my commute with. But I’m far too English, so instead I shall not cease until my search for a plastic dog turd is complete.

But there is on YouTube.

Busy, busy busy at work. Here’s something to keep you entertained while my nose gets a good grinding.

Human Tetris

I’ve asked for this to be included in our text team building/group hug event.

It just makes UK TV look so lame!

Having invested (a word that has oft entered my vocabulary when explaining fiscal sleight of hand to those less skilled in the art of complex financial transactions) in a keenly priced pre-loved digital SLR, it was – of course – only a matter of days before it became the platform for expensive upgrades.It’s good to know that the “all the gear, no idea” approach to Mountain Biking which has served me so averagely was seamlessly transferred to yet another expensive hobby.

To replace the perfectly adequate 18-55mm lens which arrived as part of the deal, I spent/spunked/wasted invested around seventy quid more than the entire purchase price of the camera bundle on a shiny new optical placebo. This lens is better is so many varied and expensive ways, it’s hardly worth mentioning that in terms of focal lengths, it is about the same.

But the “aspherical glass with 13 elements in 9 groups virtually eliminates chromatic aberration and a pass through aperture of f/2.8 along the entire length of the zoom ensures perfect composition and world peace“. I know this to be true because it plainly stated it on the marketing material.

I am more disturbed with my choice of subject since after chasing sweaty men dressed in figure hugging lycra through steamy, dark woods the other evening, now I am reduced to taking pictures of flowers. But it was – as seems to be the ground weather state for Spring/Summer 2007 – pissing down with rain so even a girly rose shot was elevated over taking pictures of the back door. If you catch my drift 😉

I intend to give it a proper outing tomorrow during a father’s day visit to Chicksands. I expect this will save me having to ride much, or – if I must – then I can test the efficacy of this mightly lens under fluorescent light in Bedford A&E.

But I think it hurt my friend Martyn (pictured) a bit more.

A great ride taking in everything I love about riding in the Chilterns. Including chasing some lambs at “ramming speed” but the less said about that the better.

Lots of lush and Cheeky singletrack, including one involving walking the bikes through a busy Churchyard. Fast and grippy downhills on a choice of flint, chalk, dirt and roots. Many uphills in which the BBC3 Gear (Granny – Granny – everyone secretly likes it but no one admits to using it) was absolutely required. A fresh pair of legs half way round wouldn’t have gone amiss either.

Cold beer and hot BBQ’d dead animal to finish. I didn’t even need a shower, because on returning home, the family turned the hosepipe onto me. Possibly smelled a bit?

There’s so many places to ride in this country. Many of them have greater technical challenges, bigger views, less people and virtually limitless opportunities for limb removal. And that’s all well and good but sometimes just getting out and riding with your friends until your legs stop working is about as good as it gets.

Much 🙂

German engineering at its finest. The new bike rack was put together in all the time it takes to invade a small country and has been about as intransigent ever since. It’s all kicked off with border skirmishes started by the Swedish Roof bars and escalated by the entire Japanese car.

Honestly, I thought I was going to have to call the UN. Anyway, ready to ride tomorrow but I must must must remember the car is now ten foot tall and low hanging foliage cannot form any part of my route to ride.

In my mind it does anyway. And once my smooth yet violent transition to world dictator is complete, it shall phonetically as well. Any linguistic scholar who wishes to diffidently argue the point, shall suffer death by killer vole. The ninja badgers are behind held in reserve for the first person who refers to themselves in the third person.

Rather than a planned ride/drink/hospital visit weekend in the Lake District, fate cruelly dealt me the joyless hand of painting the front fence instead. So forgoing the life affirming experience of bouncing head first onto sharp pointy rocks while admiring the view, I excavated the shed in search of paint, brushes and some enthusiasm. Two out of three ain’t bad.

Now, according to those lost souls who sacrifice their weekends on the alter of home improvement, a professional finish relies on painstaking preparation. Heeding such advice, my preparation involved leaving it for about five years until the Neighborhood Watch assumed the house had been abandoned. This apparently isn’t exactly what they had in mind, so firstly I zoomed up and down the flakey picket with power tools accompanied by plane noises. A satisfying if ultimately disappointing approach which rapidly low teched its way down to a scraper and bucket of water.

Is this the best 21st century technology could offer? Apparently so – yet it was only four hours later when as much as one third of the fence was cured of flaky leprosy. Much of this time was spent cussing the idiot who had previously slapped on some cheap paint in a style I came to think of “looks ok must be ok”. According to my wife, that idiot was me, although I have no recollection of it whatsoever. Probably therapy was involved to blank it from my mind.

My mood was in no way improved by the entire neighborhood strolling past in their guise of self appointed members of the piss taking committee. While one particular individual launched her jolly japes into a sea of misery (you know the kind of thing “oooh you missed a bit” and “at this rate, you’ll be finished by Christmas“), I painted her dog. Needless to say, there is no way that poor mutt is going to win any prizes at the next kennel club; “That’s never a pure bred dalmatian, it doesn’t have any spots”

She was right about one thing tho, this was taking bloody ages. The fence seemed to stretch out to infinity whereas my patience was stretched to about snapping point. Boredom took over at an inopportune point, as by this time I had the pain(t) brush grasped firmly in my mitt and was waggling away in the style of “happy slappy“. The collateral damage included two new derivations of well known flowers – “the hoster gloss-paintus” and the “Buddlea White-Spot”

What a dumb way to spend the final 8 hours of your holiday. Honestly, it was so bad, I’d have preferred to have been at work. Which is exactly where I’ll be the next time to subsidise a proper tradesman who has the requisite painting skills and stratospherically high boredom threshold.

Or I’m concreting over the entire garden and renting it out as car park space.

That’s what the Isle Of Wight reminds me of. Take the nice non Basingstoke part of Hants, pump in the hills in a Pammy style, remove most of the roads and nearly all of the cars and drop ship a hundred tea shops in their place. Being far to lazy to actually understand the history of the island, instead I sought a cock snooping alternative of everything you can find with an Internet connection and a copy of Google.

There are some very serious and well laid out sites taking you through the founding of the population (bloody Romans), the expansion in the middle ages (bloody French), the sacking of the major towns during the almost ceaseless European wars of the 17th and 18th centuries (bloody French again – specially a short one armed megalomaniac) finishing up with peace, harmonisation, Tennyson and tourism (smug Brits).

For those with diagnosed attention deficit, it goes Crops, Smuggling, Smuggling, Surrender, Smuggling, Poets, Tourism, Tacky Piers and some smuggling to finish. Or if you’re striving for historical context, you cannot beat the remendous if slightly over-named “The Isle Of Wight Timeline of History”. A clearly short of things to do Roger Hewitt has cleverly juxtaposed the major events in British History with interesting happening on the island. National events in bold, Island stuff in plain text, my pithy comments in italics

1215e__King John seals Magna Carta at Runnymede
1220c—Rabbits introduced
Is there some link? I must re-read the Magna Carta to check out the constitutional position on rabbits.

1349e__Black Death widespread
1350x__Artillery cannon coming into general use
1350x—Hall House of Chale Abbey farm built by John de Langford
Right. A little known fact in the fight against plague.

1642e__Civil War begins
1642e—Island falls to Parliamentarians with only one shot fired
“You’ll not shoot us!” BANG “Ok, we surrender”

1649e__Charles I executed
1650e—Watchingwell Park still contains “nine score deer”
Charles missed a few then.

1666e__Great Fire of London
1673e—Earliest record of an Island postmaster
“Dear Mum, London Burnt down, we’re fine”

1789c__French Revolution puts the wind up the English ruling classes
1790c—Island breed of pig developed
There’s got to be a decent metaphor here. I just can’t think what it might be…

1832e__Reform Bill widens election suffrage and changes political influence
1832e—Population “nearly all more or less concerned with smuggling”
Right about the most important constitutional event is not really of interest to those whose living takes the form of dark nights, lanterns and avoiding the excise men.

1860e—Prince Albert oversees rebuilding of Whippingham Church
1861e__Prince Albert dies
Clearly killed the poor bugger.

1919e__British Empire at its height
1920e__Marconi opens first public broadcasting station
1920e—First council houses built
You can keep your imperialist nonsense, check out our social agenda.

The history stops abruptly at 1945, so I can only assume nothing of interest has happened since.

Our visit saw the Island almost sink under the accumulation of a years rainfall lashing in thirty six hours. This was my nailed up excuse not to ride the bike I’d transported over road and sea, only to clutter up the caravan with it and mount it just the once to fetch a paper. An epic of almost two miles. This didn’t stop me in any way from attending the awards ceremony for those proper mountain bikers who’d risked hypothermia on the Wight Diamond Challenge. I remember little of that night other than significant beer and the real risk of drowning every time one popped out to make space for the next pint.

Regardless of the wet, we left under sunny skies and with some regret having seen not enough and barely scratched the surface of artery hardening confectionery at the aforementioned tea stops. We’ll definitely be back but this time I’m booking some proper weather.

I’m starting to resent the time and the faff of preparing to ride. It must be all this commuting where – dull as it is – at no point do bike trailers, cars and driving form a environmentally disturbing juxtaposition to cycling. And it’s not all 80s “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” hand wringing either. Getting ready, getting changed, getting pissed off at the twentieth trip back to the house for some trivial riding accessory like shoes seems eats into precious riding time. My pre-ride mind state is somewhere between jumpily frazzled and downright irritated with life.

So now try this with the kids and multiply that irritation to the power of about a thousand. It took me ONE HOUR to dust off unused bikes, fix brakes, pump up tyres, dismantle one for the boot, have three attempts to load the trailer and then waste most of the remainder of the morning finding and filling lost camelbaks.

The idea was simple. As part of my “no drive to ride” plan, I’ve been investigating a route along the Great Union Canal (starting in Aylesbury) to a popular ride start. It looked like it’d be a fun place for the kids to up their game a bit with it’s relative narrowness compared to the Sustrans.

Unfortunately my reece failed to factor in a month’s rain on the trail and the spring explosion of waterside vegetation. A combination of mud, people traffic and the proximity of the canal soon caused Random to plunge headlong into a nettle patch of extreme stinginess. This after we’d had about four close shaves, parental shouting and sibling sulking as the kids tried to remember how to ride properly after a couple of month of scooter action. I’d clearly misjudged – well – almost everything really so time for plan B.

We quit the bumpy path only to find a delightful, easy to navigate trail round the local nature reserve and flood plain (interesting combination that). The prospect of heading back through nettle alley traumatised little random to the extent that her lip was in full wibble mode. Instead we struck off over the council fields, veering dangerously every time a play area came into view until a safe route was found back into town.

Aylesbury has been targeted (oh I so wish by an air strike) with some Government (sorry our) money to build a safe transit through the town for cyclists. And it’s good as far as it goes which isn’t far enough. I had that terrifying parental issue of two kids stranded in the road with cars hooning in from opposite directions (my fault all round and properly scary) because a set of pedestrian lights were “out of order”. And have been for three weeks.

Just when I thought there was a good chance I’d be returning home with both children – neither of which required any treatment that couldn’t be found in the Ice Cream bucket, Random decided the simplest way to avoid a pedestrian on the shared cycleway would be to drop off the curb and ride into the busy road.

My bike has more scars from being hastily chucked at the concrete while I dove incautiously into a head of traffic that it ever receives on the trails. Random explained “I couldn’t see anything coming and I didn’t want to stop“. Fair enough and she dropped the curb with some aplomb I couldn’t help proudly noticing between heartbeats of parental terror. But we’re not doing this again for a while, it’s just too bloody dangerous.

Next time, we’re going to make use of the new cycle paths they’ve built in the village and ride into town without attempting any difficult road crossings or aggressive shrubbery. And we’ll stop in the pub on the way back – it’ll almost be like a proper mountain bike ride 🙂

Is that how you spell it? I always wondered if there was a little trammeled branch of the hive where a happily Darwinian selected bee converts pollen to beer. And if so, the queen must have spent most of her life pissed. Still with that much procreation going on, she was entitled to a few sharpeners before the next thousand eggs were due.

Or is it a cross between a Bee and a Moth? Hell of a mating ritual that must have been – “fuck off out of it, I’m shagging this light“. Ok, just to prove that occasionally I embark in a crusade of research trawling at least one venerable institute of known facts before giving up and typing it into Wiki, here’s the official version “the word is most likely a plural form of בהמה (bÉ’hÄ“māh (“animal”)). It may be an example of pluralis excellentiae, a Hebrew method of expressing greatness by pluralising a noun; it thus indicates that Behemoth is the largest and most powerful animal.”

There will be a scorpion of behemoth proportion waiting to be dropped into the trousers of whoever decided plural was a verb. However, aside from this, it’s a pretty accurate description of the monster which held me hostage this evening.

That picture doesn’t even begin to do it justice. If I’d be brave enough to place a compact family car next to the angrily buzzing killer, it would barely have cast it into shadow. Trapped in the barn, it flipped the internal psycho lever and proceeded to headbutt every flat service including frightened bits of me. At one terrifying juncture, it had me trapped in a corner so I cravenly called for Carol to come and deal with it. Using extreme violence if necessary.

Her attempts to pacify the winged phantom of death were based on a no nonsense approach of prodding it from the safety of a long brush. Strangely enough, this had the opposite effect, and soon the crazed beast crossed the boundary from “bloody angry” to suicidally insane” – a change identified by an increase in buzzing volume accompanied by a lowering of the frequency. Essentially, at this point it had turned into the animal equivalent of a Stuka dive bomber.

After failing to actually mortally wound anyone, it retired to a light fitting to regain its’ strength. I wasn’t sure if it was dead or merely having a breather while calling in the artillery. I desperately attempted to out stare it until it became apparent that Genetically Modified Bees don’t blink- it wastes good killing time.

Eventually through an act of selfless bravery that I am far too modest to recount, the flying reaper was dispatched from whence it came. Which I assume is one of Dante’s nine levels of hell. Probably near the bottom.

Anyway I’m fine thanks for asking. A little preoccupied though as eBay isn’t offering up any previously enjoyed motion sensitive machine guns last seen being looted off the Berlin Wall. Next time, I’ll be ready.