Pretty concise and snappy title eh? Yes I do have a life outside Mountain Biking. No, it’s no better written or researched.
… I give you Senator William McAdoo on Warren Harding whose “speeches left the impression of an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words would actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork”
Now that is a proper put down. Reminds me of a few people. No, since you asked, I wasn’t including myself.
No, this isn’t some sudden epiphany or life changing statement, something rather more mundane but intensely irritating. Today’s paper offered up a story that the Government has spunked£1 billion pounds of taxpayers (er, that’s our then) money on transport initiatives in the last ten years. Doesn’t sound much I hear you say well here’s the kicker; none of that money has actually been spent on building anything at all. No tunnels dug, no stations opened, no roads widened.
This litany of serial incompetence can be subdivided into£250 million on CrossRail feasibility studies,£74 million on “tram preparation” whatever that is,£20 million on Thameslink consultancy and a further£20 million deciding what to do with the road to Stonehenge? How can that cost£20 million without actually lifting a shovel? What kind of study was it? Loads of£2000 a day consultants ensconced in a Bahamas’ hotel wondering “well what about if we cladded it with jism and dead antelopes, that’d be authentic“.
My personal favourite is 32 million squandered by Fat Boy Prescott commissioning “Multi Model” studies whatever the fuck they are. The reports are currently being recycled as peat somewhere in the “stuff no one gives a crap about” filing room in Whitehall.
I could go on but burst blood vessels await. The TimesOnline has more.
It’s hard to know what’s worst; the fact that congestion, environmental pollution and the power of the car destroy and devalue the country every single day while a billion pounds is squandered, or that someone is earning a hell of a living grazing off the fat of Government stupidity.
So in the style of “if you can’t beat them, join them“, I’m considering moonlighting as an environmental impact advisor (dirt). This means being paid to ride my bike.
Not the nonsense on the TV which along with Big Brother, Love Island and I’m a total gimboid please humiliate me render me Amish amongst my hipper colleagues. Did you see what Coleen did last night?“/”No, unfortunately I was already booked to disembowel myself with a wet kipper and frankly it seemed to offer more scope for entertainment“
Anyway televisual snobbery apart, memorable things have been happening this week, unfortunately I appear to have lost the ability to remember them. Firstly my phone/pda/camera/watermelon thingybob jumped out of my trouser pocket and into an unused shoe. That can be the only reason why I found it there, after tearing around the house like an arthritic but still whirling dervish for a couple of hours. Those shoes in particular could, and probably should, be reclassified as weapons grade munitions due to a year of sweaty commuting. Amazingly the calendar/contact list/buzzsaw survived immersion in the noxious footbeds and provided sterling service until I lost it exactly twelve hours later.
How did that happen? I’ll get to it shortly but it is deserving of a unique entry. Well I think so anyway and currently embarrassment begets writer’s block.
Once re-united with my virus scanner/internet browser/nose and beard trimmer, so vexed was I with my memory loss that the intense concentration required to ensure it didn’t once more leap from my personage, saw me abandon a very expensive rain jacket on the train. I’m only telling you this now as the nice man at Chiltern Snailways (never have a bad word to say about ˜em, honest) found it by proxy and it’s now back in my happy grasp.
This is fantastic. A judge in the Philippines has been chucked off the bench for adding three mystical dwarves to his judging team. These are three dwarves that only he can see but they advise him on how to pass sentance. Amazingly he filed an appeal but slightly less amazingly it was thrown out on the grounds that “psychic phenomena had no place in the judiciary.”
Oh I beg to differ – wouldn’t that be ace; “my Lord, I now call Lord Such latterly of the Monster Raving Loonies who will exonerate me on every charge. Obviously not all of you may be able to see him” or “Any more ectoplasm in the courtroom and someone’s going to be in contempt whether I can see them or not“.
Although the judge in question is understandably downhearted at his failed appeal, he can be cherished in the knowledge that “From obscurity, my name and the three mystic dwarves became immortal”. That’s alright then.
Still at least the worst hasn’t happened in that “dalliance with dwarves would gradually erode the public’s acceptance of the judiciary as the guardian of the law, if not make it an object of ridicule.”
No we’ve got the British Justice System for that. Imaginary dwarves optional, sense of the ridiculous mandatory.
It’s all here
Great isn’t it? Deforestation of the Amazon precede the season’s openers with talking heads talking bollocks and deluded fans predicting feats of sporting heroism that in any other context would be categorised as ˜blatant untruths from diseased minds“. You know the kind of thing yeah, I know we finished bottom by thirty points, our manager was sacked for playing a lobster at centre forward and the ground was destroyed by a fallen satellite “ but I fancy us for Europe this year“
When you support a club like mine, all your best results come before a ball has been kicked – or again thinking of my home club, an opponent. Although support totally fails to capture my level of participation once the 1985-86 season terminated any actual turning up at the ground and then running away when the fighting started. This was in the days before all seater stadiums, instead four oblong sheds framed a white lined pasture that the cows had only recently dispensed with. Seats were seen as firstly rather middle class and secondly as ammunition. Occasionally if the butty van had run out of hotdogs (mining town, we had no need for abstract concepts, a hot dog was exactly that although warm road-kill offers a more descriptive summary), the shaven, sunken eyed hooligans with swastikas on their arms and hate in their eyes, used to eat the seats. Barking Mad as they were, I’d have to say it was a far safer culinary option that the sausage-inna-bun with Pirelli markings.
Sheffield was a two club city (ah the old jokes come flooding back: Best two clubs in South Yorkshire, United and Rotherham“, cue three days fighting and opportunistic looting) with Wednesday (a.k.a the pigs“, the trotters“, the grunters“, those big fucking lads in blue and white shirts, shit run for it“) having the best ground, the historical trophy provenance and the better team. United (a.ka. The blades“, The bottom of the league“, The team closest to administration“) had a long history without actually winning much, a lowly league position and a team of has-beens and never-likely-to-do-beens. I was queuing up a Sean Bean gag there but you’re spared. For now.
Obviously I supported United. Continue reading “Football’s Back!”
No, this is not some kind of splitter activity from a body splinter group questioning the value of articulating arm pieces and demanding a revolutionary new configuration where forearms are welded to shoulder blades. Obviously, I mean who else would even consider such a thing? Answer, quite a few people from my personal collection of ˜oddballs, screw-ups and gimboids’ of which my readers make up a sizable happy – if medicated “ proportion.
The real question is who would actually write it down AND consider it marginally amusing. Ah, well the sample size is somewhat smaller.
The mutant elbow is still 50{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} larger than it’s twin on the right side further distanced from healthy skin by such intense scarring and holing, it’s like a small, bloody sea of tranquillity. And it hurts far more than a week old injury should which would trigger normal people scampering down A&E to ensure no permanent damage. But I KNOW once I set a single foot over the threshold, it’ll be Christmas on the ward for me. Deformed and painful elbow versus full life Hotel California” Trauma. Absolutely no bloody contest.
The elbow of knobbly shame punctuates my day with irritating facets. Firstly it weeps like a man forced go fencepost shopping on a match day (personal experience? Possibly) leaking out thick gluttonous deposits with the stickiness of honey. Any fabric coming into the slightest contact with the toxic gloop instantly affixes itself like proverbial shit to a blanket. It’s only slightly less smelly and far harder to remove with the deep breath, PULL, scream” approach removing sufficient skin to give you a first hand (elbow?) view of how the bone works.
Once the bleeding has stopped, the hurting starts over every bump or manhole or curb. The steel bike at home cossets the offending limb like a old sofa but the harsh aluminium London bike twinned with the crenulated capital road system marks me down as a Tourettes victim with a vicious twitch. I considered riding one handed but since my last uni-ride attempt got me into this situation, it seems prudent instead grit ones teeth and stiffen ones upper lip.
By the time you read this, I may have drowned. The summer weather” outside is lashing rain at high velocity against the window panes and my rain jacket “ much like my elbow pads when I stacked last week “ is protecting the inside of the car. Short sleeved riding top and no mudguards is one approach to an inch of rainfall. Just not a very good one.
There has to be a part of my body that’s working. I hope it’s my liver. Still picking the scabs on my elbow is fun. Well you asked! Oh sorry, must have misheard.
Well that’s a relief because after the trials and tribulations of the last month, carbon dating would suggest a conservative estimate of about a 1000 years. It’s my birthday you see and the passing of time is definitely beginning to affect hair (almost gone), recovery periods (measured with a calendar) and neurosis’s (measured with a calculator).
Turning 38 last year was a bit of a wrench but at least it was just possible to deny impending middle age. 38 can be cheekily defined as mid to late thirties” but at 39, you just can’t keep living the lie. The best I’ve come up with is not quite 40” and not dead yet”
I don’t expect to have to go through this emotional hand wringing once the big four o arrives since I’ll be deep into therapy. However I did consider one last forlorn effort to attain a high level of fitness, a midriff that lacked a convex bulge and a diet that doesn’t consider peanuts and lager to contain all the essential food groups2.
But it’s become clear that even if this made me live longer, it’d make me miserable now, and I’d probably not thank myself forty years later. I’ve been a middle aged cynic ranting impotently at the world since the age of about twenty so realistically an octanarian version of Al is not somebody even I’d want to spend any time with.
I also spent a mad minute wondering how long my increasingly battered frame should be subjected to mountain bikes, or more specifically what happens when you crash mountain bikes. But then as some cleverer and yet more cheesy than I once said getting old is mandatory, growing old is optional”
So I’ll rage against the dying of the light a while longer. With a bag of crisps and a nice cold lager. And possibly some slippers.
Wednesday.
01:00
Bladder clearly been replaced with thimble during operation
02:00
A small thimble at that
04:00
Consider making myself comfortable in toilet. Sadly nothing left to read so spend most of the hour making my way there and back.
05:00
Finally bladder is empty and edge into a decent sleep.
06:00
Wake Up Call. God I’m still here.
For breakfast there’s a non optional hurty bastard antibiotic cocktail which – with a cocked eyebrow to the God of Irony – leaves me in no position to select any of the culinary delicacies from the proffered menu. How things have changed, my last hospital visit (some 25 years previously) was during the reign of terror where the chance of adding serious intestinal diseases to anything you brought in with you were about fifty-fifty. The food’s way better now but you’ll get MSRA so progress of a sort.
07:00
The word on the street is my release is dependant on a knee articulation of 25 degrees or more. Can currently manage about 3 degrees and this includes a homage to the Gibb brothers reprising “Staying Alive” lyrics adjusted to “ow, ow, ow flaying around”.
07:30
In trundles the happy trolley. Couple of their finest and I’m perkily rotating the knee to an angle that half an hour before was just an escapist fantasy.
Cheerfulness obviously an anathema to this morning’s nurses so they retaliate by increasing the flow on the pain drip. It works, my entire arm goes numb and it’s my drinking arm. Hopefully it’s not a permanent affliction.
08:30
I ask the quack what they used to clean out my knee. He refuses to tell me on the grounds that I asked and he’s far too important to answer. However, my inclination to lamp him for being such an arse is put on hold as he breezily dismisses me from taking up useful bed space. My knee’s played a blinder under the cover of strong drugs and he’s convinced I should darken their towels no more.
08:31
Ring Carol, ask if she can come and get me whenever it’s convenient.
08:33
Ring again and enquire if she’s left yet. Receive shrift that is on the wrong side of short.
08:45
‘Discover that bloke who turned up last night has a kidney complaint that means he can never drink again. He�s also due in again in September to have his tendons sliced to declaw his arthritic hands.
He’s just turned 21. Poor bugger.
09:30
The only thing that separating me from freedom are an additional raft of poxy antibiotics that are buried somewhere in the hospital pharmacy. Stump up and down the ward waiting for them to arrive. They don�t. Carol dispatches herself to hunt them down if only to shut me up. Twenty minute later she’s back clutching her prize having chased them round the hospital.
11:00
Thank Nurses. Make a fast hobble for the door before they change their mind.
11:05
Am reacquainted with Outside. Lovely experience, few sick and dying people make it this way. Car parked miles away but the slow hobble under the summer sun is really quite lovely. Just managed not to get run over while reintroducing myself to traffic.
11:15
Arrive home
11:16
Open first beer. And relax.
That’s an experience I’m keen not to repeat. Three weeks later and after one ride on the road bike, it seems the healing is almost complete. But it’ll take a little longer for the mental scars to fade. I’m wondering just nervous, slow and uncommitted the first proper off road trail will make me. Still the way I ride, nobody’ll probably notice. Except me and I can kid myself.
The NHS is an interesting organisation. A great idea, badly executed. Some super people but just not enough of them. I can’t comment on whether private health care is that much better but they are paying me£150 for the non sullying of their rather posher hospitals.
Apparently plans are afoot (although maybe awheel would be a better description) to increase congestion charges, car tax and flight surcharges. Such a move should ensure the private companies and government can increase the indirect tax burden by extolling their green credentials. I’m sure if the melting Greenland ice mass had any kind of facial features, it’d be wearing a happy expression and possibly a hat at a jaunty angle. And the again, maybe “ if we now extend it’s humanism to include half a brain “ it’d realise that this is nothing more than windsock politics mated incestuously to sanctimonious sound bites.
But that’s not what this is about. Although I may return to it later once I’ve calmed down a bit.
This morning the train suffered congestion. Now those of you born after Jimi Hendrix died (i.e. of a proper age) may remember a British Rail advert where an InterCity 125 rolled unconcerned past lines of stranded vehicles unmoving due traffic congestion. Well I’d like to take somebody to task about this although this is extremely unlikely since everyone in so called authority abandoned the failing railway with their fat state funded pensions years ago.
Nevertheless as Viz so memorably put it: someone should be told. Can someone explain to me how a train track can suffer congestion? It’s not like a few extra trains from another operator can be slipped in is it? Or maybe they can Yeah, Hi it’s Ron from GWR, Paddington is a right shit hole this morning, can we stuff a few of ours in Marylebone? They’ll be a beer and some pork scratchings in it for you”
There can be no other logical explanation other than an alien abduction of a platform or the timetabling software generously allocating terminating berths in some kind of fantasy configuration: yes 4 in the main platform, two on the roof and one in fourth dimensional phase space.
Ah the timetable or an aspirational vision” as Chiltern Railways like to think of it. Not even lightly bolted to the planet we call reality. The driver this morning differed from our normal happy go unbothered there will be a three day delay because the executives are sorting out their bonuses but I don’t care as I get paid anyway” being supplanted by Marvin the Paranoid Android on anti depressants I’m really sorry you’ve been abandoned in this dark dank tunnel, it’s probably congestion but who the hell knows, nobody tells me anything and I’ve read Austin and Keats but they just treat us like robots¦” at which point I turned up the MP3 player and waited for nightfall.
This does put me in mind of graffiti scrawled on a platform around the same time of the lying advert. Satirically lampooning BR’s timetable, it suffixed the boast 25 Trains leave from this station for London EVERY DAY” with Yeah, but only seven get back“.
Graffiti is not what it was.
Tuesday
06:00
Oh hello world. Wrenched from a fairy peaceful sleep punctuated by you can’t lie on that knee, it bloody hurts. Reason being after not feeding us for two days, starvation rations of a small bagel warranted waking me up in the middle of night.
06:01
Started breakfast
06:02
Finished breakfast.
08:30
Doctor and student train wandered in seemingly surprised I was still here. “Haven’t we done you yet?” “Yes you have but the food is so great, I’ve decided to stay the week”. One person found this funny. I’ve always thought the medical profession lacks a certain humanitarian humour.
09:30
Ate newspaper.
11:00
Crinked neck to look out of window in manner of Papillion. See life going on outside. Super hot but air conditioning doesn’t work with window open. Doesn’t work with window closed either I’m keen to point out, but hospital policy insists that patients can only die through boredom not by chucking themselves out of window for something to do.
13:00
Other people eating. Chris and I share the twisted smile of those who can feel their stomach linings start on their small intestines. We’re all forced to wear stockings to combat deep vein thrombosis which is a real probability since we’re here for most of our natural life. Steal marker pen and draw infantile amusing penis facsimiles on our feet. The childish thing to do now is a Pete and Dud stocking sketch. Which of course we do to the amusement of exactly both of us.
13:30
Good God. It’s my turn. Where’s the mayor to officially open my operation? I’m wheeled out and it’s an odd view of the world feet first into the corridors at a high speed when compared to the lethargy of the previous two days. I worry that the orderly will crack my knee on one of the many corners as he attempts to beat his personal ward to theatre record. When I say worry what I mean is more a “oh please please please please don’t fucking cut the corner“. We arrive at pre-op rather quicker than expected as the previous victim is still in there and I’m left chatting to the anaesthetist who reckons I’ll be out within the hour assuming there aren’t any major problems.
Like what I ask? Amputation? He gives me a secret smile that in no way slows my heart rate
14:00
Okay gong to give you’re the aesthetic now. Count to ten if you like. One, two, oblivion.
15:30
Ceiling floats into focus. What went wrong? Why haven’t I’d been operated on yet? Oh. I have. Weird, no dreams, no concept of time passing but 90 minutes of my life has gone and with it a bucket full of trail dirt. There’s a bandage on my knee that looks ripe for mummification but there’s no pain at all. That’ll come later.
Surgeon reckons that with 20+ stitches I’ve got off lightly. Lots of injuries like this see the patient bailed with home leave before returning on crutches for many more painful operations.
Jesus. When everyone has gone I have a little blub. I cannot think of how the phrase “reconstructive knee surgery” could ever be reconciled with “stop wasting our time, go and get on with the rest of your life“.
16:30
They wheel me back into the ward and Chris waves groggily having been given similar treatment on his middle digit. If he thinks I’m doing another “English Patient” impression for his nicotine habit, he’s got another thing coming. I’ve got to eat.
17:30
Food. Can’t remember what it was but don’t care. Devour entire packet of Pringles Carol brought in a yesterday and anything within quaffing distance. Upbeat attitude lasts exactly as long as it takes for the Nurse to tell me home is happening to other patients before putting me downstream of some super bastard antibiotics that make my arm hurt. Still it takes my mind off my knee for a while.
18:30
So full of saline, I’m cruising to the bog every hour or so and it takes me a couple of minutes to complete the twenty foot hike. Knee not articulating at all and I;m sick of carrying saline drips everywhere. Trying to open doors, wrest the old fella out of the shorts and wee without lowering the drip below heart level is a whole arena of logistics I’m too tired to deal with.
19:30
Drug time. Wait for bliss. Bliss fails to turn up. Throbbing from the knee threatens to unleash a symphony of groans arranged for parched throat and rumbly arse. Stiffen upper lip and refuse to succumb.
20:00
Fuck, that hurts. What’s going on in there. Did they leave a nurse in there who’s now tunnelling out with an ice pick?
20:30
Succumb. Since I’m already full of needles they shortcut the normal pain relief process and inject morphine substitute straight into my mouth.
20:45
Oh my. That stuff is good.
22:00
Vivid dreams and I mean vivid. It’s like the Sistine Chapel flipped through ninety degrees directed by Tarrentino.
23:00
2 minute slow limp to toilet.
23:30
Limp no longer available. Hop to toilet holding two drips and chew way through bog door. Consider at what point final shreds of dignity were rescinded.
Okay, now I’m sure, the worst has to be over
Follow this for day 4