.. that’s me. Not Chiltern Railways; a company to whom the words “Customer Service” are just a bunch of letters waiting to be outsourced to India. You can’t ring them and speak to a real person. That’d be too easy and they’d probably need counselling if every I got through. You can FAX them (high tech solution that), try an e-mail or when both of those fail, bring forth the mighty power of the electronic pen.

They never respond but in the same way that shouting at my kids “Tidy up your bedroom and let next doors three year old out of the cellar RIGHT NOW” doesn’t actually achieve anything, I, at least, feel better.

We have an unwritten (obviously) agreement. I write them letters and they ignore them. It’s a lose-lose situation that in this world of nobody’s responsible for anything, which seems to have insidiously spread to ever more far reaching corners of customer interaction.

Bugger, I’m turning into my dad. Next thing it’ll be halcyon days viewed through the untreated myopia of rose tinted glasses, lamenting the youth of today and the lack of respect they offer to their elders. Oh no, it appears it’s already too late.

Here’s a couple of examples: Do the trains every run on time and Hello, anyone there, I have a question.

It’s all this rain you see. I’ve twice rearranged my collection of uncomprehendable pension statements and broken the sander already. Short of cracking open the Chardonnay at 2pm on a drizzly Sunday afternoon or unleashing yet more DIY destruction on an innocent door, this is all that remains 🙁

May has been a bit crap hasn’t it. I’m not talking about the trifling football matters where plucky English teams were disgracefully robbed of their rightful places on the winners podium just because the opposing sides were a lot better. No I’m talking about grave, difficult and important stuff here “ yes, that’s right the bloody weather. The two days of sunshine, cheerfully predicted to herald the onset of a glorious summer, rapidly turned to wind, rain and, in the case of higher ground, snow. Am I the only one thinking this is a little odd for late Spring?

I may be. A commuter’s Gaia is intrinsically linked to the prevailing meteorological conditions. When forecasts predict, localised flooding, property damage and creation of new inland seas, it’s hard not to be a little glum.

The Internet offers forlorn hope through the medium of a hundred forecasting sites, so we trawl through the lot searching for a good one. Metcheck is generally depressingly precise but thrives on screaming tag lines; severe weather warnings” and biblical flood expected”. The BBC is wildly inaccurate but generally more cheerful if only because it’s symbols offer weather than may be rainy, cloudy OR sunny all on the same day. The Met Office is just an electronic old school Wincy Willis type cloud augmented with a random forecasting generator; Warm Spells with the possibility of trout later” kind of thing.

All of them predict that May will be a month in denial about it’s place in the seasons and would much rather be March but only if February isn’t available.

Still it’s not all bad news. This morning I successfully found, and pushed beyond, the adhesion limits of a slick tyre on an wet road. This rather perturbing incident perfectly coincided with a head unencumbered by anything more protective than a thinning layer of hair. It was either my cat like Mountain Bike skills which saved me from imbuing tarmac through a process of accelerated osmosis, or a vice like grip on the bars and a swift prayer to the Gods. Probably the latter then.

Weekend weather (consulted three websites, checked tingling in war wounded left leg, examined tea leaves) is going to be poo. What with someone else now tasked with the painting of the barn, who knows what mischief I’ll be getting up to? I believe some DIY may have been tentatively planned “ ready the strimmer.

Oh and to pass the time until the sun has got his hat on once more, I’ve been creating a top five weather songs;

Crying in the Rain – Whitesnake
Leaning on a Wet Frame – With apologies to John Denver

Feel free to do better. Shouldn’t be hard 🙂

.. yes apparently for those with X & Y chromosones, brown comes in more than one colour. Unsuprisingly this wrongness is all my fault even when my entire contribution to the purchasing decision was to supportively say “Yes, that one looks fine” while mildly distracted by attempting to stop the kids having lawnmower races.

Distressed Oak reads the marketing blurb. The only thing that’s distressed in this whole bloody painting pantomine is yours truly. Still after scoring a marital point (everyone does this, don’t try and deny it, okay not everyone keeps a spreadsheet to see who’s winning but…) by calmly pointing out who had made the colour choice and who had heroically covered the square meterage of Denmark until the small hours of this morning. This, you may be unsuprised to hear, is the same poor bastard who has the unenviable job of somehow removing what’s essentially my life’s work. On the upside, I have already decreed that this is job for the killer sander, a violent mutant fushion of the murderous strimmer and an angle grinder. It reduces mature trees to sawdust in all the time it takes to say “Clear? Plug it in then and TAKE COVER”

I hate the colour too. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it. I mean that’s not how our relationship works. We decide something, I generally do it wrong, we have a sprited argument and then either one of us backs down and gracefully accepts the others point of view or I sulk. It’s not like I don’t have a choice in these things. Just so we’re clear 😉

Honestly I hate the colour. Distressed oak my arse, more like runny poo with a hint of chocolate. That’s£20 I’ll not be seeing again.

.. well the walls really but it didn’t scan as well

A while ago, I was mocking those poor deluded, spousely oppressed sops, whose weekend consisted of uncomplainingly opening paint tins before wasting many unhappy hours with a brush. Not for me this domestic drudgery, oh no, I was significantly too edgy and radical for such pointless pursuits. My life is far more windswept and interesting, with no time for DIY activities unless they specifically involve the violent application of dangerous power tools.

Yeah, right.

Actually doing stuff yourself on crumbling houses and dodgy outbuildings is apparently so last year. With my unerring ability to latch onto the coattails of a fading trend, the last two weeks have seen me swapping bikes and beer for trowels and paintbrushes. Frankly, it’s a bit of a worry.

The previous Saturday morning, I was happy slapping the virgin wood on the barn with sticky creosote almost before the dawn had cracked. The neighbours looked on in shocked, if slightly worried, admiration whispering of a possible alien abduction. By the end of the day, they were ready to call the police or Samaritans as my crazed painting extended to the muchly unloved shed, last painted when it was assembled as an Anderson shelter. Serial painting is clearly to be my crime this summer, as another Spring day passed by with me closeted in a sealed room with sandpaper, a tin of evil smelling chemicals and a bemused expression. And of course, a paintbrush; I am currently a man defined by his bristles.

All this has been painted 🙂

Since the barn resembles the entire Amazonian forest, chopped down and ready to be sanded, it’s unlikely things will improve for a while. If I don’t adopt a pretty radical lifestyle change, I’ll be Borg’d into the DIY tribe, understanding exactly what one can achieve with a Dremel and reciting the aisle names of all the major DIY stores as a party trick.

All this needs painting 🙁

Make it stop. I’m starting to become obsessed.

As an aside, I’ve decided to rename my kids Random” and Verbal”. Random (5) is just not wired up correctly even when comparing her to the mass neurosis that affects almost all of her age group. We’ll be having a conversation about, say, what she would like for tea and she’ll tip her head on it’s side, adopt a look of mental constipation before uttering some bon mot such as I want to be a duck when I grow up“. I don’t remember dropping her head first onto concrete when she was younger but maybe¦.

Verbal (7) likes to talk. This is entirely different to having a conversation. She doesn’t need a conversational partner, she just needs an audience. Or, to use a better word, Victim. The only guaranteed way to shut her up are to stuff the offending orifice with ice cream or if that fails, bring out the big guns “ Grandma. A women who has an endless reel of anecdotes spanning some seventy years most of which I’ve only heard 50 or 60 times. She doesn’t even need an audience, just the occasional grunt to show you’re still alive. Running on strong tea and memories, she’s more than a match for the seven year old who is soon reduced to that catatonic state which, normally, only Children’s TV can engender.

This, I think is my problem. Surrounded by girls and women, none of whom I pretend to understand is clearly messing with my little mind. While I toiled in toxic fumes on a dull job that absolutely has to be done right now, my wife spent the day knocking down old gates and removing knackered locks and fittings just in case we might need them sometime”. What the hell for? Are we expecting a surge in the second hand shit lock market anytime soon?“

I think I need a beer. Giving up coffee, sugar and beer doesn’t make you live longer. It just seems that way.

You may well ask. On leaving the building this evening, the comically obscene weight of my messenger bag made me think I’d probably taken it with me. In line with the universal rule of nothing ever being big enough (M25, Overdrafts, er you can guess the rest), the voluminous sack into which I courier my life is overflowing with random stuff. For example:

• Waterproof
  Spare waterproof
  Fleece (yes I appreciate I am little overlayered for the current weather but once you’ve frozen irreplaceable extremities during a March snow storm, paranoia sets it)
  Inner Tube
  Spare Inner Tube
  Pump with Co2 Canister
  Spare Co2 Canister
  Sufficient tools to play the toolbox in the A team
  Laptop, PDA and other assorted but rarely used electronics
  Apples, Gel Packs, Unidentified squelshy forgotten fruit
  Emergency squirrel.

I think you get the idea. It’s a nattily upholstered wardrobe being ferried the thick end of twenty miles a day. I wouldn’t care if I actually used any of it but the pump instructions have mated with the fermenting fruit and the tools appear to have been selected on their total inappropriateness for fixing anything on either bike. I dunno who I’m kidding “ if anything broke from a puncture upwards, I’d just find a bike shop or abandon it in the hedge and buy a new one.

But my shoulders are now of mismatched heights and without the bag attached, I find myself still compensating for the weight and walking round in confused circles. So it’ time for a spot of ruthless life laundry except for the fleece and the waterproof and maybe the inner tube¦ my friends Mark and Ruth have embarked on a two season tour of Europe with significantly less stuff. Still bet they wished they’d packed that squirrel just in case.

The diet goes on. I nearly baulked at the thin water based gruel this morning especially as a pile of cooked bacon was riding shotgun on the next table. Maybe I just need to spice it up through the addition of a shot of vodka or a dead badger. Trust me, nothing could make it taste any worse.

Five days without beer. The face that I’m counting them is fairly conclusive proof of a possible dependency. And on days as warm and sticky as this, wouldn’t it be great to ride home, slam the fridge door open and grab a super chilled beer? Still I’m sure a lovely lime cordial will taste almost as good.

The Strawberry milkshakes are back! Yes it appears the power of the “little guy” has been undiluted by faceless corporations serially not giving a shit. It can only be my irritated yet superbly argued fifteen page e-mail that has reversed the ludicrous policy which gave us “wild cherry”.

Sadly, this week I can’t have one. I dribbled like one of Pavlov’s hounds when it became apparent that the sugary feast that features in almost no diet books was back on the menu. But no, slapped as ever by the fickle fingers of fate, even this small pleasure will be denied me. Worse still, a rigid moratorium on both beer and coffee extends to that endless horizon called the weekend – BEER AND COFFEE. Is this fair? No, of course it isn’t. I am wondering who to complain to.

I’d like to say that after two caffeine and lager free days, I feel refreshed and detox’d. But no, actually I feel a bit like Michael Douglas in Falling Down. No wonder sober people look so bloody miserable. And until today I never realised I was a ‘fruitest’ but on examining the grocers shop masquerading as my desk, I couldn’t help but whimper “but where’s the bacon sandwich? Is it behind the Orange? No, and how couldn’t I have bought all this stuff whilst stone cold sober? I don’t even know what a sodding komquat is never mind exactly what you’re meant to do with it“.

Maybe later, I’ll try and explain what has brought all this on. However, the kettle has boiled and I’ve a lovely speciality tea waiting for me. It’s probably plum and arsehair or something. I now know how heroin addicts feel when being weened off onto methadone.

But am I grumpy? No coffee, no beer, no prospect of either for a few days. Take a wild bloody guess.

While a splitters group of my riding friends are gallivanting on dusty trails over almost mountains in sunny Scotland, I’ve been carelessly abandoned to a weekend of gardening. Worse still, its my own fault; I actually volunteered in a moment of misplaced family loyalty that came right out of left field. Not like me to actually behave like a normal husband and father, rather than an ageing and selfish juvenile delinquent. I am suspicious that this moment of madness can only have been brought on by alien abduction or a long history of alcohol abuse. Scratch the UFO theory then.

Continue reading “Gardening “ The scourge of the drinking classes.” →

Unresolved things now apparently resolved. Normal drivel will be resumed. Nothing to see, move along 🙂

Well according to Suzuki, I can. Not the most macho strap line for a company selling high performance motorcycles. However this is essentially undiluted testosterone pumped through a CNC machine at a million PSI.

It’s just a big mountain bike.

It’s kind of my middle aged Ferrari meets fiscal reality fantasy. Once I find the right time to mention it to my wife (around the year 2040 after buying a new house with a swimming pool in it), other F words may follow. I’m trying to figure out how to explain the ambiguity in the phrase “No, I’ll never buy any more motorbikes now we have kids.”

I just kind of popped into the dealers and had a quick sit on one and then found out they were interest free for three years and ….. you know how these things go. Maybe I could buy it and pretend I’ve always had it. That’s got to be a flyer, surely? No?

Death by rolling pin awaits.

No, the picture does not lie. Our garden now has a two foot trench excavated all the way up to the barn. The poor bugger (that’s the builders mate, not the mole) has been digging it for about three days. I think he was getting flashbacks to the Somme. I’m expecting a firing step and barbed wire to follow.

The cat hasn’t been seen for a while and the only way to get into the garden is by donning a pair of seven league boots. Now you may wonder what kind of construction project would require such a hugely costly and major piece of civil engineering. Well let me tell you. It’s a sink.

Yes our version of the channel tunnel has been horribly over-engineered to take a single water pipe. There was going to be a shower and bog as well but once the words “cess pit” and “a shit load of cash” were mentioned, we spent our entire life savings on this trench instead.

In other news, the waste pipe for the sink has been installed using a “heritage building” technique known as hammering a big hole in the well. This well is the only thing I’ve ever owned which is deeper than this trench. We may have to knock down next doors house to create sufficient rubble to fill it in.

That’s my office. What you can’t see is the lovely floor they’ve laid. What you also can’t see if how they had to take it up after we found the door was in the wrong place. Yes, really that’s the level of client professionalism our builders have come to expect.

As with every project I’m even peripherally involved in, it’s lurching from crisis to crisis intersecting only occasionally with building regulations, correct use of dangerous power tools and sanity.