It MAY be rainy…

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

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 🙂

Hosepipe ban? You can wring my shorts out..

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

… but only if you really want to

There is a certain irony in contrasting the screaming headlines of today’s papers threatening summer long droughts, with the pissing rain which characterised my ride home through this evening. The doomsayers predict a scorched earth policy for previously verdant lawns, golf courses bunkered with sandy fairways and lifeless car washes. So not all bad then. In fact, I’m struggling to see the downside.

Not that it’s actually going to happen. Two reasons; one surely no political oversight body can ever reconcile the Water Companies’ inability to prevent a quarter of their precious aqua dripping through leaky pipes and this is some way being the consumers problem; secondly, it’s being chucking it down for weeks. Woops, for a second there I failed to make the link between faceless corporations and their greedy shareholders versus the incompetent hoard who are alleged to police them. But it has been raining, I have evidence of that.

I should have been fine. I have a layering system honed by a hundred commutes. There’s just one problem with it; it’s rubbish. Below decks, my shoes are soaked, lemmings are cheerfully practising all manner of watersports in my socks and I’m suffering from an unpleasant groinal moistness.

Above decks I am essentially a boil in the bag. While the emergency waterproof is adequate at keeping the water out, it is unfortunately bloody marvellous at keeping the water in. My first two layers wick sweat out in a superbly technical manner “ but once this moisture makes a break for freedom, it’s faced with the impermeable barrier of the cheap waterproof. I’m not getting rained on, I’m getting rained in. On removing this horrid garment, everything from the wedding tackle upwards is stained in stale sweat and there’s a generated head of steam that could make me good money if plugged into the grid. Still it was cheap and packs down to almost nothing which exactly mirrors how much use it actually was.

My feet would be dry if I didn’t have water on the brain by naively following the dogma of my fellow commuters. There is a childlike ideology that it never rains in London except briefly in the winter. Well all I can say is I’m glad it bloody does otherwise the suspicious gritty patch on my arse could only be passed off as an unfortunate and unplanned bowel movement.

As moisture began to permeate my every pore, I attempted to distract myself by musing if both the pressure and volume of this personalised enema was better or worse when comparing tyre types. Surely a knobbly would chuck up more but, hang on, maybe a faster rolling slick could make up the volume through greater revolutions.

This idle speculation kept me going until gaining the sanctuary of a warm pub where my friend enquired what do you need a waterproof for you poof, it’s never rains properly in London”.

I think he’s probably right.

Lock it, Leave it, Lose it.

On By AlexIn Bikes2 Comments

I can barely bring myself to admit it. Remember the addition to my lock collection purchased only a few weeks ago? Remember why I had to buy it? Well, I’ve only gone and bloody lost it. Although I’d prefer to think of it as temporally displaced. Because what kind of idiot can lose something that is locked to something else thereby making it almost unstealable?

This kind of idiot, that’s who.

I know it’s out there somewhere, carelessly abandoned at one of a hundred jauntily painted bike stands at the station. I can narrow it down to a single platform and it’s easily identifiable by the customised ˜birdshit’ artwork I’d thoughtfully left in place. It’s a great big sodding lock conspicuously not preventing the theft of anything unless some enterprising tea leaf finds a market for three foot high U shaped metal stands in a rather fetching shade of red. I mean how hard can it be?

Too flipping hard, that’s how.

In defence of the indefensible, the last couple of days have seen me backslide into the warm caress of beer and peanuts. And I could easily have passed on the peanuts. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do without a beer, it was just that life really was quite dreadfully dull and boring when facing it sober day after day. It is said that the Scots believe the English need a couple of drams before attaining even a partial match with recognised humanity. And let’s face it they’ve got some history and experience in this area.

So lock hunting while suffering temporary social confusion is unlikely to be successful, especially when the signal to noise ratio of bikes to locks spawns an impenetrable mechanical jungle. This spring bicycle uplift has created a space problem that Chiltern Railways have proactively dealt with by the simple expedient of ignoring it. On enquiring whether their spanky new platforms will be furnished with much needed bike storage their response was an engaging thank you for your enquiry. All our operators don’t give a shit. Don’t bother leaving a message, we don’t give a monkey’s arse as we’ve already had your money.. mwwwaaahhh’. So well done them.

This rant has in no way contributed to a future where I’m joyfully reunited with the latest addition to my burgeoning lock anthology but, through the power of misdirection, maybe I won’t feel like such an idiot.

Like that’s going to happen.

What is normal anyway?

On By AlexIn Bikes, Road RidingLeave a comment

Probably White Van Man cheerfully attempting to end my life earlier today. For sport, apparently. Sweeping round the curve into Aldwych, a vehicle largest enough to be both murder weapon and herse swung violently across two lanes with the clear intention of creating an new brand of designer curbing known as the Crushed Alex“

He was so keen to grind me into a tarmac paste, the front wheels of the van actually smacked the curb right where “ until about one second before “ I was innocently making headway. By tapping reasonably hard on his window, I was rewarded by the look of a perplexed idiot on seeing a ghost. Stereotyping is the lazy writer’s art but with his sunken eyes, unshaven countenance, England flags and copy of the sun resting proudly on the dashboard, he truly personified the ignorant arsehole” genus that seems to be a free personality upgrade on every van purchase.

We had a conversation, starting with this as my opening gambit:

Were you trying to kill me because you’re a fecking lunatic or can’t you drive this thing because you’re a fecking idiot?”

$$$&&**$$ (there may be children reading but think a sneering snarl, firing stacatto f’s and c’s at a hundred rounds a minute)

Oh really, well since your firm is keen to advertise both their name and phone number, I’ll be giving them a call to see if approve of your being a c¦” (sometimes I can’t help myself and boy it fells good)

They won’t give a f*ck mate“

Oh they know you’re a c¦ then do they?”

The noise of London traffic “ always on the knife edge of violence anyway “ was becoming increasing violent, today transmitted through a new experimental work get the f*ck out of the way, you’re blocking the road” arranged for car horn and waving fist. But we weren’t finished. He’s decided that if he can’t kill me with his van, then his bare hands will have to do. He was ready to leap out of the driver door and give me a good shooing. Well except that, in an inspired piece of survival strategy, I was leaning on it. However, it was clear that the situation could only rampage painfully downhill and I didn’t fancy my chances against this soily vested, throbbing templed, Sun weilding psychopath. And I’m only enumerating his good points here.

Seizing my chance as the lights changed to green, I pushed myself away from the side of the van and pedalled like buggery through the stationary traffic where he could not go. But not before slamming his wing mirror hard against the chassis smashing it into a million pieces. I didn’t get a look at the fella before I sprinted off in the manner of the sprightly coward but I’m guessing he may a been a little annoyed. And then I rang his firm to complain about his driving, backed it up with an email and have been promised a reply by the end of the week.

It’s a hollow victory which means nothing in the continuing battle of clueless wonders deepening their carbon footprint and planet friendly innocents just trying to stay alive. Hollow, yet strangely satisfying.

Here I am sat at my desk thinking kind of a normal day, really“. Now that’s skewed perspective.

The wrong shade of brown..

On By AlexIn Other stuff8 Comments

.. 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.

A brush with the floor….

On By AlexIn Other stuff2 Comments

.. 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.

Side View 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.

Office 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.

Get off my land…

On By AlexIn Bikes5 Comments

Generally I’m against the concept of squatters rights “ it seems an absurd liberty to take over and generally trash other people’s property. However, specifically, I find myself advocating and firmly supporting the concept of possession being 9/10ths of the law.

By specifically, I “ of course “ mean something which directly affects the self absorbed sphere of influence with me at the centre. By engaging ˜Daily Mail’ mode, it’s abundantly clear that a man who has commuted valiantly through a long and frosty winter should have first refusal on the limited parking and changing facilities offered by the firm.

Throughout this willy shrivelling winter, a few hardy souls have exchanged a daily greeting still a bit chilly out there eh fellas?” while removing many layers of woolly clothing in the manner of a Russian Doll. Worse case was a couple of minutes delay before re-acquainting oneself with one’s extremities under a piping hot shower. Obviously this was preceeded with a little homophobic ceiling gazing in a small changing room occupied by a bunch of blokes, who’d shut themselves inside a locker rather than having to defend the slimmest allegation of checking out the competition’s tackle.

Locker space, availability of your own ˜peg’ in the bike cage and shower access were all well within tolerable boundaries. Sure your toes were holidaying in the Arctic circle and your ability to extend your progeny was negligible but all in all a satisfactory situation.

Not so now. The spring sunshine dragged the fair weather commuters with their shonky steeds out of hibernation. And in some cases, retirement. So now we ˜proper’ cyclists share the road with a rambling pantheon of wandering immortals who have never been in an accident but by God they’ve seen a few. The Highway Code is only happening to other people as they happily RLJ mowing down all those who naively believe that a little green man offers them priority. Okay, I RLJ as well but I do it in a safe and, it has to be said, a rather cool and raffish way. For example, I would rarely look surprised and even a little annoyed when a women with a pram has arrested my progress on a pedestrian crossing.

But while this is superficially irritating, it’s the smallest of potato’s when compared to the destruction of the proper cyclists natural habitat at journey’s end. An earlier rant covers the coveting of locker space, this has been extended to some shopper special being locked in the cage at a spot I’ve been calling my own for SIX MONTHS. It has my lock there to prove ownership but this had been cast aside in a flagrant abuse of my squatters rights.

This theme carries into the changing room where the firm’s calculated response to the increasing numbers of smellies descending on mass at 8;30am is to replace the two partially working dribblers with a single shower servicing about 50 people. It’s standing room only in there with absolutely no handicapping system favouring those who’ve spent days of their life in this fetid basement that Dante would be proud of.

It’s not right. Obviously being English, I just mutter under my breath and then join the end of the queue checking out the cracking ceiling plaster and maintaining just enough personal space to prevent a I CAN’T STAND IT, GET ME OUT OF HERE” incident.

The solution I believe lies in guerilla tactics. Where invisible borders are breached, retaliation may be taken through deflating tyres or “ in extreme cases “ a quick workover with a blow torch. The revolution in the changing room will begin with a rallying cry all weather cyclist COMING THROUGH” and by the crafty use of a shower gel as an assault weapon.

This stuff is important. No honestly it is. And it’s not the prison diet I’ve been subjected too for the last 9.23 days that has ratcheted up my pettiness, and inability to see ANYTHING from ANYBODY else’s point of view.

Oh ok then, it is. I have a medical and immediate need for Coffee. Maybe I can get it on BUPA

What’s in the bag?

On By AlexIn Other stuff3 Comments

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.

Hip Hip, Strawb-rey

On By AlexIn Other stuff6 Comments

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.

Gardening “ The scourge of the drinking classes.

On By AlexIn Other stuff4 Comments

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.” →