An oxymoron that occupies a position of shame with Civil Servant, Help Line and Honest Politician. It’s the kind of marketing couplet that pisses you off for almost ever, and then just carries on giving.

I was forced to email London Midland* with a simple question regarding bike storage at one of their stations. This after failing to be connected to anyway who really understood what a train station might be via a life bleeding call centre, and being sort of amused by the website which states:

Cycle Storage: Yes
Cycle Facilities: No

The auto reply went something like “We will try and get back to you within 10 days but our PASSENGERS CHARTER gives us 20 days to do so”

20 fucking days. To answer 1 bloody question? Either sort out your useless web site or – and I know it’s a bit of a stretch – try providing some customer service. The customer is king eh? More like the customer is a cash cow that is forced to slum it on our shitty service so why the fuck should we invest in any kind of service that would make their life easier?

Not quite as punchy I agree, but far more sodding accurate.

Oh and while I am at it, I bloody hate “do not reply to this email” auto responses. It’s like being kicked in the wedding veg and then told “nah, nah you can’t hit me back”

CLIC-24 tomorrow. Donations still welcome. I am in that bowel loosening nervous state between ‘Blither’** and ‘Wibble’. The forecast looks considerably better but with my inability to separate “Sunshine” and “Cold beer, my already random lines choices may tend to even greater perambulation out on the course. Assuming I ever get that far.

* confused geographical branding in the same box of numptiness containing “London Luton”

** The Team Metrosexual persuasively argues that if one can be labelled a blithering idiot, then surely the root verb must be “to blither”.

Not Lawnmower Deth, a thrash metal band fronted up by Qualcast “Koffee Perkulator” Mutilator and Baron Kev Von Thresh Meister Silo Stench Chisel Marbel. Worth flicking through their extensive back catalogue if only to childishly snigger at the track titles. My favourites include the love ballad “Got No Legs? Don’t Come Crawling To Me” and the existential classic “Sumo Rabbit And His Inescapable Trap Of Doom”. Fill your boots here.

Not even the death of our aged lawnmower. God how I’ve tried to kill the useless bloody thing. It’s rubbish at mowing the grass and yet apparently indestructible. I’ve mowed cobble stones, hosed it down with a pressure washer and – in a moment of supreme but demented frustration – mowed over its’ own power cable. Barely a twitch but point it at 1in high grass with more than a nano millimetre of moisture per square mile and it’ll punish you with an electric shock before grinding to a halt.

I’m going to buy a goat. Or a sheep. Not for the lawn really, but that’s a useful by product of the darker sides of animal husbandry.

No, I may have mowed over some live plants. History tells anyone listening of my long held view that anything green should be mowed, uprooted or blasted into orbit by Agent Orange. So the following conversation shouldn’t be a surprise.

Me: “I’ve mowed the lawn and dealt with the greeny dying things”
Carol: “You mean the daffodils”
Me: “Oh is that what they were?”
Carol: “How have you dealt with them, exactly?”
Me: [thinking quickly]: “I’ve put their goodness back into the soil”
Carol: “You’ve mowed them haven’t you?”
Me: “Not exactly, they are still on the lawn, just lower”
Carol: “You’ve killed them”
Me: “No, no, they are being displayed in a new innovative ‘flat view’ manner, it’s all the rage apparently”
Carol: [sighing] “They’re dead and you’ve killed them because you’re too lazy to mow around them”
Me: “No, No, er, yes”

It’s like making bad cups of tea. If you do it long enough, people will stop asking. Anyway I can’t mow the lawn this weekend as it is underwater. I may go and lie in it for 24 hours to mentally prepare myself for the CLIC.

Failing that, who wants their money back? 😉

To paraphrase a famous Klingon “Today was a good day to lie“* as was ably demonstrated by my announcement into a late afternoon conference call. “Yes, Alex here – I’ll go on mute, it’s a bit noisy“. Not so much a lie really, more taking the thing we call truth and treading it into sodden soil while I walked over it looking for somewhere to live.

And while the phrase “Log Cottage” dredges up memories of fetid riding accommodation and over-sized saunas, this Family sized cabin offered much in way of temporary stabling for man and bike. Included are far reaching views, three ponds, – one big enough to swim in if you’re some kind of cold blooded nutter – endless garden and sufficient wood to cement the link between house building and the deforestation of the Amazon.

It’s really too expensive even for the two years months apparently required to nail down the house contracts*** but Carol will be negotiating hard and I’m fairly sure she kidnapped the renter’s much loved family dog and stowed it in the boot. Ransoming that hostage to fortune is likely reduce the price – failing that it’s a meal for 4.

Still this is mere displacement activity to stay my surfing fingers from the weather forecast centered on Shepton Mallet. This much misunderstood home of a famous tool represents the closest habitation centre to the CLIC-24 course. Currently, most authoritative sources call for a week of high pressure, low 70s temps and floor to sky sunshine.

Until Friday. When the pressure falls off a cliff and a phalanx of impatient depressions launch themselves at the epicentre of 500 people riding. Bringing with them, wind, rain and, er, depression for any of us still out on the course. I know long range forecasts are rubbish BUT only when they predict sunshine. Otherwise, they tend to the knob-on-block accurate.

Not content with impotent railing****, my pro-action has seen the cat sporting a hastily nailed lucky horseshoe on a spare ear, and lucky rabbits feet***** are being eaten by the warren-load. I’m considering this as a new form of Blue Sky Thinking.

I stole that line from Nige Parker. That’s if you’re groaning right now. However, if your response was more “that hedgehog bloke occasionally comes out with some right crackers” then Nige provided a very basic idea and I professionally polished it. Just so we’re clear.

I’ve nothing else to say on the matter. In fact this whole post is merely a wide eyed ramble in response to chugging back an industrial strength “Guatamala Elephant” double espresso at 9pm.

Probably time to wash it down with a beer.

* As opposed to yesterday where I battled the Ferengy sausages screaming “Today is a good day to fry“**

** Any Trekkies, feel free to go and get a life somewhere else. You should know, I print out and eat all hate mail.

*** I am well up for applying the same technique to the seller.

**** A fine name for a band.

***** But not for the rabbit. Obviously.

… this isn’t the setup to a joke because that man was me, and what happened next was more shocking than funny.

Me: “Pint of Niche-Micro Brewery Bitter markteted especially for ale snobs such as myself and a packet of your finest pork scratchings”

Barman: “Sorry, we’re out of pork scratchings”

Me: “What? One of the few reasons I patronise your pub is for the joy of crackling some pork* while appreciatively quaffing a dodgy beverage thrice hopped and ten times overpriced”

Barman: “Just no demand for them anymore I’m afraid”

Me: “Not true, I’m demanding them. Right now.”

Barman: “Sorry, no can do**, new rules you see” [jerks derisive thumb] ‘head office say we have to sell healthy snacks‘

Me: [full turn to take in fifteen builders bellys, twenty guys in suits with a hand shaky alcohol dependency and ol’ bob comatose and dribbling under his favourite table] “It’s not a bloody Gym in here. Everything south of the entrance is unhealthy and that includes those dodgy sausages you’re pretending aren’t leaving a horse missing a vital appendage‘

Barman: [Leans elbows on bar in accordance with Publican’s subliminal messages section 4.1 “Customer starting to piss me off”]”Look, we’re trialling this new ‘healthy scratchings”, have a bag on the house”

Me: [on return from explosive mental orbit]”What madness is that? We’re talking about supsicious pig scrapings double deep fried and then fried again to be absolutely sure they’re unhealthy enough. You cannot make a Scratching that does not fur up artories and root symptoms for four major diseases. It’s like trying to sell a Lighter Choice Deep Fried Mars Bar ”

Barman: [Spoken]: “Here’s your beer” [Unspoken] “Now fuck off”

My moral compass would have vibrated angrily to an exit direction had I not already paid for my drink. Instead, I explained to almost no one who was interested, that this represented the passing of another British Icon.

I’ve already lamented the loss of the car and motorbike industry and the demise of our civil engineering heritage, surely I cannot suffer the lopping off of yet another cultural emblem?

I blame St. George. Once you start importing patron saints from Portugal, the death of scratchings is sadly inevitable 🙁

* An activity still punishable by ‘random insertion of pig knuckle sandwich’ in some US states

** That kind of lazy grammar slang makes me mad. A Pig Knuckle Sandwich up the japs eye is too good for them.

This post may come over as a little distracted. In the last few days, I have been finding myself mostly lost, and short of trailing breadcrumbs to every destination, there seems no end to this extended state of nervous anxiety.

Monday was a directionless day as I lost myself and most of my mind attempting to crack the laptop replacement codex. But first I had to locate my new office which involved me riding past it once, and walking around it twice more. The cruel irony of the reduced circumstances, in which we cyclists find ourselves, is the front door of my working home is merely a waypoint on the continuing journey to the bike store.

And that’s just the start of it. The concept of lazy design takes its cues from a much washed and almost traction-less concrete floor, bike hooks so close together their capacity is reduced by half, a locker which is 2 inches shorter than a pair of suit trousers*, and a weary traipse up stairs and down an apathetic lift to arrive on the very same floor you left some hours ago.

The switching logistics of bike kit, clothes, locks, shoes and trousers is a burden I am already too weary to carry. A quick scan of the social lepers that make up the firmâ’s cyclists show they too are natily dressed in that much maligned sartorial garb of shirt, tie, waterproof socks and towel.

Eventually I found an unoccupied desk which took almost no time compared to finding the concealed entrance of the new building. I fully expected the security guard to welcome me in the style of Mr Ben’s shopkeeper after I’d accidentally stumbled through the door – whilst resting on what was clearly a wall.

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out. I have found the dread portal. But it really wasn’t worth the pain of the search.

Lunchtime rocked up about ten minutes later which sent me on an unfed voyage of non discovery. A phone call diverted me from retracing my earlier steps as I struck off in the vague direction of laptop replacement central. Phone call finished, I found myself fed into the snarling maw of High Holborn.

But not lost. Geographically disadvantaged certainly and genealogically incapable of asking for directions. It’s a man thing but pointless anyway in our fine capital, as the street demographic is 80{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} confused tourist and 20{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} fuck-you-I’m-far-too-busy Londoner.

I struck out in a hopeful direction. Then another direction. Then, finding myself back where I started, turned round three times, muttered a cursed incantation and stomped off confidently through a spiritually promising passage**. Which ended rather more physically in a dead end.

Driven on by hunger, bloody mindedness and a one man pincer attack on vaguely remembered landmarks, only 45 minutes later did my navigational prowess sweatily deposit me at the entrance to the correct building.

But with most of my lunch hour gone, it was disappointing to find the form of extreme tedium and length was not valid. Because I had failed to have it notarised and counter signed by God. An oversight which brought much mirth to the pocket of IT that believes it may be part of the Civil Service. Come the revolution, they’re right behind estate agents when the Ninja Badgers*** are unleashed.

I was back in London today and the experience was much the same, except with added rain and wind and absent minded murder attempts. I’m really not going to miss this place.

* even for old “Ditch Standing” Leigh.

** This is not a sexual reference. However much you’d like it to be.

*** Armed with the cutlery drawer of hurt. Sometimes you have to go all in with the full might of your armed forces.