A right knees-out

A man is sitting on a bicycle, his grey hair should be being riffled by the breeze of his passing, it isn’t, for several reasons:- 

1.   It is contained in a helmet, though this still offers scope for riffling through the ventilation holes, in the past this has led to spectacular hairstyles reminiscent of a balding sea-urchin. 

2.    It, the hair, is plastered to his skull by sweat, later more sweat will take up the encrusted salt, exit from the helmet and deposit its briny load, excruciatingly, in his eyes. This may prove a useful excuse for crying. 

3.  There is no breeze of his passage, he is overtaken by snails, tortoises, ancient glass windows, in fact overtaken by everything that defines: “slow”. The only things that are not slow are:

1.     His breathing rate.

2.     His heart rate.

                                              

What thoughts are going through the noggin of this inverted speed-merchant? At the moment it is, “Oh a yellow golf ball!” For Nick, yes it is he, has just noticed one below his left pedal as he grinds up Haldon Hill. Already his gaze has drifted from the prize, the top, to the mundane, how to get there. How to get there without dying, how to get there without having your lower limbs independently fly off at a tangent due to the explosive pressure produced by synovial boiling.

A couple of months previously his pal Carol has suggested that he might like to do the Devon Classic  a “bike ride”, he has opted for the 55 mile stage and has trained by doing a 40 miler, two weeks before in rural Hertfordshire, which, until now, he thought had hills. Thus he is woefully under-trained, under-fit, and, if this hill doesn’t stop, soon to be underground. He thinks that he will ask his fellow bikers if anyone else noticed the golf ball, a paradigm for Haldon Hill fitness, sadly he never catches up with any, apart from Paul, who waits for him at the top of every hill. He sees an older woman, who walks up every hill but never catches her, and so he descends into a Sisyphucian gloom, believing he is scorned for his lack of lycra and his panniers with 1.5 litres of water.

Eventually the Fit Bloke what rides at the back hoves into view, makes fun of his panniers – see – and then delivers a series of cycling homilies designed to make the fat boy feel better about himself. It makes the fat boy grit his teeth (only for a short time, gritted teeth impairing the ingress of oxygen) and mutter darkly (also only for a short time, passim).

Several bouts of hours, hills, power bars (power bars MY ARSE!) and unshed tears later, there is a whispered conference between Paul and the Fit Bloke. Nick is, of course, aware of this conference, the rush of blood through his head has not rendered him deaf quite yet, it is not Niagara, more Hardraw Force. He knows that they are talking about shame, swallowing bitter black bile, ignominy. Does this spur him to new heights, it does, he fumbles another power bar (MY ARSE!) out of his pocket and manages to summon the energy to tear open the wrapper.

A conference, a conference that will see him agree to suffer defeat, and be picked up from the feeding station at Castle Drogo, but first he has to get there, it is quite a long steep walk. There he finds his fellow defeatists, bids farewell to Paul and Fit Bloke, and lies around feeling sick for an hour watching the hundred and ten milers whizz past, while he waits for a lift back to the start, his bike will follow later.

The Devon Classic, was generally agreed to be “Brutal”, this is deemed by Nick to be a small fillip to a generally humiliating day.

The next day he goes home, the cycle to the Station down the Exe is generally, and surprisingly all right, the trip over Waterloo Bridge is surprisingly not, for, you see, there is a rise as the span tends to its zenith, if he wanted he could chat to the tourists keeping pace with him, he does not want.

Let that be a lesson to you!

It had been a party at my cousin Buggins', I had, by attempting to be the life and soul, perhaps engendered by the looming juggernaut of my sexagenary, possibly over-quaffed, and was now reaping the painful reward that was my hangover. I had slumped into the lap of my beloved, who's cool hand I had to keep placing on my ice-picked brow in order to devote time for my consciousness to quell the rising pit of bile in my stomach. My second cousin once-removed Louise looked at my sorry state, with some agitation she grabbed boyfriend Dave's elbow, and with her other hand indicated my recumbent, injured body.

"See Dave! That's why we have to drink as much as possible now!"

See the Young still have the potential to learn much from their Elders.

ET

I got down to the bottom of the road this morning and thought, "Bugger, where's my phone*."

Then my internal monologue (I still have one, though these days it often becomes an external monologue, causing passers-by to cross the street and guaranteeing a free seat next to me on the train) moved to, "Will I need it?", I realise that for some of you this question is anathema, for me it isn't. I continued, "Hmm, I am going out with Dean tonight, and my darling may decide to phone me before I get home, so I'd better go and get it."

I returned to the front door and then checked the bedroom - nope. Downstairs to check the sofa - nope. Ho hum, phone up from the landline - success! Well I could hear it ringing - somewhere. I started up the stairs back to the bedroom, the sound faded, I went into the living room, the sound faded. Hmmm? I went into the front garden, the recycling warbled at me! There in the glass basket was a dew-bespattered, very cold phone, I transferred it back to my shirt pocket from whence it had decamped silently the previous evening. Memories of France stir uncomfortably in my noggin (see here for details).


* You have no idea the wrestling (or even wresting) I've had to go through to drop the require apostrophe from 'phone, I still sometimes struggle with the concept of bus, rather than 'bus, let alone fridge and flu, both of which should be gloriously sandwiched between two of the erroneously ubiquitous little buggers.

The Truth (with grout)

I had finally bitten the bullet, and had started to tile the kitchen splashback, the first bit had gone relatively well, apart from the plug sockets being in the wrong place and skewiff, now it was time to grout. I had spent a long time trawling the net looking for advice. Eventually I plumped for the ultimate handyman, he gave good advice and had a penchant for doing work slightly out of shot, or, in the case of grouting, working on a piece the same colour as the grout so that you couldn't distinguish anything. This degree of..., I won't say ineptitude as this would be completely unfair, especially compared to my degree of ept, ... of lack of forethought, appealed to me, it was something I could identify with.

I made up the grout to some sort of consistency, and then began to apply it, on the video it goes on like whipped cream on a sponge cake, mine went on like damp sand onto a small child, in fact the splashback looked exactly like that, and a child who had been digging the beach at Weston-Super-Mare no less. We used to holiday at Weston, at the Mead's farm, I can remember, gagging at the fact the milk was warm in the morning, it would be, it had just come out of a cow, the conveyor lift that was used to stack the bales in the barn, and the fact that the tide used to retreat for miles leaving a beach that after you'd dug in about a foot (30cm) used to weep black, sulphide-stinking mud (probably the raw sewage outfall from Bristol), still, there were donkeys.

My grouting continued, I used my grout float, a scraper, and then my fingers to push the sand into the cracks, then I did sponging, Herculean sponging, repeat sponging, I assiduously sponged that wall until my sand-besplattered baby was discovered to be an artful selection of pied tiles. The grout provided the relief necessary to point out the tiles that weren't flat, or the odd bit where they weren't quite the same distance apart. I hate grout.

I'm now involved with removing grout dust, from everywhere.

.... but not as we know it.

For my birthday, my girlfriend (yes I have one), brought me a helium balloon emblazoned with "Birthday Boy". I've always been a fan of helium balloons, firstly for their otherworldliness i.e. the way they keep trying to quit this one by going up, away from it, and secondly for the way, when captured, they make your voice go funny.
These days, of course, balloons are made of foil, so keep their buoyancy for much longer than they used to, mine had spent the week sinking lower and lower on his tether and was now settled on the table. I decided to release him from his string to see if I could achieve what is for me - balloon nirvana, that is that he would stay where I put him, not ascending rapidly to the ceiling, nor descend sullenly to the floor like his air-filled cousins, but rather have neutral buoyancy. After a bit of excess foil-paring, I got him to float, though he still had a slight tendency ceilingwards.
This weekend my girlfriend came to visit, at three in the morning nature came calling and forced her out of bed, as she opened the bedroom door a shape loomed out of the darkness, it was Birthday Boy or BB as he came to be known, he had left the living room and had circulated through the kitchen and then up the stairs. I have to say that this is what we assumed, but his uncanny ability to appear in the least expected places did lend him a degree of the occultish self-determination, you'll have of course noticed that he is "he" not "it".  During the day he thoroughly explored the house, turning up in different rooms, occasionally leaving rooms surreptitiously so that one minute he was there, and the next - gone. At one point he came up behind me in the bathroom and gently rested against my leg as I cleaned my teeth. For this gift of company I gave him a boost by placing him in the hot air of the radiator.
Last night though, he was getting tired, no longer able to get upstairs, he sat on a step halfway down - moribund, I fear his time has come, he will, like us, be subject to the indignity of gravity, I find it quite sad, pathos abounds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQhvgo62l74