Racing Chihuahua

London, people, lots of.  Want to escape but I’m trapped in a metal tube, jerking along in a blaze of stark strip-lighting.  Country mouse, nay dormouse .   Stink of hot bodies, beer breath, most looking like they’ve already downed a nights worth.  I feel alien here.  Something’s changed since this was part of the daily grind.  A lot has changed and it’s not just the passing of time.

Go through the motions of the evening.  The company’s good.  A friends birthday, his friends making an effort, do my best but I’m floundering.  Surreptitiously glance at my watch, long for quiet, pillow, book.

Rewind a week.  Lying in a tent listening to the rain beat down on it’s not necessarily waterproof flanks. Pitched at 12.30am in a downpour, towels sacrificed to sop up the flood.  No bike this time but another wet field in a long list of fields,  perhaps one too many.   Most recently they’ve been inhospitable.  Wonder if it’s the endless repetition of being soaked through and ferrying home a car full of sodden kit or is it that I’ve got old, that I’m too tired, too broken?

I saw friends in that last muddy field; they were in all honesty my main reason for being there.  I’d gone sans bike ostensibly to do other things but those long, not seen friends were the main draw.  I’d gone prepared as always and with no expectation of seeing the sun.   I could see  folk having fun, that it was probably special but I couldn’t get there.  Unhappy, tired, sick well differently so, getting dizzy getting out of bed in a tent you can’t stand up in is unusual even for this bag of bones.

Fed up, very. Questioning things that I’ve always looked forward to, always enjoyed no matter what the weather gods threw.  Reminisced cheerfully under dripping shelters about the days when a gazebo acted as sun block rather than a way of keeping dry. Opened another beer, stayed up too late encased in wellies, waterproofs and occasionally a sleeping bag.  Chatting, having fun with people I love,  doing the thing I love, or was that ‘loved’.

Maybe I just need a ride, maybe that will re-set my mind which has defaulted to ‘give up’. There’s the rub, until I can shake this bug which encased my lungs in barbed wire and filled my legs with lead the bike lies redundant, unloved in it’s corner by the fire, with a flat tire and a coating of dust.  Yes dust.  It’s only been a few weeks but my mind feels like lungs underwater and  I’m looking at the list of things entered and curling into a ball of disinterest and dread.

Every year it’s the same.  That first hint of damp lingering in the air like thin silvers of smoke.  The slight chill that raises a rash of goosebumps. The hard dry turning to plasticine and puddles. That evening ride finishing in the glooming that chivvies me home to the box marked ‘Lights’.

Every year it’s the same.  My spirits start the slow annual tumble down into the dark that gets earlier every day.  I  grieve for the summer I’ve been waiting for, that I always wait for.  Every year I feel cheated it always seems that she’s just paused before hurrying on to another place that’s never quite ‘here’. And I think back to bygone days that  seemed to stretch on into forever of nights searching for cool spots on hot pillows, peeling skin, tide marks and tanlines, dust stained socks and bikes that can just be let go and left at the end of a ride.

Every year I go barefoot till my toes go blue. Clinging on, pretending till the inevitable miserable digging round for warm layers and the driving inside for lack of light, reluctant getting up to dark mornings.  The dank grey smog that creeps in and clings limpet like to the lining of my mind,  sending lethargy into my legs and muffled sadness into whatever’s left.

Every year the same. I shuffle through, hating the shortening evenings finding no comfort in a lit fire until at some always undetermined point something: a line of trees ablaze, wall to wall blue sunshine, a sharp breeze in my face, something triggers the warmth that spreads across the wastelands.  And suddenly those armwarmers,  the  second layer of socks, the muddy splatter and the chasing of the light don’t seem quite so much like the end of the world…

Adjustment, it’s a process. It’s been this way since almost always, but every year it feels like the first time,  I think it always will.

‘I had slept badly and spent most of the night, neither awake nor asleep, in that state that collects troubles from both the conscious and unconscious worlds… I realized …that I was beginning to feel rather desperate with fatigue…

As I stood there feeling myself to be three-quarters fantasy and only a quarter real…’

Laurens van der Post

4am tired, hollow eyed and empty. Peer at alarm clock. Late. Fling self out door, Blood Buzz, loud. Eyelids peeling back, driving to the wire. Boy racing cross-country. Twenty miles of back road winding. Winning.

No! Stymied by a 30mph, flat-capped, silver surfer with time to kill. Really not now. Glance at clock make that a double no with an eye-bleeding espresso on the side, no sugar.

Don’t tail-gate, don’t. Not big, not clever and he’ll just let the speedo drop to just above zero. I know I would. Hang back, be polite, be polite.. Know this road like the back of my cat-scratched, washed-out hands. One chance, maybe two if the oncoming isn’t. Hoping and it’s a clear ahead. Change down, opportunity snatched. Foot flat to, engine howling happily, let loose, wolf at the moon. And we’re past.

Twelve years and the suspension’s a bag bouncing spanners but we can still pack our punches. Drive like there’s actually a hole in the bonnet and the devil’s on my back, eyes fixed on the road, but there’s a persistent red light in the corner of. I swear it’s getting brighter, more insistent every time i steal a glance.

And the parking gods are looking down kindly and we’re there by the skin of. No 30 zones violated, the invitation to an open road accepted gratefully and the engine didn’t putter to a halt for lack of food. Whispers heartfelt thank you. Oh may the wheels of steel last forever more. For when my legs aren’t fit to carry me I’ll just drive till I drop off the edge.

We’re going to run out go-go juice driving the 200 yards round the corner to the garage aren’t we?

My trusty Nokia is on it’s last legs, putting it face down in a pool of water the other day didn’t help and to be fair it’s had a hard life.

As if my magic I get a text from Orange as I’m walking past the local Orange shop so I pop in as the gods are telling me it’s time to upgrade and a contract has got to be cheaper than ‘fleece as you go’. I’m travelling light as I’m planning to fill the courier bag with shopping so I’ve just got a debit card and a tenner, rather than a huge wallet taking up valuable room. We don’t get past the telephone/ address check seemingly because I’m ex-directory. No bother, perfectly reasonable. I’ll pop in next week with some utility bills as requested.

This is next week, it’s cold, brass monkeys cold. Two layers below the waist, three up top including a waterproof and I’m still cold. I’m also very tired and sicker than I’ve been in a while but I decide that parking and my waistline are both the stuff of nightmares and the fresh air and some pedal turning will do me good. It’s the only reason I’m riding 12 miles to Amersham and back instead of doing bits and bobs in the village. I’ve got a letter from the bank and a phone bill both with my name and address for all to see and a full wallet as per last week’s instructions.

Strangely the young lad remembers the small girl clutching a cycling helmet wearing a fine splattering of mud. I get through the phone check this time (huh?) and then apparently I have to choose from one of various credit cards I know for a fact I either don’t have or are not sitting in my wallet under the names on the screen. So they ask for the letters. No it’s not a bank statment we can’t accept that. Well I’ve got on-line billing but this letter has my name, address and an account code on it. No dice. Well here’s my phone bill. No that’s an broadband bill we can’t accept that. No it’s my phone bill – Pipex bought out Homecall and like Orange who provide broadband AND landline calls so do Pipex. We’ll we’re sorry…

Okay well I’ve been an Orange customer since 2000 and this card, that you do accept is mine is registered to my ‘pay as you go ORANGE account’ surely that’s enough proof of me and my address? No, we can’t accept that? Why not? They can’t provide a satisfactory answer. I’m losing patience now, not least of all because the shop is freezing. Apparently they have to leave the front door open (so much for globabl warming) for reasons I never get to the bottom of. Perhaps Orange can tell me why they feel it necessary to freeze their staff and customers and heat the outside world?

I leave them photographing the not-utility bill (which is odd as you’d think broadband in this day and age would be classed as a utility) to email it to Orange who ironically they can’t reach on the phone. And here’s me thinking they’re a telecommunications company. Nip round the corner to my bank who helpfully print a page of my on-line statement with my address on it and stamp it with today’s date. The cashier gives me an understanding nod and says that’ll do it.

They’re concede that will do it. How much time has this taken? Nearly an hour or thereabouts, including waiting to be seen. Oh but the phone you want is out of stock. Well given that it’s the one you suggested last week, it’s written on the brochure by you, that I waved at you when I came in and is clearly stuck to your wall suggesting it’s in stock why the (insert expletive of choice) didn’t you tell me before we started this process?

To to add insult to injury you offer me a phone that you actually admit is inferior. Now common sense would suggest you’d offer me the next one up and that way you get a ’sale’ and a signed contract. But no. I ask if you can tell me which of the local Orange shops has *my* phone in stock. No, we don’t have access to that information. Any offer to phone around to check or even to tell me where the nearest branch is well, you’ve guessed it is not forthcoming. Communication breakdown…

I’ve been an Orange customer for *10* years and 3 months. I don’t ever want to know how much money I’ve spent with you. I still don’t have a fully working phone and I’m wondering if I can transfer to another network and keep my number, but thank you Orange for inspiring me to finally update my blog.

From the Times Online:

”At the end of a garden path, in a home-made observatory overlooking Wee Glenamour Loch, there is an air of expectancy among a gaggle of astronomers.

The radio’s still faintly playing the slow, lazy, heat-haze pick n’ mix of songs. Summer slumbers, still making blue skies and sunshine in her sleep. But there’s no mistaking Autumn. She’s already been in and put the first cup gently down, tip-toed out dropping drifts of leaves from orange skirts, exhaling damp earth, drawing cool mornings with long pale fingers.

So make the most of it whilst Summer still sleeps, breath deep the slight scent of lingering sunshine, scatter your tyres with dust whilst you can because Autum’s in the wings, ready with that second cup. And then Summer will peer blearily at the season’s clock, stretch out nut brown arms to gather in her skirts, and with them the sunshine and the flowers. The warmth will seep away, the heavy indigo will fade making way for brittle blue. She’ll leave softly making way for Autum to soothe the trees to sleep, rustling quietly past, cold breath hanging heavy in the air. She’ll have her moment and she has pleasures of her own: the cold start snapping you from your sleep and the pleasure of the still just warm afternoon.

Then in the blink of an eye Winter will be hammering on the door, dragging mud across the carpets, rain running off his great-coat, depositing cases full of doom and gloom. He’ll stomp on the trails in hob-nailed boots, freeze your toes, scratch frost across your window panes and drag the skies with grey. Just once in a while a smile will crack his craggy features and the skies will spread with blue, the sun will sink low and spread the land with ice cold honey from bees with frost coated wings.

Italy 1992, 2:00 am

Living hell boarded the train somewhere between Aora and Bologna. Where there was tranquility, darkness and the ignorant bliss of sleep came light, chaos and undignified waking. The noise and attitude of seven, very black, very female with a capital ‘F’, foghorns raised in tribal chaos burst into our compartment and proceeded to make themselves comfortable whilst making us very uncomfortable. Carol rapidly retreated into her sleeping bag and I conducted a non-verbal battle of wills over the window, light and silence. All of which I eventually got but not quickly enough…..

Later that day:

We learnt the hard way if some one offers you accommodation at a reasonable price, close to the centre of town just take it. By the time we’d walked half-way across Rome in the searing heat and queued for a room we weren’t allowed to take (it was a YHA and we weren’t) then found another, after a hair-raising whistle stop tour of the city in a taxi (traffic lights have no practical use in Italy aside perhaps for ornamentation) there was little time or energy left for exploring. So we set off in search of a swimming pool with the hostel ’staff’ (ie a stalled traveller) Simon the ‘water-diviner’. His divination was 100% accurate, but unfortunately it didn’t extend to opening times. As you’d obviously *expect* on a national holiday, in mid summer in the capital of Italy, all of the pools, including Mussolini’s grand masterpiece, were well shut, very shut.