It's a beautiful day............

Yesterday was a great walking day, sun up above the coastline, ESE breeze just keeping the air fresh, the Atlantic swell heaving at the cliff line. It was a Saturday and the first day of the Easter holidays, the Life guards are back and coffin boxes are appearing on sleek cars.

Someone set off on this glorious day to walk along the coast path towards Porthleven. Very sensibly they took a 50cl bottle of Evian water with them to hydrate themselves whilst they walked. The bottle of water weighed approximately 530gm when full and they managed to carry it with them whilst (I hope) they enjoyed the day and the wonderful views. It only weighed approximately 25gm when they had finished the water and thought it too heavy to carry any more so slung it off the path amongst the flowering gorse and spring flowers from where I retrieved it. Somehow I was able to slip it into my back pocket and carry it away. It didn’t weigh me down at all.

I was on my way home when I discovered the next offering. There is a small National Trust car park that I pass through. Many people drive their dogs out here to take a shit, the dog shit run. I’m used to that and just shrug my shoulders, it decomposes. But it’s the complete pricks that pick the offending material up in vibrant coloured sandwich bags that they neatly tie up and surreptitiously deposit amongst cliff line vegetation that get my ire. I now have to carry that back with me as well. What did these people learn about non biodegradable plastic that they have forgotten? I blame the poor standard of science teaching in this country. I must write a letter to the Daily Mail.

I would love to appear on Room 101, as it may attract a wider audience.Litter would be my number one choice. What I find so puzzling is that people obviously walk along the path because the coastline is perceived as beautiful. So why oh why do they dump their rubbish in it?  I know the items haven’t been accidently dropped as I have to go off piste to pick them up, it’s deliberate, it’s simply been thrown away.

Whatever, the summer approaches and it won’t be the last time I’m wandering home carrying someone else’s litter.

Source of humour

 I saw an article in a magazine earlier this week about the amount of money being made by comedians these days, apparently the top ones can earn mega bucks. I was wondering where they find all their material. It didn’t take much looking to discover one source. Being in Penzance with a few minutes to wait I called in at the Blue Snapdragon for a ginger beer, it’s the wrong name by the way but Tom who I had to meet indicated that he knew where I actually was. As there was a Daily Mail on the table I absent mindedly started to peruse its headlines. I needed my glasses to read any more but fortunately had left them at home. Just one flick through and I realized this was the source of much of the comedians’ humour. The moral outrage that roared from every page must keep all the readers in a permanent state of anxiety and the pharmaceutical industry in business.  There was even an article about the shocking rates of ‘happy pill’, (their term for anti depressants), usage in the UK. I wondered if it was a double bluff.

The front page was a rant about the money businesses are spending on re-educating the dross coming out the comprehensive education system, supported by two editorials about the lax discipline in our schools, with a photo of woman who is opposed to her daughter’s school taking disciplinary measures against her daughter. Why are these women invariably overweight and dumb looking? I’m not surprised by either article, I gave up giving detentions years ago as at least 50% of them were rendered null and void by parents demanding a better say in their children’s education and using it to tell me that, although they hadn’t been in my classroom or school corridor to witness anything, their child hadn’t done it. Then there’s the daft chase for ‘levels’ which ended up with the teachers virtually doing the exams, especially the course work, for the pupils and of course that wonderful idea that every lesson has to be ‘fun’.

Then there were articles about the signs of addictive stress levels observed in 78% of young people when they are separated from their mobile phone or lap top.  Why is anyone surprised? Just observe their compulsive phone behaviour in any high street or cafe. These were followed by an article about mountain rescue teams berating people who use phone sat navs for navigating as they invariably end up lost, they advised people to use maps. I really had to laugh at that one.

Next a photo of some  female celeb who looks stunning at 57, forgetting to mention anything about Photoshop, air brushing or the amount she has spent on being remodelled. Then an appalling photo of Ricci Gervais who has lost weight, presumably on some crash diet, but now looks decidedly ill compared to the before photo.

Was I outraged? Not in the least, it’s a huge joke, all one needs to do is read a paper like this and they’ve a script written for them. Tell it how it really is and we’ll split our sides. 

Chinese whispers

The bizarre notes of Pete’s alarm clock alarm clock went off at 5.45am and whilst he stirred I went off for a shower. Today it’s day two and the first proper road stage and as I stood in the cascading hot water I have to admit I was smitten by a sort of stage fright. From the Penzance Wheelers criteriums in the far distances of West Cornwall to the UCI 2.2 Tour of Taiwan is a big jump and the learning curve I was peering at on seemed to disappear into the clouds.

I arrived at breakfast early, Tom was the only rider and I guess one glance was enough to inform him of my concerns. He listened intently as I explained my misgivings, using words like deep water, over my head and sinking. Then he quoted something to me that sounded just right; I saw the door of opportunity and thought all I had to do was push it open and waltz right in. In fact when I opened the door I discovered I was facing a grizzly bear that I had to wrestle to the ground with my bare hands. He ended by saying something like ‘just do it’.

I think he actually said fighting cock but I envisaged a grizzly.

I listened. I’ve always had a vivid imagination so I used it.  I saw a nine foot grizzly bear rearing up on its hind legs, catching it by its fur I smashed it down flat on its belly. The nerves vanished. From then on every time it reared its head I whacked it back down again.

Later as I drove in the convoy Pete outlined a few golden rules to follow and ever the student, I listened and learnt. Never ask the riders a question, always have the answers for them, pre-empt any qusetion by finding out the answers beforehand. All the riders want to do was concentrate on riding and resting. They just want to be told when and where. Well, I had blown that as my mobile had decided to go to sleep as soon as I had arrived and not having a watch I was stuck asking the time. (I decided to buy a watch but never had time to do so until at the airport on the way home when Pete helpfully pointed out a few Rolexes costing some £2,500 which I thought a tad expensive) If a rider asks for anything, do it then and there. If you ever have a spare moment, think what you can be doing to save time later and do it. 

 He also ran through how he wanted me to approach a puncture or mechanical and feed the riders. The key point being that when the radio call comes, gun the motor and use on your horn, use it all the time, that tells everyone where you are and you are doing it flat out. From then on I did just that.

From there on the days followed a pattern, up by six, showered, packed, luggage to the hotel pick up point. Then Pete and I separated, he did the bikes and car, I did the riders. Once at the start it’s the same procedure. The stage passes with the Pete and I in the convoy, driving along listening to the radio with bursts of intense activity when called upon. Stage end, again Pete does the bikes, I do the riders. Then it’s a transfer to new hotels, keys, rooms, dining room, meal times, shopping for tomorrow’s race food and drink, evening meal, riders meeting, discuss the stage, plan tomorrows, tell them the morning schedule and off they go to bed by nine pm. It’s routine, it’s what the riders like.

In many ways it’s just like a school field trip and over thirty years I have done many of those. There were things I couldn’t do much about. We had no masseur, however often the riders wished to have one, I couldn’t magic one up. There was nothing I could do about the food either. There were grumbles about this but I guess they’re not concerned about experiencing Far Eastern cuisine. I thought it delicious.  Fish is banned to the riders as it’s potentially a fast track to a dodgy belly but I ate it. I tried everything bar the braised cow tendon stew; I looked hard into it but just couldn’t bring myself to place any on my plate. I did try something that appeared as an unappetizing purple grey colour but on tasting it I had to have some more not really sure what it was.

The great thing was although I’m not at the top of that curve, it wasn’t as steep or as difficult as I had once thought. I was swimming, maybe not a perfect stroke but I was well above water. After the last stage I lay on my bed contemplating it all, searching for one word to describe the experience. Exhilarating was the one that kept coming into my mind.  

The actual quote is as follows: ‘If you want a life doing what you love you’re going to have to decide between grace and grit. Swinging wide the door so opportunity can waltz in is graceful, but wrestling a blood hungry champion fighting rooster to the ground is awkward as all hell’

Josh Ritter wrote that, good song writer too. Different isn’t it, Chinese whispers.

The convoy

I take a quick glance at the speedometer, it's hovering  between 90 and 100km, eyes back to the road, there’s a sharp hairpin, the car a few metres in front is about to swing into it, looks a tight one, eyes dart to my mirrors, one rider, descending very fast has suddenly appeared in the spray  between me and the car behind, black kit, it’s Deano, and he’s gaining rapidly. I mentally track his path and adjust my cornering to allow him to pass on the inside, simultaneously blasting my horn to let the front car know of his presence. Then he’s passing, inches from the car, its really tight, rock face and gutter  flash by, I’m round, Deano’s  in the space between me and the front  car , we’re already swinging into the next hairpin,  Dean leans into it and  out of sight, I glance in the mirrors, two more riders have appeared in the spray.

I speed on, checking road back and front; I’ve suspended any thoughts, shoving them to one side as riders shoot by as I hurtle down the descent. Eventually a long straight appears, long enough for me to see a bunch of riders ahead, a gruppetto forming as more dropped riders make it back on. 

Just then the race radio cackles into life, ‘Rapha Condor, Rapha Condor,’

We’re wanted at the front of the race. 

‘Go, go, go’ It’s Pete, the mechanic, yelling from the back seat, ‘floor it, beep, horn it’,

 I’m already doing just that. I don’t know what the call is about, feeding or mechanical or where the main group is but I accelerate the car out of the small convoy and head, horn blaring, up to the front, we use sign language with the commissar’s car, he acknowledges and I whip passed the riders horn  going.

 ‘Floor it, floor it’.

 I am, the engine is screaming as I accelerate, I have no idea where the front group is, I only know we have two riders up there and one needs something and fast. I glance again at the speedo, 180 km, the engine can’t give me much more, shit it’s some gap, and there is no one in sight. A sharp right hand bend, three policeman are signalling - don’t hit them for heavens sake- I sling shot  round, into a long straight, no one is in sight, I speed on , it’s great having  closed roads. It’s a huge gap. I eventually see some lights and then the front convoy of cars, I start on the horn as I approach and start overtaking them.

 Where is our rider? I’m overtaking on the left when through the spray and jumble of vehicles I glimpse a figure standing by the roadside on the right.

’It’s Ben, rear puncture’ I yell to Pete, as I cut across a car that instantly breaks allowing me through.  Pete has grabbed a rear wheel, as I screech to a halt just behind Ben, he’s out of his door ,old wheel out, new one in, rider back on saddle, pushed off, I move up behind. Pete leaps back into car and we’re off, fast change, good.  Ben is yelling, furious about something, I slip in front of him and he latches on and we illegally pace him back to the front group, Pete guiding my speed so he stays right on our bumper until approaching the rear cars I accelerate and pull over sharply so catapulting him back  amongst the cars where we watch him quickly work his way back to the front group. As he passes the neutral service car he turns and abuses them, from that we gather he’s pissed with them not us. (They had driven passed him as he waited for our arrival, a cardinal sin.)

 As he joins the back of the riders I look at the group  to gauge the numbers  and suddenly see a black jersey attacking off the front, even from this distance I instantly recognise the  familiar style. 

‘Tom is attacking’, I yell.

He is rapidly moving away and as I watch another rider responds and chases him. I sit at the front of the convoy long enough to see the rider latch on to his wheel and start to work with him. I scan the mileage, 60 odd km to go, a long way, but after the climb and descent the race is in chaos, it’s a good time to go. I start to drop back to my place in the convoy when the race radio the barks to life.

‘Attack, attack at front, numbers 51 (Tom) and 115’

‘It’s 115, who is it?’ I shout.

Pete checks the list.

‘A Japanese rider.’

‘How far down on time?’

 Pause,

‘About four minutes’

Good, Tom’s crash two days ago lost him seven minutes so neither of them are a direct threat to the lead riders, maybe they’ll be able to slip away. The Japanese are intent on this stage today; they’ve had riders in every break. I sit back ready to listen as Tom’s break is played out. Our riders behind will have to rely on neutral service for the rest of todays stage.

The race isn’t all like this; these are a few minutes of high intensity, squeezed between hours of driving in the convoy as car fourteen, the race just rolling on with just the occasional glimpse of the rear of the peleton. We - Pete, the mechanic and I - chat, munch our way through tubes of pringles, mixed nuts and swigs of water bottles whilst our ears monitor the radio, ready to react at a moment’s notice when it suddenly gives us a call. I thought I would be able to look at the passing towns and country side but it’s surprising how little I notice. Occasional buildings or decorative Buddhist shrines stand out as do the ever intriguing roadside booths, advertised by brilliantly flashing lights, which always display scantily clad young woman sitting in the large front windows. We always observe these booths closely as they are rumoured to be either brothels or to sell drugs, we never seem to come to any conclusion and finally decided we ought to ask, which we would if we knew any Mandarin.

If all is well we usually plan to feed one rider at around the fifty kilometre mark, listening out for the radio call and driving up as fast as possible to pass over the required number of bottles and energy bars for the rest of the team to however it is who’s dropped back. It’s always hectic, as it’s always done quickly. Speed is the essence, getting to the front of the convoy, drawing level with the rider and holding the car steady whilst listening to Pete and the rider exchange bottles and energy bars. Completed, the rider accelerates away back to the peleton, whilst we drop over to the right hand gutter so the other cars can overtake and we regain our convoy position.  We hope we don’t hear anything else as that means mechanical trouble. For the last twenty kilometres we listen more intently to the radio, especially on the flatter stages that we have targeted for a win, listening how the stage is heading to its conclusion. At the 500m mark I look out for the marshals who with whistles blowing and flags waving usher us to our parking spot where we leap out and prepare to greet the spent riders.

The riders

It’s still raining; we (Pete the mechanic and I) are standing out in it in a car park waiting for our first riders to appear. The rain started on the first category climb around the sixty-kilometre mark, some hundred kilometres previously. We know two of our number have just finished, as we had followed them in the lead group. This still left the other three still out on the road, at the mercy of the grupetto.

We have everything ready; cans of coke, water, Re-go, food and cases of dry clothes. We stand out in the rain so the riders can get straight into the car. The first two appear after u-turning past the finish line and pedalling slowly back. They are soaking wet, their exposed skin caked in a strangely grey coloured mud that etches their fatigue deeper into their faces.

They free wheel in, we take their bikes as they dismount. I wonder about asking them about who won but keep silent. I’m not expecting a win today; this isn’t one of our targeted stages, we have already come so close.

Their own silence indicates that neither of them won. One slips side on into a car seat, legs stretched out in the wet. The other just stands still in the rain, neither say a word, both are staring off into an unknown distance.

I quickly offer them drinks but both decline by a shake of their heads. The sparse facilities and inhospitable conditions the riders face as soon as the race is over shocks me. I cannot imagine any other sport where the competitors at this high level are treated in such a way. It would be unimaginable to think of Footballers leaving the pitch unable to talk with fatigue going to change in the car park. 

I wait for them to recover, keeping an eye out for the groups of riders who are coming in to see if our riders are amongst them.  I stand and wonder what it is that drives these men. They have just raced for over four and a half hours over tough terrain in pouring cold rain. They are lagged in mud and soaked through and now they have a car park to change in. No showers, no changing rooms and the first spectators are starting to wander around; staring at the riders and their bikes. Some take photos, sometimes coming face to face with the riders and asking for a close up. The riders, conscious of their role in the marketing world, somehow always responded with a smile and usually pose away through their fatigue.

I give them extra water bottles to wash with as they begin to pull off their sodden clothing and change- exposed as much to the public as the elements. The first two have now recovered enough to tell me who won, and a few bits of information about the days racing. Then whistles blow and on looking up I see our last riders coming up the hill towards the finish. I start to get their stuff ready.

Once all the riders are in and changed they are off to the assembled coaches with a large bag of food, to wait for the transfer to the hotel. Today the hotel is several hours away, this means a long wait until they will finally get a shower and lie down and something to eat, before trying to get as much sleep as possible before they start it all over again the next day.

What do these riders get from this? It’s not money, at least not a lot; this isn’t the pinnacle of the sport where fabulous fortunes are made. These are journeymen riders who set out years ago to live a youngsters sporting dream.

I can only possibly conjecture their reasons, some I know just love riding their bikes, some are trying to avoid the 9 to 5 job market as long as possible. But it’s also the travel, the nomadic life style, the competition and that occasional elation of winning. One rider even claims to do it for the personalized stickers on his bike, while some claim that this is simply what they do.

Whatever their diverse reasons maybe, I can’t help but admire them for it.

Only Cowgirls

I’ve just started rereading Tom Robbins’s Even Cowgirls get the Blues, which I remember as a brilliant book but lacklustre film. I’m not on any nostalgia trip rereading these books I’m actually searching all our bookshelves for Catch 22 ( which I didn’t read until my fifties) which I would like to read again but keep getting sidetracked by these other gems that catch my eye.

I am aware that Robbins is a talented author whose work is tight and very readable but he manages to spread his net wide. I say this as when I produced my 255,000 word tome I was told it wandered around too much, and that people wouldn’t read it if it appeared that I was mentally waffling . Well I’m still on chapter one of Robbins’s book where he is introducing Sissy Hankshaw, the heroine with the gargantuan thumbs and her background origins in the 1950s blue collar America of the Eisenhower years, when men knew more about carburettors than the clitoris. Into those first twenty- five pages he has also managed to pack in the life history of the amoeba, the importance and role of thumbs in the evolution of modern man, the rectal temperature of oysters and bumble bees, hitchhiking, the origins of five English words from their native language, the brief history of those natives before and after the arrival of western developers and their resulting extinction, and finally the German composer Schumann.  On, page 47 he suddenly includes an ‘interlude’ when he writes about the Venusian atmosphere. That’s just how I like it, a diverse range of interesting material seeding my own brain.

This ‘interlude’ prompted me to read up on the planet and Vonnegut’s writings had me thinking about it. I then wrote a story about a group of aliens who on perusing our solar system paid a visit to Venus prior to arriving on the blue planet. On the blue one, they discovered a fairly advanced species who they thought would eventually discover space travel. So being friendly helpful aliens, passed on the information about  Venus’s atmosphere saying that it was nightmarish, dark red skies, suffocating thick toxic air, continuous thunder and lightning storms deluging the upturned horizons with  sulphuric acid rain  and wasn’t worth a visit, it was hell, (an alien word meaning shithole) The small group of listening humans, not understanding anything about space travel, absorbed the information about this hellish place and on watching the aliens depart turned to one another and wondered what that was all about. One smart one admitted he didn’t know but did have a good idea about how to market this place called hell.

The book also had the effect of changing my hitching style. My partner and I were students living in a cottage five miles from town and hitched everywhere. Until then we just went along and stuck our thumbs out and waited. Now we realised there was an art to hitching and we started to learn. We set out to bring the oncoming traffic to a halt. You stood there on the side of the road and let the driver know not only that we needed a lift and that they really wanted to give us one. We also discovered we had the ability to mentally tamper with the engines, hitting the carburettor or breaking system to slow the vehicle down. It took a while but soon our hitching times were plummeting, we could go anywhere, any distance. Some days we went out and went hitching like others went for a walk. It didn’t always work, one Sunday we stopped an Alpha Romeo- first car- but had to catch a bus back from our destination as we came across an area where cars were driven by imprisoned husbands in the iron- like grip of the lady next to them who overrode our energies. Some days we hitched so fast we arrived days before we were due and surprised our hosts with our early arrival. I think my best stop ever was a fire engine that was on an emergency, we were both confused by this but they recovered their composure before me and just asked if I knew where the incident was.  

Long time no omelet.

Long time no cheese omelet.

I walked for something like ten miles today all but some 400m on footpaths that weave their various ways through our wind sculptured countryside around here, and saw four people. It’s amazing when you think there are sixty million of us crammed into this small island that there is so much space. One of the four was a woman cleaning out a stable. The other three were in a farmyard I was passing through. They were standing around a large steer that was lying on its back with its feet straight up in the air. As I approached I noticed its head was positioned some four feet away from the rest of its body, from this I concluded that it was dead. Not wishing to appear as a wimp, and to acknowledge the downside of being a carnivore, I walked right on up and pondering what to say mentioned what a glorious day it was. Well it was for us; it must have started well for the steer but had gone rapidly down hill from there. They just glanced around at the sky and grunted agreement.

I realized they were slightly ill at ease at my presence. Their silence was broken by one of them informing me that the steer had had a good life and that it was lucky as it had died in its bed, adding that not many of them did that. I didn’t have a reply to this, thinking that the steer wouldn’t have known what its life had been like or that dying in its own bed by a shot to the head was particularly lucky. One of the three, obviously the local slaughter man, got back to work and started to remove the beast’s skin.

‘Be some fine meat on it’ I uttered as it was a huge carcass.

‘Looks more like fat’ came a muttered reply, as the skin was peeled back.

‘Well we did have a cold spell this winter’ I replied.

All this got me was three exasperated glances that basically said ‘fuck off will you’. I was wondering about this myself but as at any moment now the steers belly was going to be cut open unleashing an avalanche of viscera, things could be about to get interesting. I had taught the cow’s digestive system on countless occasions to class loads of pupils and I thought it would be quite interesting to see the rumen, reticulum, omasum, abomasum for real. I really shouldn’t pass over the chance; you never know when things might come in handy. I was always like talking to doctors and nurses about their medical experiences to gain background information to make my lessons just a little more capitivating. I also collected dead piglets from a farmer I knew and dissected them with the kids at school post mortem style to see why they had died and to show them all the organs as pigs inside look very much like ours. They used to be fascinated; the vegetarians were allowed to sit it out at the back of the class. If I had done that in more recent times half the class would have fainted or screamed and the letters of complaint would have flooded in. I did have a few complaints in those days but it was usually from parents whose children had stopped eating sausages or burgers as I had pointed out what bits of the carcass went in them. I did have fainters but never on a dissection. They usually came when I was describing heart operations. My record stood at eight. I had them carried out and sat along the corridor wall to recover.

In the end I remembered that I had actually retired and the displaced head looked bad enough, did I want to watch the bloody deluge? I felt that not only had my sudden appearance from nowhere disconcerted the three of them, if I then proceeded to delve into the entrails like some ancient soothsayer they may take umbrage. So I ruefully decided against watching and set off again giving them a cheerful cheerio. They managed a silent nod or two.