When the going gets tough, I start grizzling

I was at the Olympic velodrome again last evening, and, as previously, it was an intense exercise.  The physical demands aren't too onerous at all, not to someone who rides reguarly.  But the nervous energy one expends and the pure relentless concentration riding the track requires left me feeling bereft after my hour-long session.

I could barely pedal the three miles home afterwards, and it was all I could do when I did eventually reach the house to neck a couple of glasses of wonderful chenin blanc and eat me tea.  I slept like a corpse and still woke up feeling cream crackered this morning.  And yet, I really enjoyed it.  I'll need to repeat this stage of my accreditation as I simply don't have enough track time and it shows, but I'll do it.

The evil that women do

I'm off to the Olympic Velodrome in a couple of hours for the second instalment of my track cycling accreditation training.  Unfortunately today I'm feeling terrible, really weak.  I don't have "the legs", as we cyclists term it.  I'm told that the emphasis during this part of the training is on formation and not speed, which is just as well because I could not stay the lacklustre pace on the ride to work this morning.

I blame this under-the-weatherness on a consultant at work.  She's been sat next to me since the end of last week and has a persistent hacking cough.  At lo and behold, I work up this morning with a sore throat.  Gerrrrr-ate.

But let us accentuate the positive, readers - I'm statistically-bound by my age, sex, experience and weight to be quicker than a fair percentage of the spuds who generally turn up for these things.

Zounds - call a constable. I think I'm going to faint

Mrs O and I were at The Globe on Saturday evening, as I think I've made mention of before.  Great Scott im Himmel but it was warm inside.  Real quick-get-his-feet-above-his-head warm.  And we were in the gods, in seats, where at least there was some respite from the oppressive temperatures and humidity.  The great unwashed who had to stand at stage level must have been evaporating.  It didn't help that the play, Julius Caesar, wasn't too big on belly-laughs either.  It was rather long-winded if I'm honest.  Can one say that about Shakie?

I'm sure we did this play at school.  I can't really remember too much about it, except for the bit where Julius has a, presumably epileptic, fit in front of a vulgar rabble.  To save face, it is later put about that the emperor was overcome by the bad breath of the pleb.  How we laughed when we heard this as 14-year-olds.  

Apart from this comic interlude, though, it's arid stuff.  Even as a reasonably sober and serious-minded 45-year-old, I was struggling and my eyes glazed over at least eight dozen time during act one.  Why on Earth did they choose this of all Shakespeare's play to inflict on a cohort of working-class cockney dunces like us?  It's guaranteed to put you off literature for life.  Luckily I'm a glutton for Elizabethan punishment, and so managed to rehabilitate myself.

Le weekend et le temps fera beau!

Well, well, who saw this coming?  The weather looks set fair for the weekend.  It's been a frustrating few weeks, meteorological speaking.  The working week has been absolutely lovely, but the weekends have been wet and miserable, like Geoffrey Howe (political reference for the teenagers, there!).

It's just as well it supposed to be nice because the (ie. my) wife and I are at The Globe on Saturday evening.  It's Julius Caesar this time, a play I'm not too familiar with.  Take it from me, friends, there is no more atmospheric place on God's green earth than the Globe on a summer's evening.  It exudes drama, from the oh-so-hard bench seats to the thatch.  I cannot wait.

People - a lesson from history

I was on the tube again this morning, due to my unusual hamstring.  It's not actually sore today; don't tell anyone.  I've an appointment with my physio tomorrow.  If it carries on like this, I'll have to start making symptoms up.  

I've got a bit of previous when it comes to bullshitting professionals in a one-to-one situation.  I'm a Catholic, and as a child I had to start making up sins when I went to confession.  It's not that I was free from sin at that age (I am now), but I used to dry up under the pressure of the confessional, so I'd start inventing generic venial misdemeanours.  I don't suppose Father [insert Irish surname here] bought it for a minute.  I wish now I'd taken the trouble to make up so more interesting ones, from a theological perspective I mean.  "You been feeding your budgie Holy water?  Hmm...not sure how to deal with this one...it does sound quite bad...I'll have to phone the Bishop.  Give up cheese and hop around on one leg until I get back to you."

Where was I?  Oh, yes, the tube.  So it's about 50 degrees Celsius as per on the Jubilee Line, and we're rammed in there like bluebottles inside a hollowed-out turd when some rotter decides to fart.  I'm not a violent man, but by Christ I would battered the culprit flaccid had I got my gloves on him.  Have we not all got enough to deal with, what with the heat and the general pervasive air of gloom?

Essence and Extension

I had to get the tube to work today, which for a jobbing cyclist like me is a nightmare.  Also, it's July; the sun is shining and the cotton is high, instead of being out there enjoying it, I was stuck in a giant tumble dryer with the vulgar mob.  And they are vulgar, believe me.  The reason for the unwelcome return to London's expensive and shambolic transport system is that one of my hamstrings is playing-up.  It's not sore exactly, just not right, and I don't want to do any damage, so I'm waiting to see my physio.

I have a difficult relationship with health care professionals.  I love them but at the same time hate myself for being so needy.  It's all take-take from me.  I don't know what my physio gets out of it, frankly, apart from £90 an hour (I suppose one could rent a very attractive Russian prostitute for that kind of money, but BUPA would probably baulk at that).  My physio is big on taking responsibility for one's pain management.  I had a problem with my neck some years ago; it was absolutely excruciating.  I mean this was real "can I go on?" agony.  It was debilitating too.  Anyway, he treated me and the symptoms died down, but afterwards he gave me some exercises that were designed expressly to anger the errant neck vertebra.  The rationale for this is that pain has two elements: the electrical signal, about which you can do nothing, and the brain's reaction to that signal, about which you have absolute control.  So basically I was prodding the sore nerve ending with a physio stick until it realised that Mr Brain was going to ignore it.

It was incredibly liberating, this process.  I felt a degree of control I'd never previously thought possible.  For a few months I was master of my limbs and trunk.  Unfortunately, real life creeps back up and gives one a drubbing, just to restore balance.  Just as well I suppose, otherwise I might have ended-up like one of the halfwits who thinks himself utterly invulnerable and spends his weekends base-jumping when he could be drinking freezing cold sherry with his darling wife.

No pain - yes please.

Microsoft??... phuque off.

I suppose I only have myself to blame.  I've finally browbeaten the jobbing incompetents in our IT department at work into giving me a new computer.  Last time I asked for a new hardware, I was given a retread.  It battled manfully for a few months before wilting.  I did tell the spotty herberts that I use massive databases and spreadsheets, so a 486 will no longer cut it.  I suspect, however, they think that anyone who wears a suit to work in genetically unable to work complicated software.

So on Friday afternoon my new laptop arrived.  The customer service began and ended with its being delivered.  I plumbed it in and I had to configure all the software and hardware.  In no other field would such shoddy after-sales service be allowed.  If M&S handed you four yards of pinstripe and a reel of cotton in lieu of an actual suit when you swiped your debit card, you'd feel rightly hard done by.  For IT slatterns, though, it's par for course.

So I've had to spent all day configuring this and that, and it's still not right.  The misery of new hardware is compounded by Microsoft taking to opportunity of (ahem) upgrading you while they're at it.  So I've got a new version of Office.  I've resisted this for as look as I could - not because I'm a Luddite, but because it's shit.  Yes, it is.  How is it progress when you now need two keystrokes where previously one was sufficient?  I contend that this is not progress.

I can't abide being cast as the clichéd grumpy naysayer at times like this.  I embrace progress and innovation.  But I also have the keen eye of the child in The Emperor's New Clothes.  I know bullshit when I spy it.  I should do; I sit with the marketing department.  One's moral compass takes a pounding when you get too close to marketing professionals, but it does heighten one's nose for bluster, fanny and/or flannel.  And Microsoft has been dining out on B, F & F for a quite some time now.

Bill, you've enough money.  If the mortgage isn't paid yet, that's your lookout.  Gertcha.

The air is rich with ions. The gods must be displeased.

It is super hot in London today - proper oh-Jesus-I'm-melting hot.  It's tough for the English to cope in weather like this as they like to keep a lid on their emotions by-and-large, but that's impossible.  The simplest physical task in this heat requires herculean will-power.  By the time I cycled home last night, I was like a rag doll.  Unfortunately, Mrs O was out carousing with colleagues, so I had cook the tea when all I wanted to do was lie down and have a good tremble.  Thanks to my massive reserves of stoicism and heart I did manage to throw together a Spanish omelette before the tears came.

And I speak as one of the fitter members of the populace.  If I'm struggling, I shudder to think how the flabby rotters are getting on.  Needless to say, it will be carnage in the pubs of the capital tonight.  People will be pouring rubbing alcohol in their ears.  It doesn't help that the weather's supposed to break tomorrow, so the window of crapulent opportunity is small.  He who hesitates is lost.

The one upside to the humidity and the heat was that there was an almighty and spectacular electrical storm in the small hours.  The noise was unimaginable.  Even London falls silent for a few hours in the dead of night, so the peals of thunder rang out like you would not believe.  I thought in my dozing alpha wave state that the roof was about to fly off.

Back to normal tomorrow - wet and miserable.  Ho hum.

Fatigue Arbuckle

Great Scott, I'm tired today.  A confluence of events has caused this.  Firstly, I've been charging around on my road bike, trying to get fitter for a while.  The body, who is a conservative soul and fears change has decided to withdraw his goodwill, so I'm reliant on willpower alone to turn the pedals.  And secondly, it's bastard hot in London at the mo.  This makes it nigh-on impossible to sleep properly.  Add those two elements together and it doesn't take long to turn one into a catatonic husk.

Thankfully tomorrow, which is being touted as the hottest day since the Romans returned home, is Friday.  All I have to do on Fridays is turn up at the office in mufti, half-heatedly push a mouse round a desk for a couple of hours and then head to the pub for a refreshing binge or several.  Life coaches refer to this as "letting off steam" - although if it's as humid and clammy as promised tomorrow, I may literally be required to give off vapour as my head acts as heat exchanger between my broken body and the atmos.  Nothing cools the tired trunk at the end of the working week like nine halves of freezing cold Leffe Blonde.

Amen to that.

Legless in Seattle

Ooh, the legs hurt today.  Well, not really hurt, but they're under the weather, certainly.  I competed in a 10-mile time trial last night for the first time in 14 years, and don't I know it.  I've managed to keep a fair degree of fitness over the years, what with commuting and training, but training is nothing compared with racing.  Racing marks a real step up in intensity.  I'd forgotten this until about a mile and a half into it when my central nervous system started sounding the fire bell.

It really takes some self-procession at times like this not to pack-up and start weeping.  I'm proud to say that I managed to take stock and recover some composure.  My physical well being wasn't helped by my being woefully under-geared.  I'd never ridden this circuit before and had to take a guess on what would be appropriate.  Actually, I didn't take a guess; I simply turned-up on what I had under me yesterday and hoped for the best.  Unfortunately, the track was like shit off a shovel and I couldn't stay up to speed on the flats without spinning like the crankshaft on v-reg Escort RS-2000.

The worst aspect of all this is that I ended the torture thinking I'd acquitted myself pretty well, thank-you.  Sadly, the timekeepers thought otherwise.  I wasn't the slowest by any manner of means, but there were quite a few lame and aged individuals among the starters, so I shouldn't take too much succour from that.

As is always the case with time trialling, the winner appeared to be turning over his pedal cranks slowly and with ease, and yet was averaging 30mph.  Had he been built like concrete shithouse, this wouldn't have been too dispiriting.  As it was, though, he looked just like the rest of us.  He just had a bigger engine. 

That's endurance sport for you.  She's a bastard.

The heat is off

Phew, it's getting warm - a subtle reminder to the populace that it's still technically the middle of summer.  There's a temptation to think the season over now as the World Cup has just ended.  I had to remind Mrs O last night that we had most of our summer jollies still to look forward to, so pucker-up!  This is a shameless role-reversal for me as I'm ordinarily the one with a face like a clattered asshole.  Yet, here I was, bestriding the front room like an upbeat colossus.  I can only suppose this optimism is my unconscious mind trying to deal with triple-digit humidity.

The wife and I usually take our holidays late in the year to avoid the great unwashed and their mewling progeny.  This year we had planned to go to Tel Aviv but John Simpson advised against it.  Instead we're having a series of mini-breaks in Spain and Germany.

On the surface, they're uneasy bedfellows, Germany and Spain, but each offers the wise traveller a wonderful playground in its own way.  People always cock-on about visiting this monument and that restaurant when they're on hols, like it's some sort of Ironman competition.  You're there to relax and enjoy yourself, you dozy twat.  People who claim that they're not interested in a bit of low impact R&R during the vacs and prefer instead to yomp or go pot-holing need an electric shock to the brain, frankly.  When I go on a mini break, I want things to be different, other and new.  What I don't want is onerous.  This is why S&G offer very different cultural mores, but similar experiences.

Any Sport in a Storm

It's a dark day today, metaphorically-speaking.  The weather is gorgeous as it happens, and just as well because the spirit needs a fillip.  The reason for the malaise is that The World Cup ended last night, and it was a belter too.  Germany scored a simply divine goal five minutes from the end of extra time to beat Argentina.  This popped the tin hat on what has been the finest World Cup I've ever seen, and I've seen them all since Argentina 1978.  In fact I gave up going to cubs during that World Cup, so rapt was I by the football being played.  Ah, well, Baden-Powell's loss.

The end of these infrequent tournaments is always fraught.  When you're young, four years might as well be four light years.  It's simply unimaginably far in the future.  And when you get to the foothills of grizzled dotage, like me, you start to worry about how many of these you have left at your disposal before you lose you marbles.

Yes, best not to dwell on these matters too greatly.  Anyways, there's still the Tour de France to enjoy.

Gareth Ale

I'm off out tonight.  No great surprise there, I hear you shriek; it is Friday after all.  Ah, yes, but tonight I'm not going to one, several or all of the four (count 'em) pubs that lie within 400 yards of my front door.  The missus and I are off to meet friends at a microbrewery under a railway arch in the east end.  Had I told you that ten years ago, you'd have been quite within your rights to have me sectioned under the mental health act.

Not now though.  Microbrewerage, former shitholes in east London postcodes and even railway arches, I dare say, are now uber-cool.  Craft beer is all the rage in London.  Craft beer is simply real ale for the most part plus marketing.  Luckily the railway this gaff is under gets Mrs O and I home in a matter of minutes.  So it's a win:win pour nous.

Toot toot, dude!

Gathering winter fyoo-oo-ell

Summer in the city (London) is turning out to be a shit quibb this year (I think that's the expression I'm after).  This lamentable assessment extends to both the sporting British summer and the prevailing meterological conditions.  The weather in London yesterday was okay(ish) for a Wednesday in March.  And to top it all, Chris Froome abandoned the Tour after crashing about seventy times in the space of two-hundred yards.  Even his legendary phlegm ran dry at the atrocious conditions, and he looked heartily pissed-on-and-off as he leapt headfirst into the back of the womb-like Sky Jag.

The low cloud base last evening led to the inevitable gloomy speculation about the approach of winter in the nothern hemisphere.  It's coming, isn't it, the absolute bastard?  The evenings are definitely drawing in.  The actualité of winter is nothing compared with the anticipation of its arrival, as with most experiences in life.  We know this, but the brow can't help but furrow when the summer has been as underwhelming as this one.  Even bog-trotters like myself need sunlight.  I'm a surface-dwelling mammal after all.

Mrs O and I had decided initially to head to Israel later in the year as it stays hot and sunny there until at least Boxing Day, but the internecine brouhaha there means that that is not now going to happen.  I could go, but would have to do so sporting a beak and features.  I'm not scared, you understand, just concerned about being shot to ribbons in my prime.

Perhaps I should pop to Oz on me holidays, and get some courage.

Play up and play the game!

Well, well, what a twenty-four hours of sporting drama that was.  Verily.  Just in case you don't follow o jogo bonito, or own a television and some ears, Brazil got knocked-out of the World Cup by the Germans last night.  I say knocked-out; I mean beaten into a persistant vegetative state by the Germans.  To lose 7:1 is embarrassment enough for most nations, but for the Brazilians in their own back yard it can properly be likened to a national disaster.

Brazil has no perspective when it comes to footy.  Politics, the economy, sex, music, social cohesion - all these criteria are mere reflections of the state of the national game.  This loss, then, cannot be overstated.  The fear of the body politic is that the disaffected masses will take out their frustrations on the elected representatives.  One could hardly blame them if they did.  Brazilians pay income tax at a level comparable to the Scandinavians but in return receive public services that would shame a sub-Saharan tinpot dictator.

Back of the net!

Nose, meet Grindstone

I'm back from a long weekend in Ireland, celebrating my father's 70th birthday.  And very life-affirming and jolly it was too.  Family gatherings are minefields of course, but everything on this trip worked a treat, from the choice of hotel to the dining and day trips.  Even the weather wasn't too bad, which for Ireland in July is little short of a facking miracle.

The irony of the trip for me was the fact that The Tour de France passed about twenty feet from my front door during the my absence.  Me, who's been following professional cycling for a quarter of century, when it was about as popular in England as kabbadi or bull-fighting.  I suppose it's probably just as well I wasn't there; I don't suppose I could have resisted the temptation to headbutt some Johnny-come-lately at the roadside as he held forth to his missus on why Chris Froome would probably win the bunch sprint on The Mall.

Mrs O and I arrived home literally as the stage was finishing on The Mall.  We watched the highlights last night, and I have to say it was amazing watching the streets that I know like the bee of my aitch full of world-famous cyclists.  Former Tour winner Andy Schleck had the misfortune to crash at a bus-stop at Waterworks Roundabout, which is about a mile from my house.  That bus-stop has already taken on cult status among local road men.  I myself will be visiting it this evening on the way home.  Wish I brought me camera.

About turn

Forget what I said yesterday; I was talking out of my fez.  The Olympic velodrome was every cycling schoolboy's dream.  I was able to hire some shoes, so I was on the pace throughout.  It was extremely exciting.  The staff were all courteous and knowledgeable, and the kit we got to use was splendid.  

I went along with a colleague, and we both agreed at the end that here was a new mania to add to the pile.  We actually stopped on the way out and had a look around the velodrome's bike shop for track bikes.  This on the basis of one hour's track cycling.  Had I done this taster session at 14, I'd have been lost to track cycling for the rest of my days - no question about that.  But as a middle-aged man, I don't have the time to commit to excellence in this new sporting passion.  I do, however, have money.  And track cycling can part a fool from his hard-earned quicker than a waxed Russian prostitute in a hot tub on the roof of Caesar's Palace.  There were a pair of track mitts in the velodrome shop for example that cost £49.99, ferrchrissakes.  That's what I pay for frames.  What could they be made of to justify that price tag?  Italian marble?  Heroin?

In other news - Mrs O and I had been planning to visit Tel Aviv in October, but that now looks about as likely as Rolf Harris winning a BAFTA.  It's going off there le big style.  So we're probably going to bottle out and go to Spain instead.  The last thing the warring factions in the occupied territories need is a pale horrified cock-er-knee like me looking on.  No - discretion is deffo the better part of this chicken's valour.  Thanking you.

Velo darkness, my old friend...

I'm off to London's Olympic Velodrome this evening.  It's not called that any more; it's the Toilet Duck Velo-Excellium Experience or something.

One can't just pitch-up and "ride the boards" as we cyclists term it.  You have to be accredited.  This is a sensible precaution.  Most every office Johnny of a certain age these days has access to a road bike courtesy of the bike-2-work scheme.  Worse still - most think they can ride them.  It is (just) possible to get away without causing a crash when you don't know what you're doing on the road, but the track is less forgiving.  You're riding in a lot of traffic in a confined space.  You're also riding a fixed-wheel bike with no (count 'em) brakes.  It makes sense, then, to teach everyone some race craft before letting them off the leash.

Sadly, I've just learned that I cannot ride using my preferred pedals.  There are several pedal systems for cyclists these days.  They require matching shoes to work.  I assumed that I'd be able to select the pedals of my choice for the hire bike I'll be riding.  But, no.  So the Lord alone knows what I'll be riding.

I'll report back tomorrow, but they're going to have to charm the shorts off me to get a decent write-up after this.

Absolute rotters.

Pity Poor Tom

I have a cold.  Bah.  It's a bad one too - bunged heed, runny nose and sore throat.  I thought I had hay fever, but this is a cold.  I didn't get a wink of sleep last night, and was so shattered of body and spirit this morning that I had to pull sickie.  It was merited though.  No really, I have enough residual catholic guilt not to go sick from work unless I absolutely cannot drag my skinny white ass into the office.

But I've filled the chassis up with paracetamol and tea and have rallied a bit.  It's nice being at home during the day, isn't it?  I haven't turned the telly on though.  That way madness and indolence lays.

What to do for tea though?