Diarist manqué

Bah, I didn't post an entry yesterday, in spite of its being a workday.  My usual regime requires that I post something on a workday; I'm excused high days and holidays.  I'm flesh and blood, not a machine.

I did, reader, have the best of intentions.  I couldn't update the diary before leaving work (my preferred method).  I ran out of time last evening as the forecast suggested it was going to shat down in the early evening, so I didn't want to hang about and get caught.  "No matter", I thought.  "I'll do it when I get home."  Home, where my toys are.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.  Apologies.

I'm reading a book about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore at the mo.  It's not particularly well written, but the story is interesting enough for one to forgive the prose.  What's particularly interesting is Peter Cook's diffidence about himself and his talent.  He always get portrayed as having a very patrician hauteur about him, PC, but people who knew him, particularly those who knew him before be became famous, recall a much warmer person than that.  I love finding out that my heroes are nice as well as talented.  It gives one hope for the future of the species.

Cook, like a lot of that golden Oxbridge generation, fell into the business of show by accident.  Both he and Jonathan Miller had no intention of becoming performers on leaving Cambridge.  Funnily enough, John Cleese was the same a couple of years later.  Despite a successful Footlights career as an undergraduate, Cleese applied successfully for a job with a London law firm on completing his studies.  He only postponed this for what he thought was a short theatrical jolly with friends.  It's still on deferral.

I wish shit like this would happen to me.  That's the difference between Oxbridge and redbrick I suppose - serendipity.

Days of wine and roses

We had a bank holiday weekend here, in this united kingdom, the weekend just gone.  It was super.  The weather, which was predicted to be terrible, was nothing of the sort.  It was largely sunny, warm and spring-like.  Just watch the doctor ordered.

Friday night we launched festivities with a couple of jolly old ales at one of our locals.  Every pub in the vicinity was packed, but everyone was in gerr-ate spirits.  There was real feeling of optimism and comradeship broad; it was lovely, like being at war, but with rationing and carpet bombing.

On Saturday morning I continued my preparations for the up-coming time trial season by going on a 2-hour training ride out in the sticks.  Post this, I had that euphoric feeling one gets, a mix of endorphins and hubris at having done some exercise.

This feeling was bolstered by a 2-hour walk in the Essex countryside with the missus, followed by a slap-up binge dinner for two with fine wines and ice cream.  Marvellous.  I slept like cadaver on Saturday night as a result.

On Sunday we trundled up to Cambridge, which is pleasant enough for a couple of hours.  A vegetarian scone and a browse around England's sole surviving independent bookshop then home.  We met friends for noisy, drunk bourgeois drinks that evening to see the sabbath out.

Yesterday (Monday) was spent at a dog obedience show and then in the West End browsing around expensive shops, which is the quintessential British bank holiday Monday in a nutshell.  It's liberating to be cliched from time to time.

Huzzah!

Bike Riced

Mrs O and I went for a weekend away en vélo over Easter.  We popped our folding bikes on the train and trundled up to Cambridge on Good Friday to commune with the hundreds of thousands of Chinese tourists who had made the trip also.  It actually wasn't so bad in Cantab.  The students are at home (the normal ones, at any rate), which helped a bit.  We steeled ourselves by spending the night there and heading off the following morning, a massive complimentary buffet breakfast to the good.

The first few miles were great; well-appointed cycle paths take you right out into the mercifully-flat Cambridgeshire countryside.  It's quite dull, the landscape here, but good for low-octane cyclisme.  The trouble only starts when you get to Essex.

The physical geography of Essex is the absolute inverse of Cambridgeshire's.  The whole county appears to have been corrugated by a malevolent god.  It was massively hard going.  Mrs O had planned this first day to be 35 miles of bucolic bike jollies.  Five and half hours later, we pitched-up in Great Dunmow, utterly broken.  We must have cycled closer to 55 miles, what with the peaks and troughs.  As a consequence of this unforeseen extra effort, we spent the evening eating and drinking with abandon.  That's the quid pro quo of arduous cycling, and one of the pasttime's joys of course.  

After a mighty chug of Chenin Blanc and a slap-up Vietnamese dinner, we both slept like sedated babies, and lept out of bed, ready for the miles ahead.  Unfortunately, the weather undid us.  Literally as we were leaving the carpark of our hotel, Mrs O detected a spot of rain.  It then opened-up for ooh, let's see, the next nine hours solid.

The plan had been to ride all the way home, but by the time we reached the quaint end of the Central Line, I hoisted the white flag.  We jumped on a tube and headed to my sister's house, which is nearby.  We threw ourselves on her mercy.  She did the needful and filled us up with tea and hot cross buns.  She popped the tin hat on it by then offering us a lift home.

Easter time, mistletoe and wine

Today is Maundy Thursday.  It should be a solemn time of course, what with the Jesus stuff soon to go down, but in fact most of us can barely wipe the grins from our chops.  Easter means two 4-day weeks.  Woo and indeed hoo.

The weather is still rather fine in these parts, which means the pubs will be carnage this evening.  People (educated, otherwise genteel people, mind you) will be sucking and champing at tumblers of fine wine like piglets on the teat.  I'll be there too of course, to monitor events and scowl.

Tomorrow it's off to Cambridge, that poor man's Oxford.  There's a rather nice hotel in Cambridge.  It's part of an American chain that Mrs O and I have had some dealings with in the Ud Ss of A.  As well as being comfortable, this chain has a couple of winning customs that we both enjoy.  Upon checking-in you get presented with a giant chocolate chip cookie each, in a brown paper bag.  I don't even like CCCs much, but it's a nice gesture.  I give mine to la wife.  She's finds them most compelling company.

The other service they provide is a pancake-making machine as part of the breakfast buffet.  I'd never seen one until we visited the States.  They're quite lumpy, about three feet long by two high.  They also give off a tremendous noise.  You pour batter in one end and 90 seconds later out pops a fresh pancake.  Well, as fresh as a pancake can be, that is.

If I'm honest, the process is more fun than the result, but I don't like to see average food go to waste, so I normally eat about two dozen before I'm done.