Woof! Begorrah...and relax

Well, I'm back at my desk after a tiring weekend at my sister's place in Ireland.  Too much drinking, not enough sleep and approximately half a fluid ounce of exercise have rendered me useless.  I'm physically frail and emotionally running on empty.

It was lovely to spend some time with the sibs and their better halves, as we do this so infrequently as adults, but I always come away from these events feeling slightly down and introspective.  It always occurs to me as I chat with my sisters that we have a lot of collective water until the familial bridge now, and that time is of the essence.  I don't like introspection.  It hurts.

Anyway, back now, so onwards and upwards.  The missus and I have a free weekend this weekend, so I'm not feeling under pressure.  It also helped that I had a day off yesterday, which I spent in industrious, domestic bliss.  I got ton(nes) done.  Again, this industry on my part is another symptom of the time-slipping-by anxiety.  In my 20s, I'd have gone to a gallery or watched an impenetrable art-house film.  Now I regard those pastimes as wasteful and decadent.  My decadent days are behind me I'm afraid.

Weak end

Friday today.  Thanks be to Godfrey.  I've only done 4 days this week, and the final two of those didn't exactly cover me in glory.  I turned up and made the right noises, but, really!, I should have been at home under a 20-tog duvet for all the use I was.  It wasn't for the want of trying.  I do have enough residual Catholic guilt to at least try and work, but I couldn't uncross my eyes long enough to get anything meaningful down on paper.

The events in France are coming to a predictably violent head.  Those behind it will all be shot to ribbons of course, moving their cause on not one jot.  There's a legacy for you.  I'm willing myself to keep my sense of humour in the midst of all this misery, but it's tough.  If there is intelligent life on Europa, or one of these hundreds of habitable exoplanets they keep turning up, let's hope they swoop down and give humanity a right good kicking for treating its sentience so shabbily.  If I set about some blameless passer-by with a broom handle one day in the name of Eros, say, I'd quite rightly be locked up as a loon.

A lunatic.  Lunacy, which is just idiocy's wide-eyed cousin of course.

Grimble gromble hatstand

I'm not sure what's happening today, blog wise.  I've found by rereading my diary that I've started dropping into a very prescriptive form for my daily entries.  The weather first, followed by how busy I am at work, followed by my route home and ending up with what's on the telly.  There's no scope for empty-headed scat scribbling within this highly-structured form.  I need, therefore, to break its face with a forearm smash of art terrorism.

When I was younger (i.e. at any time prior to now) I used to be so tired and hungover when filling in brer diary that my musings would meander wherever they saw fit.  This was useful because rereading it was like reading the thoughts of a dissolute stranger, who just so happened to be inhabiting my body at the time as I was using it.  This is as exhilarating as its sounds.  But as I've aged, I've become more and more bound by bourgeois routine.  And the old BR absolutely hates improv.

This is age creeping up on one of course.  However, I'm a great believer that age-appropriate behaviour is conditioned - nurture rather than nature.  Given this, it is possible to override it.  I shall do this using positive affirmation and hyperventilation.

Ready Steady Go-Slow

It's Thursday, today.  And thank the baby Jesus for it.  It's been a very long week thus far.  I've spent the majority of it emerging from a heavy cold.  This has left me physically bereft.  I spend all my time either sleeping or yawning.  This leaves scant resource for gadding about and witticisms.  The time, when in a slough of physical despond like this, passes ever so slowly.  I'm hanging on by my fingernails for the weekend to scoop me up in its frivolous arms do the necessary.

It comes to something when your life is a bitter grind for the most part, with only the occasional low-octane piss-up at the weekends to lighten the load.  I keep thinking of pastures greener when it's like this, of working with my hands, of joining a circus or taking up base-jumping.  The trouble is I'll read a similar lament by some pampered wining lifestyle columnist in The Times on Saturday and realise that these thoughts are wholly unoriginal and, therefore, not worth acting on for a confirmed contrarian like myself.  I'll then set my jaw against the notion, and determine to stick to the largely meaningless bourgeois existence....that'll show 'em!

Your eyelids are growing heavy...

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.

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.

Tea break's over. Back on your heads

Mrs O and I have been in Belgium for a long weekend.  Ah, what bliss was it to be alive.  We watched a bike race, drank some vee fine Belgian beers and ate a pizza géante.  Our enjoyment was heightened, I'm ashamed to confess, by the knowledge that the weather in the low countries was considerably better than in Blighty.  I should be bigger and better than this at my age.  The fact that I'm not makes me think I'll never now grow-up fully.  Oh, well, there are worse crosses to bear.

The trouble with joyous weekends away is that it throws the working week into sharp relief.  As you flail away at the keyboard on your first morning back, the dissolute part of your brain keeps reminding you that you're wasting your life.  "Why not live in a hotel in Belgium full-time?  Oh, we'd cope.  Don't be so negative."  I was so tired I almost gave into the rotter today.  Tomorrow will be better.  Yes, yes, I'm sure that's right.

"The sun'll come out tomorrow...betcha bottom dollar etc."

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.

T D M

I'm bored today.  It's a much underestimated affliction, boredom.  It really lays one low.  It generally gets short-shrift from high profile head-shrinkers and dramatists because it doesn't come equipped with the usual eye-catching mental and physically flailing normally associated with mental maladies.  But make no mistake - it's a dangerous foe.  It really takes the joy out of life.

I've been a sufferer for as long as I can remember.  Shortly after I learned to speak, I started haranguing my mother.  I would complain incessantly at her about being bored, and demand satisfaction.  I always had this semi-formed notion that they was a clever workaround to avoid it, like paracetamol for the ego.  But apparently there isn't.  That was a lesson hard-learned.

I don't ever remember my little playmates being like this; they all seemed content enough with a combination of Playschool and Fuzzy Felt.  The sufferer becomes an island in situations like this.  You feel divorced from your peers and polite society as a whole.  They seem to be enjoying themselves, which makes them the enemy.  And this just makes the sorry business of getting on with the rotters and with life itself even more tiresome.

The funny thing is I've always held on to that youthful belief that there is a salve for boredom; I just need to continue the quest for it.  I've worked through umpteen hobbies, drugs, careers, body-modifications, religions and esoterica during this fruitless journey through life.  Nothing yet.  If I should happen across something, however, I'll let you know.  Perhaps half a dozen espressos might do it?

If we took a holiday...ooh yeah, ooh yeah

I'm just back from a long weekend in Ireland, visiting my parents. I always sleep like a new born when I'm there. It's difficult to pin the very welcome blame for this on one cause; it's probably a combination of events: the clean air, the peace, the restful ambiance, the good food and the heavy consumption of Guinness. Each plays its part I suppose.

The odd thing is though as soon I step back onto English soil I'm unable to slumber, which makes no sense. Take last night for example. I spent the majority of the day in Ireland, so I had a plenty of exposure to clean air. I ate well, and because of the travelling, I arrived home in a fatigued state. The wife and I then popped out for a couple of sharpeners before dinner to bring the curtain down on the festivities. But could I sleep last night? Could I feck. The only conclusion I can come to, therefore, is that I'm allergic to England. It could be London I suppose. But I'd need a control group to be certain. Perhaps I should relocate to Leicester for six months? That's a high price to pay for catastrophic fatigue though; I think I'll just make do and mend.

Post Mortem

I've been away for a long weekend at the Cambridge folk festival, which is why no posts. I'm back at my desk now however. I don't think it's overstating matters to say that I'm absolutely shattered. Physically, mentally, spiritually, and financially I'm at my lowest ebb. This is a short, bleak post as a consequence. Sorry. I really don't have a positive or mildly amusing thing to say.

Porn Free

There's not much happening chez me at the moment, so I've forgone the usual format today and have decided to list some punning porn star names. I know it's trivial. I'm not a comprehensive twat, you know.

Okay, here goes...

Dr Evadne Minge

Fuckinem Alice (I may have overstepped the mark here)

John Vein

King Conkers

Shafter Askey (one for the kids, there)

Fellatio Hornblower

Suck Norris

Dolly Partem

Screw Edwards

Princess Michael of C*nt

Wank Hilliams

Jizz Taylor

Toss Hogg

Wristo Stoychkov

Forrest Hump