North by north east

Today is my first back at work after a 4-day break in North Yorkshire.  It's the first time I've ventured so far into the county; we went right up into the North York Moors National Park.  And as always with Yerk-shuh, it was even better than I'd dared to hope it would be.  The scenery, people, historic sights, food and drink were all exemplary.  I could happily spend my dotage in Yorkshire I think, and I speak as a dyed-in-the-wool smut-faced cockney urchin.

The great thing too about Yorkshire is its sheer size.  It's England's largest county, and by a mile.  And within its generous boarders, there is a wealth of variety.  Cityscape, countryside, peaks, valleys, coast, moorland - if you want it, Yorkshire has it.  Finally, it's a place that esteems tea and real ale above all other libations.  This just about pops the tin hat on it for me.  It's my kind of place.

There was a fair bit of drama, along with the gentle walks to and from pubs while we were there.  Driving back to York to deposit the hire car yesterday, we witnessed a Land Rover and trailer of cattle overturn on the A64.  It's very hilly around that part of the country.  I didn't see what caused the spillage, but I did see it happen.  Two cows went scudding across the carriageway at a fair old rate of knots.  Luckily, the other road-users were alert to the danger, and none of the bovines was hit.  In fact, they didn't seem hurt at all.  A motorist who stopped obviously knew his cow onions and corralled them into a neighbouring field for safe-keeping.  The driver of the Land Rover also appeared unhurt.  He scrambled out of the passenger door of the vehicle, which was now moonlighting as the roof.  I read later on the local newspaper's web site that indeed none of the participants in the prang was hurt.  Phew.  Moo.

So that's Yorkshire for you.  It's like Las Vegas, but with flailing, confused livestock instead of topless dancers.  LV's loss.

When the go and get stuffed.

It's time trial season again!  That's cycling time trialling, I should make clear.  I knew it was looming, but had managed to wipe it from a my mind.  I was in cycling denial.

As soon as I found out my first one is two weeks away, I leapt into action.  I cut out food for the most part, well the foodstuffs that afford pleasure.  Food for an endurance athlete, even one as modest in his abilities as this one, is fuel.  It's not to be enjoyed; it's to be endured.  The only upside to food when one is training is that it stops you shaking when you've overdone it on the bike.

As well as not eating fun stuff, I've cut the portion size of the rest of it by at least a third.  I do feel lighter, which is good.  It's all about power to weight ratios, this game.  Which brings us to the second part of the preparations: training.

I went out after work last evening and did my first interval session.  Intervals involve going hell-for-leather for a short period and then having a rest.  You do this eight times.  It's quick.  Unfortunately it also makes you look like a loon.  You ride along as if all is well with the world, and suddenly, apparently for no reason, go crackers.  You ride with the intensity of a man fleeing a hippo.  Ten seconds later you stop and calm descends once more.  Other cyclists can and do take offence at this type of training.  Understandably so.  You fly past someone like he's going backwards, only to sit up and let him catch you shortly thereafter.  It looks like you're taking the piss, frankly.

I'm feeling it today.  I can scarcely keep me eyes open.  Luckily today is the portal to a bank holiday weekend, so I couldn't give a shite.  A couple of real ales this evening, a homemade curry will restore the tissues.

Right, home time.

High pressure international jet-set what-have-you

I'm usually pretty good at keeping regular vides in my appointments diary.  I don't like being on the meter constantly, especially when I'm supposed to be enjoying myself.  Other people appear to love being ordered hither and yon in the name of leisure, but they, madam, are perverts.  I'll have no truck with it.

Having said all that, which I just have (see above), events do conspire from time to time to cause me to spread my considerable talents and charisma a bit thin.  The next week is a case in point.  I'm already up against it at work.  This our busy period.  On Friday I have to leave the office early in order to dash to Heathrow for a flight to Berlin.  We're in Germany until Monday.  Back to work Tuesday.  On Wednesday I witnessing the marriage of a friend.  Back to work Thursday, a day full of back-to-back meetings.  Work again on Friday.  An archery lesson on Saturday and we're collecting some hops as part of a local brewery scheme on Sunday morning.  Still, it's all good fun I suppose.

I might have mentioned before now that I've given up beer for Lent.  I will have to forgo this fast for the duration of our stay in Berlin though.  Germany produces some splendid beers, not the fizzy lager piss with which you're no doubt familiar, but proper beer.  I was particularly taken on our last trip there with a kraut jollop called "winterboch".  It's a dark, flavoursome ale they produce for the cold winter months.  It's super.  I cannot and will not not drink it.  Nein, nein und thrice nein.

Gorge North

Well, we had a simply splendid weekend in YERK-shuh.  The weather was pretty good too - better than forecast anyways.  We rolled in to York Station at 9.30 Friday evening, immediately stopped at the pub in the station, which is lovely, and had a sharpener.  Thence to the hotel.  Bags dumped, and off to a pub nearby that we hadn't previously patronised.  It, like every pub I've ever sought shelter in in York, was super - cosy and with a great range of ales.

On Saturday, we caught the trans-Pennine train to Hebden Bridge.  HB is to lesbians what Brighton is to gay men.  It a glorious town, nestling in the cleavage of The Calder Valley.  We mooched around there for a few hours, browsing and eating cake.  Lovely.

Saturday night back in York was greatest hits tour of pubs we knew and some virgin ones that Mrs O had specced-out.  We ended the night with a splendid curry.  The more I see of Yorkshire, the more I like it.  Like Steve Bushemi.

The north will rise again.

As I promised I would some months ago, I'm heading off to York tomorrow after work.  I've really warmed to the north (of England) of late.  I didn't really know and/or trust it previously.  I'd rarely been there, and then it was usually en route to somewhere else.

Mind you, I mustn't fall into the trap of defining the whole of the north of England as some charming, homogeneous entity.  It's as varied as anywhere else - more so in fact.  When you consider Liverpool and Manchester are 35 miles apart, their cultural difference from one another is staggering.  That's the joy of this country, it's incredible diversity.  We're losing it of course, in this age of instant communication, but it's still there.  I intend to sample as much of it as I can before it's snuffed out by smart phones and shit pop music.  The mission continues tomorrow.

I do have a little problem though.  I've foolishly eschewed beer for Lent, and York is home to more good real pubs than you can shake a stick at.  You don't even have to plan your evening in advance and track them down, as in other cities.  Every pub in York will have a tremendous array of ales.  You simply walk in, shake the rain off and point to a nearest beer pump.  Whatever's in the barrel beneath it will be superb, 'appen.

York Shyer Pie

Well, well, what a gem York turned out to be.  It's a charming place, full of interesting historical architecture, fascinating museums, lovely places to eat and dozens of superb pubs.

The journey up on Friday evening was a treat for starters.  The train's an express, so it only took two hours.  Also we were sat with a gaggle of Yorkshire ladies d'un certain age who were very friendly and good value.  They did the usual Ls d'un C-A thing and cracked open a bottle of prosecco as soon as the train left Kings Cross.

We also happened across a couple of young Dublin students who were travelling from Dublin to Edinburgh via London and Newcastle.  There were taking part in a charity event.  Several teams of two had to undertake this journey with absolutely no money whatsoever.  It was also a race, so no chance to rest whatever.  They'd been on the go since 9am that morning.  This was at about 8pm.  We helped them out with some food and a few quid for their collection.  So, all in all, it was a very diverting journey.

We arrived in York at 9.30 and checked in.  Then out for a couple of sharpeners in a craft ale pub at the train station.  Normally, you'd need your bumps felt for drinking in a pub at a train station.  They're generally foul - anonymous, violent and poorly maintained, like Guantanamo Bay with pool tables.  But the one at York station is lovely.  The beer is great and the staff friendly.  This is fitting addendum to the station itself, which is a gorgeous high-Victorian palace to the age of steam.

Saturday was spent at the National Railway Museum, which wasn't the cavalcade of sweaty confirmed bachelors I'd feared.  It was actually a very well kept and presented collection of important engines and carriages from the around the world that illustrate the history and innovations in rail technology.  Even as I type those words, I can feel you slipping away.  I'd had thought the same in your position, but, believe me, it's a great museum.  Everyone uses trains to some extent.  Their history is our history.  It is therefore of interest to most of us.

As Saturday night!  Well, what can I say?  It's absolutely packed with charming, cosy hostelries, York - absolutely packed.  We wandered around, tasting the wares, and finished the night in a lovely curry house.

Sunday morning we charged around the city walls for an hour before heading off home at noon.  A tremendous place - we'll be back.

Aide de camp

The camping season is looming, and it's time for young men the nation over to nail their courage to the sticking place and get the Trangia and the tent out of mothballs.  Each year camping looks less and less appealing - the cold, the hassle, the inability to bring all your adult toys with you etc.  And yet to decline to go would be an admission of defeat, a kowtowing to the advancing years.  And we can't have that.  Rage rage against the dying of the light.

Unfortunately it's murder trying to book campsites these days as holidaying under canvas has become dead fashionable.  Years ago one could turn up without a reservation and still bag nine pitches and a kennel for the dog.  But now it's like trying to get into Studio 54.  This is only one area of many in which the zeitgeist has chased me down and helped itself to my hobbies.

Over the last five years or so most if not all of my interests or peccadilloes has become the thing for the fashionable young graduate about town.  All men under 40 who aspire to a certain intelligent otherness now wear tweed jackets, ride fixed wheel bikes, drink real ale, go camping of a bank holiday weekend and live in Walthamstow Village.  Yes - I invented that.

Whilst one doesn't wish to appear churlish, where were you lot in 2010?  I don't do these things to make a statement; I do them because I believe them to be pleasurable and/or worthy of my time in some other regard.  I happened across them not because the colour supps suggested I should, but because they appealed to me on a fundamental level.  That's the problem with fashion movements: they broker no dissent.  They don't allow for individual likes and desires.  You throw your lot in with currently fashionable pasttimes etc. whether you like them or not

When I was a boy, I was starstruck by the mod movement.  As soon as I saw a scooter, a sharp suit and a pair of desert boots, I was lost to it.  My little mates and I immediately became mods, and I can honestly say that this period was the most improbably exciting time of my entire life.  I lived being a mod, absolutely lived it.

Sadly for me, during the long summer holidays in 1981, all the former friends decided en bloc to become casuals.  Just like that.  I could not believe it.  I felt betrayed, but they couldn't see the problem.  "Everyone was a mod then, and everyone is a casual now."   The scales fell from mine eyes.  The aesthetics of modism meant no more to them than did the price of sherbet.  It just is what it is now.  We move on.

I resisted the move, and I still affect a certain mod look to this day.  I don't do this to make a statement or stand out.  You cannot choose with whom or with what you fall in love.  It chooses you.

I May Be Some Time

Well, we've returned intact from our weekend's camping. It was a fairly uneventful trip. There was a real ale festival at the pub on the site. (For non-British readers, real ale is traditional form of British beer. It's delicious, but it does tend to attract joyless, bearded obsessive types. They're usually harmless unless you get talking to one about hop varieties, in which case you're likely to experience a virtual stroke due to boredom.)

However, I'd forgotten how cold it gets in England at night. The days were nice enough, but as soon as the sun went down, it got seriously chilly. I went to bed each night wearing all my belongings, and I was still frozen solid. And it was a real battle of wills to overcome the urge to urinate in the small hours. I had to lay it on the line to my bladder and central nervous system: we're going nowhere until daylight, so roll over and get some sleep. Also, some of our neighbours thought it might aid the sleeping process if they sat up all night inexpertly playing a shrill banjo. It's a testament to how much beer I'd stuck away that I was able to zone out the extraneous noise and get ten hours solid dreamless a night. I'm not by nature a deep sleeper. At home, the sound of dust settling is usually enough to disturb me.

In the news today I see serial offender Joey Barton has got it all over his shoes again. He was sent-off yesterday for confusing football with greco-roman wrestling. When his manager, Alan Shearer, questioned the wisdom of his commitment to the game, he got the right royal hump. Anyways, the upshot is he's been suspended by the club (again).
Now I don't believe I'm betraying any great confidence when I say that Barton's got history in this department. Everyone outside the game appears to realise that he has (ahem) issues with authority, and that he'll fly off the handle as inevitably as night follows day, and yet clubs are queueing up to buy him. They always argue that he's turned over a new leaf or at least deserves another second chance. Someone will give him a job if Newcastle sack him, and he'll be okay for about ten minutes before getting the red mists again. What does he have to do to get sacked? Take hostages or organise a drive-by? Even if he did either of these, he'd be employed again because between assaults, he's a decent footballer. This dubious logic doesn't extend to other professionals thank God or Fred West would still be in work. Yes, he murdered a few, but look at the quality of that grouting.