Pain is just weakness leaving the body...via the legs

Good grief - last night's first time trial of the season was hard.  It was always going to be a test of will and sinew; I haven't raced for a year after all.  But the elements decided to chuck their oar in too.  It was blowing a hooley down the home straight - the longest stretch of the course.  It was such a stiff breeze that you felt like you were crawling, and consequently slightly overdid matters.  The cumulative effort required for this meant that the final two and a half laps were physically tortuous and conducted at brisk stroll velocities.  Disheartening.

I had the highest of hopes going into it too.  I'd prepared myself and my bike carefully.  I'd warmed up properly.  In spite of this, I finished a full minute slower than my lacklustre time from last year.  I thought I'd take a minute out of it, to be honest.  Still, I don't think I was the only disconsolate grown man in Lycra there last night.  I heard one of the other riders disputing his time.  He was, like me, incredulous that a ride that hurt so much could have been conducted so slowly.  Despite this, I did enjoy it.  It's good to be back among the faithful.

Yes, they're weirdos, but their my weirdos.

Wind in the pillows

Good god, it was windy last night.  It still is today, as it happens.  When I turned in last night, it was quite pleasant, listening to the wind whistling through the blinds on the bedroom windows.  I drifted off imagining myself aboard a Spanish galleon in the mid 18th century, as things creaked and sang.  By 4am, however, the romantic associations had worn wafer-thin, and the noise was just that - noise.  I bunged in some earplugs and copped a deaf 'un.  Mrs O was kept awake by the tempest too.  That takes some doing, believe me.  It must have been a ferocious one.

The poor weather also meant that I overworked my already weakened right knee on the ride into work.  I suppose I should get the train in for a few days, but that feels like a defeat, and I don't need one of those at the moment.  My morale's at a season's best low as it is.

Stop Press: I've received a couple of unwelcome from the IT dunces at work, telling me I'm liable to be beaten with rhino-hide cosh if I use the Internet inappropriately.  They don't define appropriateness.  All this is because they got hacked a few months ago and are trying to divert attention from their own major professional shortcomings.

No-one likes a bully...you acne-ridden friendless 40-year-old virgins.  No-one.

Wind in the pillows

It is windy today.  Wind, as I think I've made clear before now, is dreadful stuff.  The more of it there is, the more miserable life becomes.  Some years ago Mrs O and I visited Tarifa on the southern tip of Spain.  There's a tiny (relatively-speaking) aperture betwixt Tarifa and north Africa where the Atlantic and Med meet.  Anyhoos, for reasons too dull for me to type-up, this confluence of geographical mishaps makes Tarifa the windiest town on Earth, more-or-less.

We had been warned about this, the wife and I, but as soon as we stepped off the coach, we realised we'd made a tremendous Iberian howler.  It was literally impossible to stand upright unsupported.  We hid in a shop doorway to take stock.  I'd assumed that the guide book was laying it on a trifle thick about the gales, but, no - they'd been faithful to the facts.

We stayed in Tarifa for a few days, and it's actually a charming place.  It's a testament to wind's ability of wipe the smile off one's chops then that it still managed to overshadow the stay.  We left with the avowed intention of never returning.  

This being Andalusia, the weather was glorious, so we trundled down to the beach for a gawp.  We were the only people visible for miles, even though it was the middle of the day and 35 degrees in the shade.  The reason for this is that the relentless gusts whip-up the surface layers of sand and fling them off into space at a rare old lick.  Even a grain of sand hurts when it's doing eighty.  In its defence, it is quite exhilarating for a second or two, but then it begins to grate.

So today's lesson: wind - it's shit.

And finally...
Someone on Facebook had the lovely idea of jotting down one's favourite writers and poets.  You simply write down 15 of the blighters in no more than 15 mins.  It's quite enlightening.  I haven't read some of the authors on my list for years, decades in some cases.  And yet - these people have had a huge influence on who I am today...hmm.

Here's my list: 1.Woody Allen 2.Charles Bukowski 3.Enid Blyton 4.John Cooper Clarke 5.Ian Fleming 6.Graham Greene 7.George Orwell 8.Thomas Hardy 9.James Joyce 10.David Lodge 11.John le Carré 12.Philip Larkin 13.Spike Milligan 14.Neil Simon 15.PG Wodehouse