It's for charadee

A friend of mine is undertaking a trial by exercise in June this year to raise money for a children's charity.  It's a worthy cause.  And just as well too because what he's proposing to do boggles the brain.  He is cycling from London to Paris in twenty-four (count 'em) hours.

It's 280 miles all in, and in a sadistic piece of scheduling par excellence by the organisers, the first tranche covers the 100 miles down to the coast to catch the ferry, leaving 180 French miles to be covered in one go on the final leg.

My friend is a relative novice in matters cycling if his blog is anything to go by.  This is just as well.  Anyone who's done any distance cycling at all remembers the first one well.  You set off with the best of intentions, full of vim and anguished anticipation.  Five hours later you're in a dark place.  No matter how diligently you eat and drink or how well you pace your effort, the horrors seep in.

It starts with seemingly inexplicable extremes of mood and physical discomfort.  For no apparent reason, you'll suddenly feel nauseous and tearful.  Moments later you find yourself singing to the hedgerows as the spirit soars.

The secret is to be aware of these peaks and troughs and what causes them.  The body is trying to protect itself from your idiocy - and quite right too.  If you have an iron enough will, it is more than possible to kill yourself on a bicycle.  Because the machine supports the rider's weight, there is no "wall" that simply stops you in your tracks when the tank hits empty, as is the case with runners.  You need, therefore, to detach yourself from your emotions.  Acknowledge them, yes, but do be fooled into thinking you must do as they implore.  It's important in (near) extemis to reassure the body that you know what you're doing, and that you will allow it stand down ante mortem.

This is the kind of caper James Bond used to get up to when he was being imaginatively tortured inside a hollowed-out volcano in Fleming's books.  He used to have a mental cell that he would retreat to to ride out the physical maelstrom.  It's easier said than done though...particularly when the leather saddle you're sat atop turns out not to have been sufficiently broken in after twenty minutes' cycling, as happened on my last marathon undertaking.  I couldn't sit down for a calendar month after that one.  I had to pretend to colleagues and friends that I'd given up sitting for Lent.  I'd actually given up castor sugar.

...still, what doesn't kill us and all that.

Because it's there...

I decided today that the life of the jobbing office-Johnnie-about-town needed spicing up, so at lunchtime instead of wandering aimlessly around the environs of Canary Wharf with my snout buried in a Graham Greene, comme d'habitude,  I thought I'd jump on the DLR, and take him to Greenwich for an hour.

Okay, it's not exactly white knuckle stuff in terms of distance and culture shock, but a cee is as good as an ar, as they say.  And so it proved to be.  

The weather, when I reached my destination, was shithouse (what rotten luck, 'eh?), but I was determined to make the best of it.  I ducked into the Waterstone's there, found a comfy chair and ploughed through a couple of chapters.  And very convivial it all was too.

My wife and I chunter down to Greenwich at the weekends now and then.  It's usually rammed to the gunwales at times like this, and can be a bit of a chore to be honest.  It's like being at a festival, but without bands and tempura - i.e. diabolical.  

The absence of my best girl by my side also added a tinge of sadness to proceedings, but that's the quintessential point of travel, isn't it, to challenge oneself?  Generally, we scoot straight home apres-G and dig out the sherry, and I did rather miss the ritual when the time came to head back to the office.  I had to make do with the half truckle of brie and bottle of port that I'd hidden in the stationary cupboard instead.

Stupid boy

Louis Theroux's back on goggle box.  I've a strained relationship with Louis.  His subject matter is interesting, and the production values etc. of his shows are very high, but he's such an incorrigible twat.  

I should probably nuance that last statement.  It's not that he's a twat per se.  It's just that his schtick is this faux-naive persona that drives me crackers.  For example, last night's programme was about dogs in LA.  This, unsurprisingly, required a segue into the world of south central LA's gang culture and, by extension, its strained relationship with the hound.  For hound, read pit bull.

Louis met up with a former gang member who now earns a crust "weaponising" dogs for customers who fear crime more than they fear being eviserated by their pets.  The meeting culminated with a trip back to Mr Former-Gang-Member's modest bugalow in what looked for all the world like one of the shabbier backwaters of Helmand.  In the yard, Mr FGM keeps his fiercist hound; I didn't catch its name, but let us suppose for a mo its name is Edward.

Edward, I think it fair to say, went absolutely spare when Louis and crew hoved into view (I know how he feels).  Luckily for the squeamish, Edward is kept permanently under lock and key in a cage, and wasn't able to "get at" our host.  

Even Mr FGM didn't feel he could trust him, which when you consider Edward had the build and temperament of a enraged hyena was fair enough.  Going straight for the faux-naive jugular, Louis asked Mr FGM what would happen if Edward were released.

"He'd bite you," came the response, "no question."  That's right, Louis, that's no question.

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks...the ones on your face

We've been having some weather of late in London.  I was up in town on Saturday, shopping for birthday gifts for a 14-year-old boy (good luck with that, by-the-way).  I was mooching through Oxford Circus when a bank of angry-looking grey cloud coalesced overhead and decided it had had enough.

An almighty peal of thunder rang out, which was as surprising as it was alarming because it was a decidedly chilly day.  Here in Eng-er-land, we exclusively associate thunder with extreme heat, i.e. anything over 19 degrees cee.  Shortly after the sound and fury came the payload: a short, but genuinely violent hail storm.  

I hid under the auspices of John Lewis to let the weather do its thang when out of the store rushed several excited tourists, phones in hand, and started filming the downpour.  They'd clearly never seen hail.  And some of them appeared so amazed and befuddled by the experience that I can only conclude that they never even heard of it.  Where on earth could you live to have not heard of all possible weather conditions, even the ones that don't attend in your locale?  As Del Boy once rightly observed: I've got a pair of desert boots indoors, but you don't see me down The Sahara, do you?

I've just finished reading The Mayor of Casterbridge.  I read quite a bit a Hardy in my youth.  Everyone in England seems to do this.  We read it under sufferance.  I'm not sure why.  I supposed because it so beloved of the public exams syllabus setters.  His work is afforded a certain caché, therefore, like Dickens.  I must say I quite enjoyed old MofC.  It's a bit of a curate's egg, but I was genuinely affected by the incorrigible descent of the protagonist.  Sad to witness.

Another Country

I happened across a fascinating documentary last night in BBC4.  It was the harrowing tale of Japan's worst-ever train crash, in 2005.  The material details of the crash were laid out, as one might expect, and there were interviews with several survivors and the families of those who died.

It was all elegantly and dispassionately presented, as good documentary always is.  Any pathos that emerges is wrought from the stories that are told; it doesn't need to be cynically prompted by music, insensitive prying journalism and/or mawkish cinematography.

One of the most intriguing things about the programme was its lifting the lid on Japanese inscrutability.  It's felt that a major cause of the crash was the intolerable pressure that train drivers are put under in Japan.  Timetables are cut several times a year, and extra stations commissioned to accommodate the insatiable demand.  But no quarter is given to the drivers, who are expected to magically summon extra speed without compromising passenger safety.

Former drivers spoke bitterly of the quasi-military disciplinary culture of the railways.  Drivers contrive to make their station stops by driving dangerously fast and braking dangerously late.  The results was this catastrophic crash.

What's interesting about this that it foregrounded for the first time for me that the Japanese are just like the rest of us.  That sounds a strange utterance, but I think it's a common assumption among westerners that the Japanese are like polite automatons, or cartoon characters.  They don't really have the same preoccupations, emotions and petty fears as the rest of us.  I never supposed for a moment that they were possessed of cynicism or bitterness.

They've always inhabited this human hinterland for me, the Japs.  I thought for years that, like dogs, they couldn't metabolise chocolate for example.  Turns out they love a Curly Wurly as much as the rest of us.  Fancy!

Your carriage awaits

The telly was on in the office this morning.  We have tellies all over the place, as the hacks in the office need to watch the sport as it unfolds.  It's unusual to see one on the go first thing, however.  

It was tuned to one of those generic breakfast tv shows; you know the kind of thing - an uneasy mix of gilt-edged trivia and hard news.  "After the break, an in-depth macro economic overview of today's budget and a blacked-up parrot from Runcorn who impersonates Smokey Robinson."

Annie Hoose, the prog I was watching was presented by Lorraine Kelly.  I've never met anyone who can find a bad word to say about LK.  She's personable, adept, unpretentious and upbeat.  She's also (and I think I'm speaking for the vast majority of heterosexual men here) extremely sexy.

It's difficult to say why this might be the case.  She's attractive, yes, but not wildly so.  She has a nice figure, but, again, not one that's going to turn heads down the youth club.  There's just something about the combination of her personality and chassis that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

There's something very alluring about this Gestalt combination.  I should say also that I suspect that beneath the playful trivial exterior and stately bearing beats the heart of a passionate adept femme.  Oh, yes, I like to think la Kelly goes like a train when the mood's upon her.  I bet she knows what's-what once hostilities begin in earnest beneath the continental quilt too.  Phew.

Down wit da yoot

I've been pondering a return to time-trialing of late.  That's bicycle time-trialing, not driving around the alps in a two-seater Bentley with a pair of flying goggles and a silk neckerchief.

I used to do a fair bit of this kind of thing when I was younger, not young, you understand, younGER.  I really enjoyed it too.  But then I packed-up, for reasons I can't properly fathom.  Anyhoos, after a 14 year hiatus (Great Scot - has it really been that long?), I feel increasingly desirous of a return to competition.

I've been trying to analyse the reasons for this change of heart.  When you get to a certain point in life, it's important to start scrutinising the motives for your actions carefully, lest ye be acting at the behest of the dread midlife crisis.  When this happens, all dignity is lost.  It's for this reason, for example, that 20-stone bald hedge fund managers take up snowboarding, or leave their wives and move in with teenage Russian slappers.  That, then, must be avoided.

I think, however, I'm mooting this change for the right reasons.  I've kept myself fit, and I do enjoy racing bikes.  Mind you, it's important I keep an eye on matters in case the mania escalates; otherwise I'll end-up buying a one-piece lycra gimp suit, a yard-long aero helmet the shape of a bidet and a five grand carbon fibre bike.  These things, needless to say, are the cycling equivalent of buying Ludmilla a pair of crotchless scanties.

My trouble is that I'm as thin now as I was at 20, and I've kept my hair (nightmare, 'eh?).  It's all too easy, then, to fool myself into believing that I look pretty sharp dressed like an adolescent.