That was the weekend that was

Ah, the mini-break.  Mrs O and I spent this weekend in Belfast, watching The Tour of Italy bike race kick-off.  We flew out of Heathrow on Friday evening and returned Sunday afternoon.  A fleeting visit, then, but even so, you always return to the homestead with the batteries fully-charged after a weekend away like this.

Belfast has changed so much over the last few years.  I first visited the North in 1997, on honeymoon.  That's how you keep the nuptial magic alive, incidentally: take your newly-minted bride to a war zone for two weeks.  In fairness, Mrs O does hail from Ulster originally, so it wasn't the wanton act of cruelty it might otherwise appear.

On that first visit we drove up from the Republic, and I remember the real fear crossing the border engendered in me.  In those days, you had to be searched and then cross 500 yards of no-man's-land to enter the North.  And this no-man's-land was straight out of Le Carré: armed observation towers, razor wire and armoured personnel carriers.  I covered the terrain at walking pace as I genuinely feared being bazooka-ed for driving too fast and being mistaken for a dangerous insurgent.

And when we reached NI, things didn't improve much.  Each village and small town we drove through was staunchly Loyalist or Nationalist, the flags and coloured paving stones left you in no doubt about that.  As we drove into each new conubation (again at 8 miles an hour), my mind would be doing cartwheels trying to work out how we might go down with the locals.

The reason for the mental contortions was that we are a heady and contradictory mix, Mrs O and I, at least in Ulster we are.  She's a protestant from the North, and I am a London Irish catholic.  I have a very Irish (for which read very catholic) surname.  I have an Irish passport, and she a British one.  And we were driving a British registered car.  We'd left no sectarian offence stone unturned.

Everything, but everything in the North in those days was hugely symbolic and significant: where you went to school, where you went on holiday, your name etc.  Unfortunately, we were screwing with the religion gardar, which made us suspect to both sides of the divide.  Eventually we settled on staying only in the large town and cities, which are mixed and therefore tolerable.

We've been back to Belfast several times over the years since then, and every time you visit, it seems more relaxed and normal than it did before.  The scars are still there of course, but they have an historical feel about them now.  It doesn't feel like the place could tip back into madness (I pray to God - the Catholic one - that I won't have occasion to eat those words).  There's a generation of young adults in Northern Ireland now that has only known peace.  You'd hope they look upon the actions of their forebears and think Just what the fuck was all that about then?

I suspect they will.  Northern Ireland - it's the future.

That would be an ecumenical matter

Mrs O and I are off to Belfast this evening.  We're off to another bike race, the Tour of Italy this time.  The organisers traditionally kick-off il giro outside Italy and get the riders to thunder into the boot, so to speak, after a day or two abroad.  To be honest, though, Northern Ireland's probably pushing the tradition a little far.

Having a stage in Belgium or The Netherlands is one thing; the people there are familiar with bike racing at least.  But the inhabitants of NI are about as familiar with road racing as they are with kabaddi or that Basque version of squash you play carrying what looks like a wicker bidet.  Consequently some of the publicity bumf is pitched at the cycling semi-literate.  No harm in that of course; they can't help it.

The problem with hosting races in countries with no sense of the sport is that the spectalcle is wasted on the herd.  Road-racing is rich with intrigue, plots, bluff and bravura.  That's why the Italians are good at it, and why the public there loves it so much.  All these atributes are considered admirable in Italian manhood.

The one aspect of the sport that separates it from all other endurance events is the premium placed on maintaining one's aplomb and deportment whilst suffering like a dog.  Athletes look fairly ragged when they're charging around the track in their vests and ill-fitting shorts.  Vests, for Christ's Sake.  But even the world's most medicre pro-cyclist will refuse to start a race until he looks a million dollars: bike and kit spotless, legs shaved and oiled and sunglasses in situ irrespective of the weather.  And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it's the greatest sport in the world.

Fashion dissonance

As I was legging it to the executive washroom earlier, I passed-by a chap in the corridor.  He was making a phone call, and would have escaped my notice entirely were he not wearing the world's most outrageous shirt.

It wasn't one of those kak-handed hysterically-coloured "Behold - I'm unconventional" ones that certain men sport in offices.  Oh, no - it was made of flannel, and had large ugly embroidered roses all over it.  It reminded me of the kind of material your grandmother would have had best tablecloth rendered in - not the everyday tablecloth, just the best one.

At first I thought he must have got changed in the dark, or been sick on himself en route to work and had had to duck into SCOPE for a replacement chemise.  But he had a certain swagger about him, this fellow, so it can't have been that.  We've all, I'm sure, pitched-up chez work looking a little shabby from time-to-time.  Christ alone knows I have.

When I was young and foolish, any dishevelment was generally due to my having been out on the pop the night before.  I'd always make a point of doing the ironing before retiring to bed, no matter how King Knuted I was - better that than do it with a hangover the following morning.  The trouble is of course that one's technique goes to cock in a handcart when pissed, so I always turned-up looking like I'd attempted to iron my shirt with a freezing-cold corrugated cheese grater.

A friend of mine was so impoverished as a student that he owned only one shirt, and had to wash it every night while he was temping during the holidays .  He was also notoriously thirsty and would stagger in of an evening only when the pubs shut.  He'd then have to wash his shirt in the kitchen sink before turning-in.  Luckily, the shirt was made exclusively of petrochemicals and repelled water like a two-stone Canada Goose, so it was always dry enough to wear the following morning.

Now I'm longer of tooth, I only turn-up to work looking like I've been hauled through a hedge fund backwards if there's been a consumer-durable failure at home.  Occasionally the iron gets its own back by spraying my strides with rusty water, and if I fail to spot the blemish, off I trot to work with it in full view.  Other than that, I'm pristine.  That's what age does to one.  Shocking really.

Living in the now, then

I think I might be undergoing une crise d'emploi, as we say on the riviera.  I'm absolutely bereft of concentration when at my place of work.  For the last couple of months or so my mind refuses to knuckle down and whittle away at the in-tray.  One always goes through peaks and troughs of application of course, but I don't think this is one of those.  It's more deep-seated than that.  I've basically fallen out of love with my job, not that I ever really fancied it that much, if I'm honest.  I just needed somewhere to lay my hat during the day.

And it's a vicious circle too, this inability to silence the voices and actually to type up the minutes of last Thursday's uneventful meetings, because as the time ticks by, one becomes ever more disheartened by the increasing pile of trivial tasks at hand.  This increases the inertia, and the problem grows at an exponential rate.

The problem is that I've mentally washed my hands of my current duties, but can't be bothered to end it.  It's like being locked in a loveless marriage.  I need the other party to force me out of the nuptial home because I'm too lily-livered to pull the trigger myself.  So I keep taking liberties in the hope that matters come to a head.  

In fact, a good old row with the job would help a lot.  Some hysterical screaming from yours truly along the lines of "You've changed.  There's no excitement any more.  I can't honestly say I love you at this stage in our relationship.", followed by some plate-hurling might do the trick.  Perhaps it is possible to save this car crash of a relationship after all.  Mind you, I have found myself trawling the web sites of employment agencies rather a lot of late, and furtively too.  Whenever anyone in the office catches me, I have to shut down the browser quickly and pretend I've been browsing classic 80s porn sites.  I generally don't like deceit, except when it makes for an easy life.  For me, I mean.

And...collapse

So, the first day back at work after a busy and vee-enjoyable bank-holiday weekend, and don't I know it.  I slept like a corpse last night.  Usually, it takes me at least three hours to drop off, but last night I genuinely don't remember a thing between kicking off the memory-foam slippers en route to the mattress and the alarm clock screaming its tits off at 7.20 this morning.  The bedside lamp was still on when I woke up, implying that I must have fainted rather than fallen asleep in the traditional manner.

Despite all the shut-eye, I was super knackered right from the bully-off.  I managed to get through the rituals of breakfast and dressing myself on instinct and caffeine alone, but quickly ran out of juice.  I even had to have a lie down before leaving the house.  I'm no general practitioner, but that cannot be right, can it?  I really should have 'phoned work and told them to sod off, but that's not the kind of attitude that gets you on the Apollo Program, is it?

I am no stranger to chronic fatigue.  I blame my bio-rhythms, which are all-to-cock when compared with polite society.  When they're preparing for bed, I'm settling down in front of an episode of Kenneth Clark's "Civilisation" with a half a bottle of rioja and a bag of monkey nuts for company.  I've always been like this.

When I was boy, we had a cat called Tibby.  I remember heading-off for school one morning.  There was snow on the ground, and as I mooched forlornly off I spotted the Tibster curled-up in front of the gas fire in the front room, utterly oblivious.  "You jammy get," I remember thinking.  I could have wept.

 In fact cats have a rare old time of matters generally, don't they?  The favourable shift-patterns notwithstanding, they are the masters of their own ships in every conceivable way.  I sometimes look at dogs, and feel sorry for them.  They're like children: they go out when they're told to; they're always accompanied by an adult, and they can't feed themselves.  I often look at my friends' chocolate Labrador and sense her thinking "I could absolutely murder a sausage."  She's got more chance of flapping her ears and taking off, the poor cow.

Your cat, on the other hand, is like an undergraduate: he comes and goes as he pleases, sleeps 14 hours a day and eats when and what he wants.  If a cat wakes up hungry and it's several hours before the Whiskas gets an airing, he simply leaps out window and bags himself a pigeon or a tit.

The ballad of reading gaol

Due to bad planning, I found myself without a book the other lunchtime.  This caused some panic to old mister brain.  The idea of an hour stranded in Canary Wharf without literary diversion?  No, thank-you.  CW is an cultural desert - there, I've said it.  The shops are boring unless you like Ugg boots and sunglasses.  So there's nuttin' to do.  This causes introspection, and before you know it the river police are fishing you out of The Thames before sedating you and wrapping your quivering form in a foil blanket.

No, we can't have that, so I had to run off and buy a book.  I have developed rather an addiction to reading, generally fiction.  Most people look upon this as an admirable trait, but I see it just as another mania, and something that needs to be kept in check.  Yes, one should read regularly and actively; it's good for the noggin.  But if you find yourself getting the yips and trembling like a 15-year-old Pekingese because you've mislaid your copy of The Day of The Jeckal, then perhaps you need to cut down.

It's funny how class-riven matters like this are (in England too!)  Reading is middle-class and is therefore always beneficial, the logic has it.  But when you distill it down, literature is simply distracting oneself by reading a lot of pretendy words.  How is that more worthy than watching John Craven's Newsround or Top Gear, say, or drinking fine wines for that matter?  I contend it isn't, your honour.

Despite my reservations regarding its inherent merit, I ended-up studying literature at college.  Luckily lit crit at undergraduate level dispenses with plot obsession - the colour of Mr Micawber's socks, for example - and is actually more akin to cultural studies, or social anthropology.  The upshot of this is that I don't remember much about specific books, but know much more about the authors.  It always brings people up short that a literature graduate can't remember the name of Pip's sister in Great Expectations, but there it is.

Pip, pip!

Keeping out of your own way

I'll be honest with you - I have a tendency to over think matters.  I like to amass as much data about a subject as I can and sift it for about 14 years before committing to a course of action.  Also, having a basic working knowledge of a subject allows one to fool oneself into believing one has some control over this capricious circus turn we call life.  Usual fanciful male guff.

In some regards, this completist mindset is a boon.  Knowing how to fix a bicycle has come to my rescue at the roadside many many times over the years for example.  But it quickly and unhelpfully spills over into paranoid inaction.  One vacillates until aficionado status has been attained, but by then the decision horse has bolted to Poland.

As I've reported in these pages recently, I'm "under the physio".  My knee (my good one, mind you) has been giving me gyp.  The physio gave me some exercises to perform, and the errant joint is little-by-little pulling its socks up.  But as it gets better, I've grown bored with blind faith in the physio's regime and have started reading-up about this fascinating joint.  (Yeah, I know).

And it is a fascinating subject.  I know I'm wielding the weak anthropic principle with abandon here, but indulge me for a mo.  It's so elegantly and effortlessly fit for purpose, the human knee.  It really is  a triumph.  Forget your Dyson cheese grater or your iPhone, the knee knocks them both into a cocked hat.  And you've got two knees dangling out the bottom of your underpants.  (Apologies to those of you who have less than the usual complement of legs.  No offence intended.)

But there's a problem.  As one's knowledge of the workings of the knee increases, one becomes dangerously self-conscious while using them.  This is bad.  I find myself constantly assessing the biomechanics of my gait as I mince across the office to the printer.  This over-analysis causes me to walk like Godzilla in desert boots.  Not a good look for your middling office Johnny, comme moi.

How on earth do physios cope?