A Write Lark

In the industry I work (Construction) and in the company and region I work for, I know of at least four people who have experienced nervous breakdowns. This is on top of a further four who at the moment - in my opinion - are heading the same way.
I, regrettably, have experienced the horrors of prolonged exposure to excessive stress. The outcome can literally wreck lives. I am aware of people who have developed severe depression because of stress and who, I am sure, have lost perfectly good marriages due to a lack of fundamental understanding. This is not to mention the suicide risk and the general risk to physical well being which ensues.
As a child in secondary school, I have a distinct memory of our form teacher talking us through a guided relaxation exercise. We left that session feeling better than any of us had probably felt in weeks - bearing in mind that we were twelve years old. It is my recollection that our teacher made no comments regardng why we were doing what we were doing, or what the potential was for stress to cause us problems. In fact, I was not aware that stress was in any way damaging until I was struck down by it aged twenty five.
Why didn't somebody say those potentially life altering words? "Relaxation is vital, because stress can cause this, this and this."
Somebody who knows about such things, please tell me that schools now teach children how to relax and about the importance of learning how to do so?

This is the first time in a while that I'm not beating myself up for letting the blog slip again. The reason for this lack of self-criticism is that I've finally written my first book.
It's a book for children and it has been a real eye-opener in terms of just what it means to devote your time and indeed your life to writing. If switching off after a hard day at the office, or on the road, is tough, then switching off after a period spent inside your own imagination with the potential for life changing results looming over you, is positively mind bending.
Daring to dream is what it's all about - refuse to accept that the life you seek is out of reach and just convince yourself of its possibility.
I read an interesting web page recently containing advice for writers who were preparing to write a book. It said that writers are prone to depression, alcoholism and suicide and advised against doing it in the first place.
Great.

Two months again since I wrote my last blog entry! It doesn't seem that long. This is an extreme demonstration of my utter laziness. Give me a Top Gear re-run on Dave, a savoury muffin with cream cheese and a large mug of tea and I'm happy to the point of sedation.
So what's been happening with me you ask? (Probably not, actually).
Well, I've just returned from a week in Corfu - Paleokastritsa to be precise. It was a very scenic, green place and the thunderstorms we witnessed on our last night (Friday) went along way to explaining the lush hue.
Giant wasps demonstrated to me why it is never a good idea to murder innocent animals. I killed two on our balcony and was viciously attacked by a relative of theirs. The sting on my neck caused a night of discomfort, made worse by the fact that I tried to kill my assailant by striking my neck with a wooden spatula.
Oh yes, and I'm writing a children's book! I've got fourteen thousand words down which puts me about half way by my reckoning.
Here's me signing off with yet another promise (probably empty) to write here regularly. Although we do have a lot of muffins in the freezer.

My brother in law came up with this idea and it gets more and more tempting with every ride.
When stupid, ignorant motorists drive so close to you on your bicycle that you have to correct for turbulence, or when they pull out on you or cut you up on roundabouts, or when (and this really has happened to me) they throw their empty fish and chip wrappers at you, a bag of ball bearings tactically positioned within easy reaching distance - for example on the handlebars - would enable the infuriated cyclist to make a lovely job of the body work of any passing vehicle.
I swear one day I will do this, so give me some room or it will cost you - bastards!

Well it's my birthday again and I'd like to thank everybody who sent their best wishes.
I'm now 32 and looking forward to twelve months of getting used to this age before it changes again.
I had plans to watch the final stage of the Tour de France live today but, alas, late nights at weddings can cause havoc with your plans.
Instead I have been looking at photographs of last night's joviality on Facebook. It always amuses me how quickly people seem to rush to download their snaps onto the 'trivia portal' as I like to think of it. Sometimes it seems to be a race to get the documented evidence of varying states of inebriation onto a worldwide stage.
I've never been one for celebrating my birthday in any great style. The closest I ever got to it was sinking shots of Vodka with a friend a few years ago and I ended up sleeping in a field.
So today - as I'm now teetotal - I'm about to boil up another kettle and watch the Mount Ventoux stage that I taped from yesterday and catch the finale at seven on ITV4.
To quote a famous Geordie television series: 'That's living alright!'

I'm not a big believer in mourning somebody that I've never met.
It is clear that millions of Michael Jackson fans are of the opinion that you can know someone through the media to such an extent that their death causes untold grief, but I think there may be a hint of the pressures and emotions of everyday life being chanelled into an unexpected event, which the brain perceives as an opportunity to offload stress in a socially acceptable way. I don't know whether I read that somewhere or whether I just made it up. Any social scientists or psychologists reading this? Feel free to tell me that I'm talking out of my arse.
I've heard more than one person comparing this to the death of Lady Diana. The only similarity is that it has resulted in massive public reaction.
Although I've sat in front of the television like everybody else and shouted 'freak!' at the sight of Wako's hideously mangled nose, I have to concede that the man was talented. I'm not really a fan of pop music, but his songs sent tingles up my spine; electric is the only way to describe it.
As for Lady Diana? She shook hands with a few land mine victims and cuddled some kids with HIV. Other than that she spent her life running around trying to get laid. Big deal.

I've not really written about cycling since I started this blog, but it forms a huge part of my life.
It started in childhood - I think I must have been about seven when I got my first bike and to be honest, I didn't really struggle learning to ride it. I think I was okay after about a day spent falling off at a caravan site we were staying on somewhere in the Scottish borders. No stabilisers for this kid!
That developed into better bikes (a Raleigh Grifter!! with slip gear!) and my first mountain bike was a Raleigh Montage - a lime green affair with twenty one gears, if my memory serves me correctly. It was bought for me by my parents after getting good grades in my first ever high school exams.
My friends and I used to ride the disused Consett to Sunderland railway line, once we even picked up another track at Consett and ended up in Gateshead! A long way back in those days.
Any sporting pursuit can suffer when alcohol and women arrive on the scene, but thankfully I reclaimed it (cycling) as a life long friend a few years ago, this time to overcome some pretty rough times and keep my energy up.
Now I ride a Merida Sub-60 hard tail when I want to leave the roads behind and a Specialized Allez when I don't.
I will always be a cyclist - may even pop my clogs on one if I manage to ride for as long as I hope to. What a thought!

Did anybody else find Martin Mcguinness' comments on the anti-Rumanian violence in Northern Ireland laughably hypocritical?
For those of you that weren't party to his comments on the subject, he said that he'd recently been holding a five month old Rumanian baby and while doing so 'worried deeply about the humanity of these people.'
What?! Martin Mcguinness is concerned about humanity! I feel it should be pointed out to the bigoted bastard that no Rumanian's (to my knowledge) have been killed, whereas the history books are full to the brim of God knows how many women and children rendered limbless and lifeless by the sectarian bombings of recent decades. Those very bombings that Mcguinness (despite his best claims) was clearly party to and of which he wholheartedly approved.
Humanity, really Mr Mcguinness? Wipe the blood off your hands.

I have been conducting my own research on this one. Management speak, otherwise known as complete bollocks, can be traced.
That's right. If you listen to any supposedly 'high brow' radio or television broadcast (Sunday mornings are particularly useful), you will begin to pick up phrases which are being used by journalists, politicians and television presenters. These phrases - like 'comfort zone' - filter down to the lower intellectual echelons of television and radio (for instance Chris Moyles, who, although an undoubtedly entertaining man, is hardly food for thought, other than in that 'haven't-quite-woken-up-yet-so-need something-easy-to-digest-in-order-to-warm-my-brain-up-ready-for-the-day-ahead' sort of a way.
You also start to hear the phrase on game shows and sport programmes.
I followed the phrase through these bland channels of communication and was rather amused to hear it spewing from the lips of the directors at work, even to the point where the phrase has now become the subject of ridicule among disgruntled middle management.
So next time you hear a phrase being spun by some guest on the Andrew Marr show - keep your ears open and soon it will be everywhere.

I think I'm starting to get control of that stubborn part of my brain that used to launch me into black depression the night before I'm due back to work after two weeks holiday.
Now, rather than feeling like curling into a ball and dying on the Sunday evening, I quietly sit and reflect on the wasted hours of my precious life spent pleasing people I don't particularly care about, while keeping one eye dutifully on the endless Top Gear repeats on Dave.
The upshot of it all is that I should really start playing the lottery...
(More chance of winning an olympic gold medal...I wonder when they'll make being pissed off an event?)