A Write Lark

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?)

I sat through an entire episode of Nicky Campbell's 'The Big Question' this morning. The big question that this caused me to ask myself, my wife and now you, is how did this cretin ever become so firmly embedded in our national television?
He was debating, among other (less interesting) things, whether or not the BNP have a right to be heard. Firstly, what a thoroughly ridiculous question. Of course they have a right to be heard. They are (whatever their fundamental beliefs and goals) a political party and they now have MEP's in their armoury.
It is my understanding that the presenter of such debate shows (e.g. David Dimbleby) can only be effective if they remain impartial to whatever viewpoints are being discussed. Dimbleby does this with ease and still manages to impart his own humorous introspections into the proceedings.
It is laughable, therefore, to watch Campbell's lame attempts at facilitating discussion in a meaningful manner, when he seems to take such great glee in stamping his own point of view on everything. What is he hoping to achieve? To show us all that he is not racist? The two members of the BNP were cut short, berated and belittled and basically shouted down by a lot of people who, one assumes, believe themselves to be intelligent enough to have something worth saying.
And don't get me started on Watchdog. Yes, Nicky, the big guy must always be wrong. Let's not forget how high a proportion of the British public are complete morons.

I've never been anywhere in France besides Paris, at least not until my recent jaunt to the Loire Valley.
Having had visions of setting up easel and eating French bread and cheese amidst relative peace and serenity, I was somewhat perturbed at the intensity of French drivers. I'm not exactly wet behind the ears when it comes to negotiating busy roads and have had my fair share of run-ins with insane Brits who regard themselves as some sort of road Gods, but France puzzles me. The roads are largely clear - congestion seeming to be the curse of the somewhat smaller island nation, and on the whole the traffic flows smoothly and lane discipline (the lack of which gets my goat in Blighty) is rather slick. The trouble with French drivers, in my humble opinion, is the constant tailgating while you are trying to overtake. The speed limit on their motorways is a quite reasonable 130kmh in the dry (about 80 mph) but overtake somebody and there will undoubtedly be some nut who hangs about a centimetre off your rear bumper as if to say, 'How dare you be overtaking when I clearly wish to do so at a far more rapid (and illegal) pace?'
A minor grumble, really. Nice scenery (although nothing I haven't seen topped in the UK)and fantastic food, as is to be expected. Finding somwhere that keeps regular opening hours, however, is a trick and a half, even in the city. They seem to close when they feel like it - which is great for them, but not so great for two starving Brits who have just travelled for six hours and think - 'we'll find something to eat round here!'