You'll do for our mate, you will.
How old are you? That's a good age.
What do you do? Oh, that's alright.
Are you single?
Do you have kids?
You'll do for our mate. Don't you think so Lil?
She'd like you.
How old are you?
You might do for me.
Our friend will like you.
What do you do again?
Can I have your number? I'll give it to our friend.
She'd like you.
How old are you?
Sunday, May 31, 2009
CYCLING: Bug's strife
Cyclists eat more than their fair share of bugs. It goes without saying.
Two lbs an average pedestrian's year according to Catherine.
A failed operation to persuade my face to breathe through nose and not mouth has left me even more susceptible.
I would say I eat two or three insects a saddled week.
But beware... turning to look at Downland views can worsen matters.
You may not know but they’re a lot harder to get out of one’s ear hole, ill equipped as we are to gag or cough through them.
And, to make matters worse, I discovered this week, whereas the struggles of swallowed bug manifest at worse in a throaty tickle and the icky thought of what you’ve done, in the ear you experience winged animal panic at high volume.
Two lbs an average pedestrian's year according to Catherine.
A failed operation to persuade my face to breathe through nose and not mouth has left me even more susceptible.
I would say I eat two or three insects a saddled week.
But beware... turning to look at Downland views can worsen matters.
You may not know but they’re a lot harder to get out of one’s ear hole, ill equipped as we are to gag or cough through them.
And, to make matters worse, I discovered this week, whereas the struggles of swallowed bug manifest at worse in a throaty tickle and the icky thought of what you’ve done, in the ear you experience winged animal panic at high volume.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
CYCLING: Sets for the soul
The sun was waiting for us at seven fifteen as it seems to do in April, positioned precicely between two Downland bushes.
We turned behind The Downs Golf Club's par five second, puffing, and there, see?, millions and millions of miles away, but in the exact same place it had been yesterday and the day before, at the exact same time.
How does it do that?
Good evening, it said.
We agreed and said thank you.
It had been busy laying out a feast too; stretching, as the valley did, to East Dean and northwards to Jevington, cast in gold.
And weirdly, we noted, no queue.
Are there honestly better things to be doing with your life? Are there two sun sets going on in Hampden Park?
--
Have people forgotten
What a sunset can do
For the soul which is suffering
As ours tend to
We turned behind The Downs Golf Club's par five second, puffing, and there, see?, millions and millions of miles away, but in the exact same place it had been yesterday and the day before, at the exact same time.
How does it do that?
Good evening, it said.
We agreed and said thank you.
It had been busy laying out a feast too; stretching, as the valley did, to East Dean and northwards to Jevington, cast in gold.
And weirdly, we noted, no queue.
Are there honestly better things to be doing with your life? Are there two sun sets going on in Hampden Park?
--
Have people forgotten
What a sunset can do
For the soul which is suffering
As ours tend to
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
CYCLING: Six sunny days say spring
The sunset is back the right side of clocking off and all of a sudden, in the space of a week and no more, this corner of southern England is awoken.
Amongst watch and phone adjustments and the very occasional sale at work, three bikers are jubilant – to us at least, more than anyone else has cause to be.
The sun may be here, but we’re the ones who’ve earned it.
Months of greyness, slippery track, leaves and roots, frozen fingers in districts of peaks and the ever-present threat of frosty half an hour in the back garden with the hose and one’s bike, are gone. Gone in the kind of way which makes you unsure they were ever here.
But here they were. They fought us body and soul. They lost. And now, and in this week of elemental surrender, it is sweetest. The spoils are all ours.
We’re fit, we’re strong, we’re giddy.
Dan’s full of cold, but that aside, it’s perfect.
As our comrade recovers Neil and I have peddled over the Downs from Old Town – up the tarmac escarpment like it wasn’t there – and around our 45-minute loop in ten minutes less than last summer – five of the last seven evenings.
Just then, between those paragraphs, we did it again, for the sixth.
The sixth sunset over East Dean, Friston and Jevington. The SIXTH in six days. Literally, beat that? Ha.
I sit here sweating delight, sweating glee. I’m sweating the prospect of the months ahead.
Amongst watch and phone adjustments and the very occasional sale at work, three bikers are jubilant – to us at least, more than anyone else has cause to be.
The sun may be here, but we’re the ones who’ve earned it.
Months of greyness, slippery track, leaves and roots, frozen fingers in districts of peaks and the ever-present threat of frosty half an hour in the back garden with the hose and one’s bike, are gone. Gone in the kind of way which makes you unsure they were ever here.
But here they were. They fought us body and soul. They lost. And now, and in this week of elemental surrender, it is sweetest. The spoils are all ours.
We’re fit, we’re strong, we’re giddy.
Dan’s full of cold, but that aside, it’s perfect.
As our comrade recovers Neil and I have peddled over the Downs from Old Town – up the tarmac escarpment like it wasn’t there – and around our 45-minute loop in ten minutes less than last summer – five of the last seven evenings.
Just then, between those paragraphs, we did it again, for the sixth.
The sixth sunset over East Dean, Friston and Jevington. The SIXTH in six days. Literally, beat that? Ha.
I sit here sweating delight, sweating glee. I’m sweating the prospect of the months ahead.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Cycling: Lewes/Alfriston loop (part II)
Continued...
Later the ground fell. Our wheels went too but Alfirston caught us with its familiar frown.
It handed us each a pasty, sent us around the corner and told us not to come out until it was time to leave, we were making the place look untidy.
It's a village so focused on being beautiful it's forgotten to have fun - forgotten what life is surely about. There are cold shoulders on every corner, behind endless counters and bars.
The pasties were unimaginably good though. Guilt free buttery pastry and red meat. Reason enough to take up biking. We washed them down with Oreos from the same magical, time-locked shop (personed by sour face youngster) and slipped out of our side street and away, being sure not to disturb the po-faced people inside their diamond encrusted homes.
Refuelled we all sped up to the top of the Old Coach Road and began the flatter ride home. Poor Phil was suffering equally with bum and lung.
Every incline, even slight, is so hard, he confessed.
I feel I'm holding you up.
Suddenly aware how far we'd come we congratulated and comforted and directed to the pub at Firle.
My man, you should be proud... go and drink away the good, as is tradition, we both said in less poetic phrase.
He went with it agreeing to do his best to conform.
We did pick up the pace for a mile, but then road became path, stile and ploughed field. It appeared the makers of the Old Coach Road to Lewes may have stopped off at the same pub as Phil and never started again.
But a friendly car washer put us right and soon, after a ploughed field which would have red carded us a week earlier, we were in Beddingham.
It's back over the downs or the main road towards Newhaven mate, I said to Dan, who sees A roads as I see passenger aeroplanes.
Taking our chances with the freight we held our breath for a mile or so and survived to tell Phil how little he'd missed.
Later the ground fell. Our wheels went too but Alfirston caught us with its familiar frown.
It handed us each a pasty, sent us around the corner and told us not to come out until it was time to leave, we were making the place look untidy.
It's a village so focused on being beautiful it's forgotten to have fun - forgotten what life is surely about. There are cold shoulders on every corner, behind endless counters and bars.
The pasties were unimaginably good though. Guilt free buttery pastry and red meat. Reason enough to take up biking. We washed them down with Oreos from the same magical, time-locked shop (personed by sour face youngster) and slipped out of our side street and away, being sure not to disturb the po-faced people inside their diamond encrusted homes.
Refuelled we all sped up to the top of the Old Coach Road and began the flatter ride home. Poor Phil was suffering equally with bum and lung.
Every incline, even slight, is so hard, he confessed.
I feel I'm holding you up.
Suddenly aware how far we'd come we congratulated and comforted and directed to the pub at Firle.
My man, you should be proud... go and drink away the good, as is tradition, we both said in less poetic phrase.
He went with it agreeing to do his best to conform.
We did pick up the pace for a mile, but then road became path, stile and ploughed field. It appeared the makers of the Old Coach Road to Lewes may have stopped off at the same pub as Phil and never started again.
But a friendly car washer put us right and soon, after a ploughed field which would have red carded us a week earlier, we were in Beddingham.
It's back over the downs or the main road towards Newhaven mate, I said to Dan, who sees A roads as I see passenger aeroplanes.
Taking our chances with the freight we held our breath for a mile or so and survived to tell Phil how little he'd missed.
Monday, March 02, 2009
Cycling: Lewes/Alfriston loop
Sorry Phil.
I'm almost dead here and you two don't seem to be even breathing hard.
There is little as sweet sounding to the cyclist's ear, as a yard stick to your own fitness, than a hyperventalating mate.
It's your first time for an age fella... and you're bike weighs a ton...
Was my glee detectable?
I'm not terribly fit.
I still have to sub off every minute and a half during tougher hockey games.
But Phil kindly showed, as we tickled the foot of the Downs near Lewes, that hard winter work pays off.
As it happens, up top, there was more than a suggestion winter was fading.
The trudgery of a week or so ago seemed no more. Perhaps not just temporarrily either. There was a permenance to the ground's firmness and it made for riding unriveled in months.
For two at least the ups were painless and the downs delirious.
What's that paraglider doing standing on a post?, asked Dan as hobbiests all over the Beacon struggled with the calm.
It's hardly going to make any diff...
We watched as, balance lost, he tumbled off and was saved from a bump by the gentlest of breezes. He was up. And I laughed at the timing.
Behind the glider was a view worth putting the effort in for.
Prodominant greenscale mixed with mist on the Wield in the middle distance. We could see the Old Coach Road, our route home, but soon, before its parallel main road replacement of a centuary later, the curtain came down.
Continued...
I'm almost dead here and you two don't seem to be even breathing hard.
There is little as sweet sounding to the cyclist's ear, as a yard stick to your own fitness, than a hyperventalating mate.
It's your first time for an age fella... and you're bike weighs a ton...
Was my glee detectable?
I'm not terribly fit.
I still have to sub off every minute and a half during tougher hockey games.
But Phil kindly showed, as we tickled the foot of the Downs near Lewes, that hard winter work pays off.
As it happens, up top, there was more than a suggestion winter was fading.
The trudgery of a week or so ago seemed no more. Perhaps not just temporarrily either. There was a permenance to the ground's firmness and it made for riding unriveled in months.
For two at least the ups were painless and the downs delirious.
What's that paraglider doing standing on a post?, asked Dan as hobbiests all over the Beacon struggled with the calm.
It's hardly going to make any diff...
We watched as, balance lost, he tumbled off and was saved from a bump by the gentlest of breezes. He was up. And I laughed at the timing.
Behind the glider was a view worth putting the effort in for.
Prodominant greenscale mixed with mist on the Wield in the middle distance. We could see the Old Coach Road, our route home, but soon, before its parallel main road replacement of a centuary later, the curtain came down.
Continued...
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