Cheat

As I rode my merry way down the canal path the other evening on my way back from work, I spied ahead of me a group of Crusty Jugglers shuffling around.

As I drew closer I could see that there were two grimy males on a bench to the left, on the path was a female and a small Jugglet, and on the other side, next to a canal boat was another female and her male tie-dyed partner.

As I drew closer I rang my jolly bell as a warning of my approach and I hoped they would clear the path for me to carefully pedal on past. This did not happen. As a unit they turned to face me. I slowed my incredible super bike even further as I noticed the scraggly haired male on the bench, clearly the tribal leader, open his vegan pie hole and speak.

"Hey watch out, here comes that crazy cyclist."

I ignored this slight insult (cyclist, indeed!), said nothing, and continued at a cautious crawl towards them.

"Oh look, he's a cheat, he's got batteries on his bike!" 

This stopped me dead.

The other Crusty Jugglers laughed like the acid-cripples they were. The Jugglet just stared, dead-eyed, at me.

"What did you say?" I knew exactly what he had said, I was just saying it to be threatening because you say stuff like that if you want to be threatening, and getting people to repeat themselves is really scary for them, just ask deaf people.

There was a tense few seconds when no one did anything, and I glanced from Juggler to Jugglet to Juggler again, gauging them, looking for weaknesses. Their choice of knitwear was awful, a definite flaw. Suddenly there was an almost imperceptible movement from the other, shaven-headed Crusty on the bench, as he reached a hand for something just out of my sight. 

It was an ambush.

In one swift flowing movement, I leapt from my bike reaching for the twin Barettas in the holsters on the small of my back, and unleashed a hail of covering fire as I fell into the cover of the hedgerow. I heard a loud boom as a shotgun blast shredded the leaves nearby.

Glancing out I saw that I had felled the male of the crusty couple by the boat and the female was trying to drag his body to the safety of the boat. Two out of the action already, a great start, but I was lacking cover and the Alternatve-lifestylers had good firing positions. The female who had been in the middle of the path with the Jugglet had disappeared, which caused me some concern, but right now I had to deal with the two male Crusties who were firing on me from their position behind the bench. Shavehead continued to blast at me with his Spas 12, and Big Chief Scraggly had twin MAC10 Ingrams that he was firing wildly all over the place.

He was as high as Christ, and twice as dangerous.

"Die, you low down cheating sonofabeeeeeeech!" he screamed.

"Yeah!" agreed Shavehead shaking his hands silently above his head in agreement, then letting off another shot in my direction.

Suddenly, behind me the bushes erupted as the female and the Jugglet came crashing out. The mother(tree)hugger had outflanked me! Worse than that, she was wielding a glittering samurai sword which she swung with deft precision at my neck. I thrust my right Baretta up and blocked the blow in a shower of sparks. I was suddenly aware of a searing pain in my left leg and looking down I saw the Jugglet had pushed a ceramic combat blade into my thigh. It was looking up at me with a curious expression of curiosity on its dirty urchin face. Curious, I thought. I could see the other side of my top-of-the-range Gortex Water/Windproof breathable riding trousers start to bulge as the blade pushed it's way out. Blood splashed down on my very expensive cycling shoes, which are awesome.

"Drum circle this, bitch!" I quipped as I swung my Barretta around, twisting the sword arm of the ninja hippy, and then put my other gun under her chin and pulled the trigger. A fountain of stuff that was seconds ago safely inside her head showered down on me and the Jugglet, who was still putting the knife in. I knew I had to distract it somehow.

"Look, a pretty birdie!" I voiced, pointing to the sky to where I was pretending a bird was flapping about.

But there was something coming.

As the Jugglet looked around we could both see something huge flying towards us at great speed, silhouetted by the sun. Only at the last second, just before it's arrow sharp beak speared through the Jugglet's knife arm, did I realise this was The Heron come to help me again. He swooped low over the scene, carrying the silent, yet struggling, Jugglet away.

"No! Skylark, Nooooooooo!" screamed Shavehead as he leapt from his cover to catch the Jugglet as it passed. He missed. I didn't though, one shot from my still working Baretta took him down, like Bambi's mother.

It was just me and Hippius Maximus left. I took the initiative and whilst he was distracted with his buddies demise I pounded across the space between us. He stood and up, rage on his unkept face, and raised his MAC10 as I slid towards him. We both ended up facing each other, guns against each others heads. We both pulled our triggers at the same time, but only the clicks of empty chambers were heard.

"The next bell you'll ring will be in hell, bike man." he menaced, raising his other MAC10 to my head. It clicked empty as well.

Horror, fear and despair shot across his eyes as I reached down, pulled the ceramic blade from my leg and pushed it through his chest.

"Get a job, asshole." I whispered.

As his twitching body slipped to the ground I realised I should ask my doctors to try me on a different anti-pychotic drug as these ones really aren't working that well.

I blinked a few times, looked about myself at the path, and the confused and frightened faces of the Crusty Jugglers standing around me, got back on my bike, rode home, and had dinner. 

I think it was Three Bean Bake. Mmmmm, yummy.

Questionnaire: Are you a Predator or Prey?

Do you have what it takes to take stuff and eat things in this world, or are you just some sort of mamby-pamby loser always losing? Do you live life like danger is something that happens to other people when you dish it out, or is danger something that is dished out to you by people who live life like danger is something that they dish out? If you just got mangled by that sentence don't even bother doing the test, you are prey and I am the word predator! Hahahahah!
A-hem, actually please do the test, I would apologise but that isn't what us predatory 80's guys do, we tell it like it is and if a few pathetic sheep get it in the neck then that's how it is.
Anyways, here's the test:


1: You see some hump-sack wangdangler cycling past your tree. Do you:
   a) Scamper in front of their wheels for no apparent reason
   b) Throw your nuts in their direction
   c) Wiggle your bushy tail in a deeply sensual way and tempt the unsuspecting day-glo toogler up to your treetop lair where you then split them open, run your claws through their innards in sacrifice and praise to Squirrethulu.

2: You are a Floppy-eared Rodent and you have to cross the road to get to some juicy carrots growing on the other side. Do you:
  a) Hop slowly to the centre of the road and wait for the inevitable doom that awaits us all.
  b) Get drunk on nettle wine or whatever shit Rabbits use to get effed up on, steal a car and drive across the road.
  c) Wait for someone who looks like an Bloody Hippy Animal Lover to come pootling along in their clapped-out VW camper van and run out in front causing them to swerve dangerously, spontaneously combust, and plough into a Bus queue. 


3: You are a crow. Do you:
  a) Lose all self respect and get Crusty Jugglers to feed you Sugar Puffs (see 'The Tapping of the Crow' blog entry).
  b) Eat the Rabbit that chose (a) in the previous question, narrowly avoiding getting splatted yourself (see question 2 part a)
  c) Chase some woman who has realised your master is the Antichrist, peck her eyes out so she can't see the tanker truck that smashes into her, smashing her all up in a smashed up way (see 'Damien: The Omen II).

Where the fuggle are my sugar puffs, lady?

4: You are a Crust Juggler's dog living a half feral life on the canal path. Do you:
   a) Spend your days looking soppy, getting strokes off the passing people and carefully pooing where no one will step
   b) Stake out a patch of ground with your wee and poo and woe betide anyone who enters your territory of dog hell
   c) Try and mate with anything alive, especially bicycles. 

4: You are a Magpie and your Magpie pal has just got flattened by a car. Do you:
    a) Cry for a while, then tie a load of flowers to a nearby tree with your beak and place photos of Patchy lovingly there as a shrine of remembrance.
    b) Quickly race to Patchy's nest and 'inherit' all his shiny stuff.
    c) Wait till the car has gone and go and eat Patchy's eyes.


5: You have got to get to work but some lay-about good-for-nothing lazy lay-about Crusty Juggler has left all their dirty crud, dogs and children all over the canal path. Do you:
   a) Slow your bike down and carefully pick your way through, saying a merry "hallo!" to the merry folk, as they ambush you and steal your time by engaging you in a 'conversation'. 
   b) Ride as fast as you like, certainly not slowing down, it's their look out, the path is for everyone and just now that means just you!
   c) Stop your bike and start punching stuff.


ANSWERS:


Mainly (a)'s: You are not long for this world. Your 'why can't we all just get along' attitude will not win you any friends in this dog-eat-person-on-bicycle life. It will just win you a one way ticket to No Breathing Land stopping at Pain Town and Victimsville. PREY.


Mainly (b)'s: Not so bad, you certainly stick up for yourself in the face of some serious provocation, but you lack that true killer instinct it takes to be a total arsehat wrinklehanger. NOT PREDATORY ENOUGH (keep it up, you'll get there in the end, just expunge any last remnants of human decency you have left lurking in the corners of your rotten soul.)


Mainly (c)'s: You are the pinnacle of human dick-swinging evolution, you see what you want, you take it, and if any wobble-faced jibber-jabbers get in your way then it's goodnight for them! Some people may consider you a dangerous premium grade tool, but they are just jealous of your deadly get-ahead attitude. PREDATOR.


All done? Great! Now wiz along with total disregard for other internet users to the Person on a Bicycle Facebook page and enter whether you got mostly (a)'s or (b)'s or whatever on the question thingy there and we will find out whether readers of this blog are a blood-thirsty pack of go-get-em top-of-the-food-chain type Alpha types or just a very small gathering of nicely nice people.

SWEARING

WARNING: This bit below contains offensive language of an offensive nature that could cause offence if you are offended easily because you are a fonkin spangwinkler.

Hello. I have a rather chilling tale to recount to you now. It's more chilling than a freezer on the moon and at least twice as pointless. 


If the rain comes down hard on the canal path overnight, the exciting bottomless pot-holes which keep me on my toes can become filled with cloud diarrhoea. This not only has the added benefit of hiding the cavernous earth-cracks from my eagle squinty eyes, but also satisfyingly splashes brownly all over the place as I career through them at dangerously cool speeds, looking like an awesome advert for something fast and cool and dangerous.

I like to pride myself on my total consideration to other path users (I got all 'A's in my own questionnaire (see an earlier blog entry)), so I will always slow or stop for a Person Walking, or tinkle my tinkly bell as a warning that I am carefully coming up behind them. On this particular day I was just riding along what is possible the most puddle-strew, but also the widest, part of the path, when I saw a young woman walking towards Bath, going in same direction as me. 

She seemed to be carrying everything that she owned, countless bags and rugs and shit, all topped off with a cheap crusty acoustic guitar. She was also dragging, in a careless way through the dirty smeg-ridden water, one of those crappy suitcases with those stupid tiny wheels. I duly rang my bell hard, like a teenager in the shower, to warn her of my approach. It had no effect.  Odd, I thought. I slowed down to a fast walking-pace style speed and went right onto the grass in an attempt to go around the wide-load. 

As I pulled alongside her majesty, she made a sudden start, like I had just gone for her and theatrically stumbled into a nearby skank-pool. 

"Ooooo, are you OK? Sorry didn't mean to startle you, I rang my tinkly bell in the direction of your earholes, but you must have not heard, sorry, sorry." I spluttered in what I attempted to be an apologetic tone.

"Piss off you fucking arsehole! I've got wet boots now 'cause of you, you wanker!" she spat with a crazed look on her crazy face, "I've got to spend all fucking day with fucking wet feet now cause of you, you fucking twat. Piss off, go on, just piss off you piece of fucking shit!"

She was only getting started.

"Sorry, but I really didn't do anything." On reflection, this was probably not the best thing I could have said at this point. 

What followed next was a stream of consciousness style swear-athon, which painted a picture of me that would probably win the Turner prize.

Then something happened that finally pushed her totally out of Sane Town and into Wack-job Woods. Three Lyra-clad Psycholists came tearing past her at full pelt, all, one after the other, splashing her with muddy stuff as their wheels passed. They raced on, without a word.

I have to say that my heart went out to the poor waif at this point, as the top of her head flew off and lava shot out of her skull.

"Kind of put things in perspective doesn't it?" I cheerfully announced.

I told the hospital staff that they were dog bites, I don't think they believed my lie, but they gave me the rabies jab anyway. 

"Bite me, lady muck!" Some people take things so literally.

 

ALIENS part 2 (which was ALIEN3 i think)

So, last time I recounted how I was run off the road by some crazy-assed dock wipe driving a UFO like they owned the planet. Well, I was so shaken up by this Close Encounter that I decided to leave the road of mystery and continue my epic struggle to get home on the canal path. Little did I know what was waiting for me on that route of twilight mysteries...that was because it hadn't happened yet...but it was just about to...


I pottered along the path, feeling relieved to be off the road and away from the Fear Of Real Stuff (FORS), but it wasn't long before the Fear Of Made Up Stuff (FOMUS) came at me like a crack tramp on acid. Questions raised their heads in my brain like ugly children at a birthday party. What was that just out of my field of vision? What was that sound in my ear holes? My speed increased. Soon I was flying along at almost maximum warp, oblivious to the hideous situation I was about to slam head-first into.


Suddenly, I saw something white step across the path about 20 metres ahead of me, from the canal and into the hedgerow, it's dark, oval eyes shining at me. What was it? I quickly arrived at where I had seen the thing walk, or maybe trot across, but as I slowed I could seen no trace of anything traceable.

Don't look at it! It's trying to use it's mind control on you so you don't believe my story!

I was distracted then by shouts and calls from up ahead by the Dundas Aqueduct. As I drew closer I could see the lights of many torches flashing in all directions like a gang of over-excited chameleons' eyes with beams of light coming out of them. I was shocked to see that the people holding the flashlights were police officers in search gear, in their other hands they held long sticks, which I assumed was for rummaging in the foliage and undergrowth. 


But what were they looking for?


They totally ignored me as I carefully negotiated my way past them and I only caught a few snatched words of what they were saying, but a chill ran the length of my spine all the same, "Bloody training courses", "Effin' chilly tonight", "Hey look, mine is a lightsaber, waaannng waaaannng!".


Telling words.


I put two and two together. It was a four that equalled the white thing was an escaped Alien, (and not a deer as my case worker has suggested), with the police in on the cover-up and trying to catch it. This was confirmed to me by what happened next.


I was so engrossed in what the police were up to that I let my inbuilt Crusty Juggler Canal Boat Person guard down. Out of nowhere one staggered towards me reaching out to grab my arm with it's filthy claws, "She's gone!" it wailed, it's fuggy, fetid breath wafting towards me in great alcoholic clouds, "She's gone, and she took all the feckin' 'ome brew wiv 'er." Water was leaking from his eye holes and snot was running out of his red hooter. It looked like a clown who had just been told that he could no longer go within 500 metres of a playground.

ALIEN BOOB JUGGLIN' FREAK.

"Your Alien lover almost run me over on the road after she left you," I blurted. "She was driving her spaceship like a looney, but don't worry because she must have stopped and got out because I saw her going across the canal path, but watch out, a police search team are after her. What planet is she from? Is it nice having sex with her? Have Aliens got great boobs?"


For some reason, the crusty one backed off rapidly with a look on his face which I think was of horror, fear and despair.


Some people just won't be helped.

How I imagine they were in happier times. One filthy river dweller and their alien/deer Hybrid love interest.

SNOW!

You know that white cack that falls out of the sky sometimes?


No, not bird doodoo, the other stuff, that comes out of those other, fluffy, ominous sky hangers. Yeah, you got it SNOW. Now, some people I know are desperate for it to snow, They think that it is just effin' fantastic, because it can stop them from going to work and breaks up the monotony of getting a constant work grinding.


I, on the other hand (which is covered in a top-class techno-top goretex glove, which cost me a shed-load of wonga), I am less enthusiastic. "Hey, you grouchy cokesupper!" you might shout at me across a busy street, for not liking the White Death, but this isn't the case. I like throwing balls made of the mushy crud, and sliding down hills on an old shower curtain on it as much as any toddler, but when it comes to riding my bike on it, I want to fubb it's shit up.


You see, when it drifts, ever so gently, down from the sky, the first place it settles on is the canal path. It is also the last place it will cling onto well after the rest of it has turned into brown slush puppys in the gutters. When this happens, the path turns from something quite lovely and safe to a wild place, full of primeval horror and ancient fears. Bands of starving Crusty Juggling Canal People maraud through the misty drifts with impunity, their enormous packs of snarling dogs desperately snatching meat where they can.

In snow no one can hear you scream. Well, they can, but no one gives a crap.

Trying to ride your futuristic two-wheeled space-age transport thing on snow is an acquired taste, and I've fallen off more times than I can remember now (due to head injuries), so I am not looking forward as many others to this impending wave of white and icy man-traps.


Going on the road is a total no-no. Last time I tried that my gears froze in first gear, and although I was very good at going up the shiny slopes, the 15 mile tail back of very patient and polite drivers got a bit testy when I could only do about 8 miles and hour on the flat. This led to me being encouraged  out of the clear salted strip of road and into the soft welcoming sludge at the side of it. As I lay there with the soft flakes falling onto my bewildered face, starting to bury me, all I could think of was, "I hope when I am found come spring time, and they try and straighten my frozen corpse, they don't accidentally snap my cock off."