Racist Sheep.

Saw some weird shit down the canal this week. 

As I cycled through the misty rain I came level with a field full of sheep. This field had two distinctly different types of sheep in it, one lot black, another load white. The bizarre thing about them though was they way they had sorted themselves into segregated groups along the lines of colour. 

Holy crackers.

The white fuzzy tozzers were all in a big huddle in the middle of the field, whilst the black dudes were all in a line circling about them. It looked like some cack-covered arse racial stand off. 

I was getting my camera out to take a picture, due to thinking no one is going to believe this, when I was distracted by seeing The Kingfisher out of the corner of my eye, flying off down the canal. I forgot all about the racist sheep and rode after the elusive multi-coloured flapper. Unfortunately, His Royal Fish-breath was totally lost from sight within seconds and I just couldn't be arsed to go back to the sheep, who had probably started burning each others churches or something racist like that.

PHOTO  COURTESY  OF GOOGLE EARTH. Lucky the satellite was overhead at that exact moment, eh?

I pedalled on.

Later in my journey I came up behind a grey-haired Lycra-clad Machopath on a preposterous bright blue wafer-thin bike. It looked like at any second this feeble piece of over-engineered expensive bollocks was going to disappear up his massively over-muscled bumhole. 

As is usual, I tinkled my jolly bell and I went go around the heaving sweaty obstacle, but no! He swerved to stop me. I tried again, he sped up and swerved in front of me. I had had enough at this point, after all, I'm just trying to get to work. I blame that sideboard-ed drug-fuelled Paul Weller enthusiast Baldey Wighead, or what ever the feckles his stupid name is. Every twenker on two wheels now thinks they are riding for glory, for Britain, for gold! 

So I did what I always do at times like this; I burst into my own unique rendition of "Macho Man" by Village People, as loudly as is humanly possible.

After about a minute of this the poor arsehat gave up and let me pass, the time-wasting shattle scrangler.

Listen to me sing the song in all it's glory below:

About Me: Episode 1, The Goatening.

I was born on a lonely farm in the foothills of the Broken Mountains. I was raised by my Mother and my "Uncle", Old Pokey. 

Photo taken on my twelfth birthday, Mom and Old Pokey giving me my first bike! Love those guys!

When I was old enough I asked  Uncle Pokey who was my Father. He told me that "Yo fool, yo Mom an' Pops were like ships in da night, see. By which I mean, it was dark, everyone was drunk, an' one ship repeatedly rammed inna da other, spilling seamen everywhere. Word."

"Oh," I said.

My Mother never told me who that ship was. I like to think he was a tall galleon, tall and proud, with tall stuff proudly standing tall. She just mumbled something about him being more of a canoe. Was he a King or Lord of high, noble birth? Was he someone I would later meet as my enemy, then I would find out in a shock reveal moment at the end of an episode that he was really my father, and I would have to scream "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!" as I fell off something?

I don't know, I haven't decided yet.

My early life was a life of hard toiling toil, working the goats in the high pastures, herding them like some sort of lowly goatherd and juicing when they were ready. But I knew in my heart of hearts (I had had quite a collection, I loved the way they glistened and dripped) that I was meant for greater things, like a destiny awaited me that was unlike the normal style of destiny, but instead it was a destiny that was like a destiny someone might have that was destined for something destinified. As the twin suns set on the horizon and my theme tune came mournfully whistling from my lips, I vowed that I would make it my destiny to find that destiny I was destined for.

One day a strange thing happened, a travelling band of squeaky Dwarf farm equipment salesmen stopped and sold us a a large grain dispenser, the "Seed 'n' Throw" and a wheelbarrow that always knew where it was going, the "Hard to Detour".

A pair of tools, Seed 'n' Throw and Hard to Detour.

"Yo fool! Take these two to tha Goat's crib and get them cleaned up. Fool." Uncle Pokey ordered.
"But I was thinking of maybe doing something else like going into town and hanging out at the railway station with my chums, Frankenstein and Dracula," I whinged.
"Yo fool! Yo can waste time with your fiends when yo chores is cooked, homie. Yo crazy assed fool," came the reply.

I could never catch a break. Things got worse later when I realised that the little bastard wheelbarrow had malfunctioned and decided it had no idea where it was going and run off. It's strange one-wheeled and two dragged stands trail trailed off, to my utter horror, fear and despair, to the Canal Path in the Woods of Terror near to our little farm. I knew I must venture into that hollow of hideousness to get back the troublesome wheeled bucket before Uncle Pokey found out and popped a cap up mo ass.

For some unknown reason know only to myself and not known by anyone else I decided to take Seed 'n' Throw grain dispenser with me on the back of my trusty rusty wobbly old bike. I rode down the hillside to the point where it joined the canal path.

Entering that creepy area was hard for me to do, I had heard such hideous tales of the weird goings-on down here from my blog and I was rightfully cautious. It wasn't long before I found the stupid bloody GPS guided wheelbarrow. It was stuck up a tree, and took me an Seed 'n' Throw quite a while to knock it out by throwing Crusty Juggler children we found lying around at it.

Suddenly Hard to Detour started to excitedly shake and spin it's wheel around. "Sir, he says that there are creatures approaching from the south west." said someone, I'm not sure but I think it came from the seed dispenser. Weird. I got out my binoculars and looked down the canal path. Yes, there in the distance about 3 miles away were some squirrels hopping evilly about. I totally shat myself.

Even more suddenly, like in a really shocking end of episode shocker, a blurry, red-eyed, squirrel face whizzed past my binocular vision and gave me such a fright I gave a high pitched scream like a hydrophobic panicking kettle and passed out..................

CLICK THIS AND IT WILL WHISK YOU AWAY TO WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO WATCH IT HERE, BUT I'M NOT SURE WHY YOU WOULD BOTHER.

Flies

The beautiful sunny mornings of spring have a awoken many things along my canal path route. Daffodils, Primroses and crocusses Croqueses cockasses other flowers are all lining my journey like a crowd of adoring fans (I wave regally at them as I pass). The sexy twinkle is in the eye of the sheep and cows as they pop baby things out of their front bottoms that scuttle and hop under rocks and into the caves where they grow into adulthood. Birds tweet like they are being strangled by invisible Pine Martins, desperate to attract the mate that will bring meaning to their flappy lives.


But there is one thing, or many things, or lots of the same thing, not sure which, that is/are not very nice thing/things that appear also at this season of the year.


And they are FLIES.


Flies, if you are unfamiliar, are little insects that can fly (hence the name, Einstein) and have no purpose on earth other than to hang about in the air around the canal path. This brings them into direct conflict with me. I, if you are unfamiliar with me, am a bicycle riding misanthrope.


Here are some Stat cards for you to cut out and keep:

So what's the worse thing about these airborne flappers? 

Well, it's not that they fly into your eyes and you have to spend hours when you get home picking their corpses out. It's not even when they fly up your nose or straight down the back of your throat causing you to puke your high-energy bike fuel bars up all over Timmy Toddler out for a fun scoot, scooting about on his new scooter with his scooterless family.

No, it's none of these.

It's the way that they dive, kamikaze style at my lips (I even think I heard one buzz "Banzai!" once). 

"That's not so bad, you effin' drama queen" I hear you scream. Well that's because you don't know the thing that I am about to tell you in the next line of this blog that I am writing now. 

I have to cover my lips in Vaseline so the don't dry out on my journeys and the flies become stuck to it and I end up with writhing fly-encrusted mouth parts! 

Dead flies, half dead flies, ones still crawling about amongst their rotting compatriots, all over my mouth!

I try to wipe them away, but that just pushes the fly/petroleum jelly death mix further into my open orifice. I can feel them crawling about as the struggle in their death-throes, desperate for the release of freedom or death.

People point and recoil in horror, fear and despair at the Fly Mouth Man who speaks in buzzing words of death and relentlessly hurtles passed them at speeds so speedy, only the truly damned would pedal at them.

When I arrive home I have to carefully scrape the crust of corpses carefully from my lips with care.

But I tell you, it has worked wonders for my lips, all that fly goo has left me with luscious, ever-so-kissable smackers. If only I could find some way of bottling it and selling it to posh chumps/chumpettes I would probably get rich. 

Or arrested. 

KISSY KISSY!

Theme Song

Hey! Got nothing better to do? Well check out this Link below. It's my very own theme tune. What? You think that is awfully egocentric of me to have my own theme song? Well, yes it is, but don't you, as you ride along the roads, have a three minute rant pounding on the inside of your skull to get out? Thought so, well here's mine:

LINK TO PERSON ON A BICYCLE THEME SONG, CLICK ME!

http://catnipp.bandcamp.com/track/person-on-a-bicycle

Or listen to it here on this video:

Or if you can't see that then try this link to the Facebook page to watch it there:

PERSON ON A BICYCLE THEME SONG ON FACEBOOK PAGE LINK


It has my complete and utter official endorsement as well as my distain and pity.
Anyway, for any of you chumps out there who are interested in these sort of things here are the 'lyrics':

Verse 1:
Hello, I'm Person on a Bicycle
My adventures they can be farcical
But I'm not typically typical
'Cause in a crash I lost a testicle
Attention I crave isn't medical
Although a creme I use is topical
Please don't be over-critical
Of when I ride reading my Kindle

Chorus:
My ravings are non-sensical
Horror, fear, despair make me cynical
I try and write it in an article
Called Person on a Bicycle!

Verse 2:
When I see a big vehicle
Squish a bunny I get hysterical
They tried to lock me in a hospital
Said my problems were purely psychological
Calling me a cyclist is not advisable
Machopaths and squirrels make me flammable
I don't want to get to technical
But fugg 'em, I'm Person on a Bicycle!

Chorus:

My ravings are non-sensical

Horror, fear, despair make me cynical

I try and write it in an article

Called Person on a Bicycle!

Horror
Fear
Despair
Horror
Fear
Despair!

Chorus:

My ravings are non-sensical

Horror, fear, despair make me cynical

I try and write it in an article

Called Person on a Bicycle!

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

I'm Person on a bicycle

Not a tricyle

I'm Person on a motherlovin' Bicycle!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!

I like the way everything rhymes with ickle. Sort of.
There you go, hope you have many hours fun screaming this at cars as they pass you by in the street. Go and shout it full in the face of some pensioners at a bus stop. Works wonders for the soul!
BYE!

Today's Top Insult:

"Get off that bike, fuckwit! I want to shove it in your colon, turn the pedals, and empty you of all the shit you're made of!"

Heron Hitman

With his black stick legs stuck in the slick black canal water The Heron is the most awesome of all the motherlovin' creatures that litter my path to work. This guy is the coolest Bustard around, never moving a muscle when I pass right next to him on my bicycle-from-the-future. When he is flapping gracefully around in the sky bit of earth he looks so graceful and stuff, but what is best is that he looks exactly like a pterosaur.

He is also a deadly bad-ass hunter that uses total stealth like a Predator from that movie where Arnold Sweatynecker had to fight stuff...er...Kinder Egg Garden Cop-out, or something, I dunno, films confuse me, OK?

Anyway, I was having a lovely ride to work the other day, the spring sunshine was warm on my back as I slid, almost effortlessly, through the air that was in and around the canal path, my legs moving in a furious blur as they pummelled my pedals like two leg-like engines. The breathing gas about me was fresh and clean and I started to feel that the world wasn't maybe completely filled with horror, fear, despair and death, when I suddenly took a turn around a bend into a very dark area of the path.

The ancient trees grow very dense here, bending over to meet each other like sumo wrestlers, across the canal. Twisted gnarled Oaks and Ashes create a tunnel of dire gloom and watching terror that I fear to ride through. This particular morning that place of quiet horror was made all the more terrifying by the presence of a grey figure scampering about in the middle of the path.

When it saw me it stopped its incessant scrabbling and went on it's hind legs to look at me, it's hideous bushy tail shaking with a hideous hideousness that filled me with a hideous feeling, hideously like hideousness. Hideous.

I stopped my, frankly, incredible bike using it's brilliant Magura brakes, the red ones, they are the best, great for dry weather and wet, so easy to change as well, although adjustment can be a bit tricky, but when you've got them set up just nice they are AWESOME TO THE MAX, and stood there looking at the thing of evil blocking my way.

It was then that I saw the others, I had ridden right into a bushy tailed ambush! To one side, next to the canal water was another squirrel, and I can only guess at how many had closed the path behind me, I bet it was loads. Just as I thought this was it for me, and the squirrel I hadn't seen at first was about to pounce on my throat and rip out my veins and arteries and bathe in the shower of blood that erupted from my tubes of life, suddenly a beak like a sword shot out of nowhere and skewered the rodent alive!

The Heron had come to save me! In one incredibly swift motion he flipped the floppy nut-cracker up in the air only for it to land in it's wide-open gobble-chops.

"YEAH! TAKE THAT YOU NUT-NIBBLING TREE HUGGER!" I screamed as loud as my lungs could manage. The relief of not being gutted by some noisome fluffy beasts was quite obvious to the family that had just come up behind me, walking their dogs.

The Heron gulped down his meal and then flew off for an after dinner snooze in a tree or something, I guess, safe in the knowledge that he would always have a friend in me.

Please watch this video I shot as I think it explains a lot:

CLICK THIS TO SEE THE VIDEO IF YOU HAVE A MOBILE DEVICE AND YOU WILL BE TAKEN TO SEE IT ON THE FACEBOOK PAGE

Ghosts

There is a lovely road that I travel down in the morning in Bath called Prior Park Road. On a sunny day it is a beautiful whizz downhill at top speedy speed. The scenery is stunning, with Prior Park itself on one side and on the other, an ancient overgrown graveyard.


But at night, on my way home, this all reverses. The road is a steep incline for 1.5 miles and it is dark and isolated. Silence beats on me from all sides like a kettling Police officer. Prior Park House stands tall and menacing at the top of the climb, looking down at me like a police officer who has just beaten me to the ground because I had the audacity to accidentally find myself in the wrong part of London at the wrong time and have the misfortune to look like a Bloodystudent.


Then there is The Graveyard.


It goes on and on and on, bit like me. It is dark, ancient and unfriendly, bit like me. It takes the dead into its arms and holds them, forever, bit like...no not that one, legally I must say, not that one. The creeping horrors that lurk within, creep as they lurk about creepily. A creeping sense of horror, fear and despair creeps my very soul as I puff my creepily purple-faced way up the creepy hill.


Travelling past it I always see the dead just standing there, impassively looking down at me, yes you heard, their dark figures unmoving, their pale mask faces following me as I struggle pass. I'm just like that kid in that film with Bruce Willis in it, you know, Home Alone. I've got used to seeing their frozen faces and it doesn't really bother me now, but something strange happened this thursday night as I was travelling home very late from work that struck me as strangely very strange.


One of the dark figures was shuffling about nervously, I slowed and stopped at looked at it. Its usually unmoving mouth was trembling and it looked as if it was about to speak to me. This is something that has never happened before. Usually I don't hear a peep from these guys, but now one was about to communicate. What would it say? What secrets from beyond the grave would it tell me? At the very least it could tell me if being dead is really as boring as it looks.


As his mouth opened wide to utter words from The Other Side, another corporeal dude shuffled over and gave the first stiff a nudge. The open-mouthed one quickly shut it, shrugged at the nudgey one and hung it's head in, all I can assume, was an embarrassed admission of guilt.
I looked as meanly as I could at the spooky bully, he took no notice and just glared me down, bastard.
I rode off none the wiser to what the ghosts keep to themselves....after all, what else have they got? Eff all.

LINK TO VIDEO ON FACEBOOK PAGE

Bank Vole Funeral

This week a terrible tragedy befell upon a small thing in this world. I bared witness to this sad and hideously horrific event.
 As I rode my meandering and serene way along the canal path I was suddenly overtaken by a Lyca-clad Machopath on on of those highly inferior racing bikes. At his reckless speed he failed to notice a large (for them anyway) Bank Vole using the path too. The Machopath's bike passed over the furry scamp compressing it. The Machopath rode on oblivious, but I stopped and dismounted and ran to the vole's side. I remembered what Vinnie Jones had taught me and I pumped away with my little fingers on the Bank Vole's squashed chest with the Bee Gees pumping through my brain.

The poor little guy. Wow, my incredible bike looks good though.

  After 30 minutes of resuscitation attempts I finally had to call it. The crowd of people who had gathered around me edged away nervously as I looked up at them. One by one they either ran off or reached for their mobile phones to call the emergency services I guess. 


  After they had all gone and I was alone, I noticed something I had failed to notice before when I wasn't noticing it. By the side of the path was  a curious sight. One Bank vole stood there forlornly, by her side were two smaller juvenile voles. They were staring in shocked horror at the vole on the path.


I bent down and picked up the still warm vole, when I did, I noticed that some seeds and grains fell from the voles limp paws and scattered in the cold wind.
The juveniles had tears trickling down their furry rodent faces and the Mother Vole turned and sadly beckoned for me to follow them.


 I carried the limp vole corpse as I followed them to the canal edge and into a tunnel cut into the bank. The tunnel was dark and led steeply downwards, the sound of the weeping Vole children leading my way. There were many side openings to the tunnel that I passed and the lights of many shiny eyes looked out at me as I made my way slowly down. I could feel something behind me, and I chanced a glance over my shoulder. A huge host of solemn voles were following silently behind me in silence.

A regiment of the Second Company of the Bank Vole Army followed me.

  Suddenly the tunnel opened up into a large cavern, the ceiling of which was the glistening water of the canal! I stood there amazed at the way the water was just held there above my head, but that was nothing to what happened next.


  Two dark shadows appeared above, moving closer to the intersection of the water and cavern. First one beautiful black beaked head, followed by a long snake-like neck, peirced the membrane beween the two elements, and then another. The two swans then passed through completely and fell gracefully to the floor.



"Please lay the Vole King on the stone" the first swan said to me in a voice that seemed to enter my head not through my ears but through my something else.
It was then I really noticed the rest of the cavern. It had been beautifully carved out in intricate designs depicting all kinds of woodland creatures. There were joyous scenes of frolicking, but also of war. The hideous creatures being fought bravely by the critters were none other than the grey squirrels.

With all the solemnity I could muster, I placed the stinking rodent on the stone altar.

I moved nervously to a stone altar at the other end of the hall and placed the Vole King on it.
"Thank you, you have done us a great service," One of the freakily-necked ones said, "We have watched you for many years and have seen your great kindness and consideration to the other things in this world, so we will entrust in you a great secret that we have long laboured with."


The second feathered freak now took up the mental story, "Eons ago an invader came to these shores, the Grey Squirrel, we tried to fight them off but the were just too powerful. Now they have taken over. The ones you know as Lycra-clad Machopaths are really a mass of squirrels jammed into that stretchy day-glo crap and they ride recklessly about squishing us and our friends and being inconsiderate to people."

I knew it!

"Please help us in our war against them. You must seek Croll-Agar T'glloac'ia, the leader of the Red Squirrels, only he can aid you blah blah blah....sword of Righteous Redness...blah blah effin' blah...."
I really at that point had totally lost interest in these certifiably paranoid animals and just wanted out. I decided to feign sleep and just curled up in a corner in a foetal position.


When I awoke I was in a very comfy room. So comfy someone had even gone to the trouble of padding the walls. Hello? Hello? Is anyone still there?

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.

Orgy

I have a story of such unremitting cosmic horror and eldritch terror to tell you, that I think it should come with a warning. So you have been warned, I am warning you that this is my final warning!

It all began on dark, dark, dark night as I was cycling my fear-struck way down the canal path. There is a place of silent trees in a ancient hollow which lies to the side of a very remote part of the canal. In the middle of this disquieting glade is a twisted undead thing that I call The  Tree of Ultimate Cweepiness. During the summer months the hollow was full of lovely singing and skipping little Crusty Juggler children. There was an old tyre tied to a rope, which in turn was tied to a thick, twisted branch of The Tree of Ultimate Cweepiness, that the joyous mini-scroungers swung about on. It was now depths of winter, and no children ran and called, the tyre had gone, and only the rope, frayed and menacing, swung in the frozen, thick air, like, a, forgotten, hangman's, noose.


Hold on, need a breather before I go on to the next bit, I'm getting scared.


Ok that's better.


On this fateful night I was approaching the hollow when a strange chattering and screeching came drifting towards me on the black mist. Suddenly I drew up to the place where you can look down on the foul clearing from the canal path and an indescribable scene met my eyes that I will now describe. I tried to peer through the inky dark, I could see small shapes moving, swaying but couldn't make out what they were. I quickly swivelled the front of my top-of-the-range Kalkhoff pedelec bike around to shine my £300 Hope Vision4 light down into that pit of hellish hellishness.


Countless Squirrels filled the hollow, they writhed and danced in an orgy of wanton abandon, their little clawed paws raised in unholy praise of some demented squirrel god, their bushy tails shaking to the rhythm their squeaky chanting.  At the centre of the hollow, just in front of the gnarled tree, now looking like the skeletal hand of some vast beast thrusting out of the earth, was another larger squirrel. it was waving it paws over something that was lying on a large flat stone that I had never noticed before.


The thing on the slab was flat and a dark road grey. Two hideously malformed arms stretched up from it, and a grotesque squirrel head, twisted in frozen agony gaped open-mouthed in my direction. As the chattering and screeching reached a deafening level I saw, to my utter horror, fear and despair, the corpse of Flatso start to quiver and move! (for it was he, see some earlier gibberish blog entry for his story) His venomous eyes locked to mine and his putrid, stringy yellow jaws let go a scream that came straight from the pits of damnedest hell!


My view of this monstrous scene only lasted a few short seconds, seconds burned into my mind forever that no amount of counselling or booze or crazy destructive sex would ever erase from my memories. Suddenly my light was extinguished somehow and the I heard strange calls in the utter darkness and the scurrying of many tiny evil feet.


In my panic I scrabbled pathetically to find the on switch for my light. When I did and the light shone forth again, the hollow had cleared, even the stone slab was empty and a silence like none I had ever heard (unless you count the gaps between songs at the gigs for all the bands I have ever been in) descended on me, like the hand of a giant silent thing. 


I will never venture that way again, unless in day light, and I will be sure never to find myself alone with a squirrel nearby.
For in Flatso's hideous scream I'm sure there had been words too, "Nuts so fast, human...Aiiee!...safety first...f-tang f-tang!..take it easy on them roads...whhaaa!...why can't I feel my nuts?...shai-yai!...Squirrelthulu will rise...Whhhaaaarrrg Aiiii-shubbnug f-tang!"

RECONSTRUCTION: A scene of debauched horror, with fluffy tails.

Death

I have seen a lot of dead stuff. Squashed dead stuff, twitchy dead stuff, dead stuff at a tube station bleeding all over the platform, dead stuff that had other dead stuff piled on top of it into a massive pile o' death. I once saw a Badger on my way home from work that I thought was sleeping everyday by the side of the road. Every day I would see it and each day it grew fatter. "There's one Badger that's finding plenty to eat each night and then coming back to the same spot to sleep each day!" I would cheerily shout to myself as I passed it. It got to a crazy mental size, then the next day it must have eaten something explosive because it had popped and badger bits were everywhere. Strange.....


BUT! I have never seen something die. Never seen the light, then the brains, go out of it's eyes, well not until tonight I had not, I hadn't.


I was making my way down one of my least favourite roads, journeying home, when I saw a skanky old rodent with big ears hopping about in the middle of the lane of carnage. This bit of highway is very thin, passing for People in Cars is hard as they have to scrape their way past me as fast as they can and narrowly avoid the People in Cars coming the other way by pushing me further into the two and a half metre stone wall that supports the railway running along side of the road. Anyway, this floppy-eared fuckwit was just hopping around like the road was Mr. McGregor's garden. I immediately started to slow so as to not hurt the dopey sniffler and tried to flag the People in Cars queuing behind me down. I'm guessing my random hand-flaps were interpreted in a different way to that which they were intended.


The engine pitch of the car behind me raised to a Nazgul scream and then it Millenium Falcon-ed past me. One of the cars tyres went slippety slappety bang right over the middle of my new best friend. In slow motion Rabbit's eyes widened and kept on widening. Its mouth opened in what I thought at first to be shock, but as it happens it turned out to be the outlet for most of Rabbit's insides. Blood, little though it was, splashed onto my top-of-the-range Gore-tex water and windproof trousers. The car moved on, and Rabbit was released. It's outstretched arms relaxed and it's head lolled to one side. Then the rear tyre went over it.


As I stood there looking down in horror, fear and despair, People in Cars driving past me, some avoiding Rabbit, some not, some beeping me, some swearing at me, I saw Rabbit turn into nothing more than a greasy black stain on the asphalt. Once all the People in Cars had gone and I was left alone, I put my feet on my pedals and rode off.


Boy, that was B L E A K.

Here's a video of a drawing I did with my pens that My Therapist said would be good for me to do.

MACHISMO

I sometimes get a lot of hassle and animosity off of other persons on bicycles. I know, hard to believe that I could upset people in such a way, but it is as much a fact as anything else you might read on the internet.


The simple reason for this seems to be my incredible, cutting edge super bike, which is a pedelec. This means it has an electric motor that gives me a boost uphill when my ageing 43 year old body needs it, especially when I can be carrying over 20kg extra weight in my awesome Bikebin panniers. 


I have almost lost count of the times lycra clad psyhcolists have screamed "cheat!", "you know that's cheating, don't you?", "you're on a lazy bike, you lazy c**t!" at me as I have whizzed past them. They seem to be under the misapprehension that I give a shit about them, and that I am only there because they are, whilst in reality I am just trying to go home from work.


Once I had a very mental run in with someone who's machismo was way off the scale. I was happily minding my own business, pedalling away like the madman I am, going up Prior Park Road in Bath. This is a long, steep, picturesque climb of over a mile. About half way up I drew up behind a rather out of shape looking man on one of those fold-up bikes with teeny weeny wheels. The rush hour persons in cars were roaring past us, so I couldn't overtake him, but strangely he started to speed up, his wobbly legs moving in a crazy blur. Oh well, I though, he's just trying to get a move on and not hold me up, how considerate. I just stayed behind him, trying to look for somewhere else to look other than his jiggly arse.


When we were nearing the top he suddenly slowed, and as it was safe to overtake, I sped up to carry on my merry way. As I came along side of him he turned to me and said something that would have filled me with horror, fear and despair if it hadn't been so stupid.


"I'm...not...racing...you...any...more" he wheezed. His face was the brightest shade of purple I have ever seen on a humanoid. Veins stood out on his twisted face like shiny blue snakes in a ugly swamp. Puffy and sweaty, looking like a angry baby tomato, his fiery eyes focused on my bike.
"Oh...you've...got...a...motor, you...cheat!" he puffed with all the venom his swollen head could manage. I stayed silent, it's best just to let these macho psychos just blow it all out of their moronic faces.


Then he said something which I couldn't help bursting out laughing in his bulging, blubbery, slimy face
"I...am...my...own...motor" the swollen one spluttered. I am my own motor? What in Zeus' name does that effin' mean? If he was his own motor, he was one motor that definitely needed to have a large cooling fan, some seats, four wheels, an exhaust, a steering wheel and go-faster stripes attached. His head looked like a giant shiny purple bell end, and I wasn't about to hang around as he shot his anger stuff all over my face.


I'd had enough and zoomed off up the hill.


About five minutes later, when I was pootling along the flat plateau at the top of the hill, minding my own business, thinking thoughts that only I can think and going past Ralph Allen school, the same purple machopath shot past me at an incredible speed. He blurted something unintelligible (probably something unkind about how I was a rubbish person or something), cut across traffic coming in the opposite direction and turned off into the sports centre, presumably to further prove his manliness by getting sweaty with another man by whacking their balls about.


Still, he sure showed me who was the better man.


Oddly enough, I have NEVER had anything other than cheery "Hello!"s and "oooo, tough hill!" from female persons on bicycles. I wonder why that is?

These guys need to grow up.