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

ALL IN MY HEAD, EH?

Last night, as I was nearing the very end of the canal path part of my journey home, where it joins Winsley Hill, an incident happened that falls into the categories Dog Attack and Weird Shit.


The sky was dark, probably due to the sun being blocked out by the Earth itself (that's weird for a start), and the path at this point becomes very narrow, with a tangled hedgerow on one side, and the bottomless pit of miasmic blackness that is the canal, on the other. I have a very, very bright light on the front of my utterly futuristic bike, so even though the night was oppressively dark, my path home was totally illuminated like something lit up with a bike light. The path seemed empty, I say seemed!


Suddenly to the hedgerow side, a savage growling and gnashing of dagger-filled jaws broke out, and the sound of a hound from my twisted nightmares thudding after me came to my shocked and frightened and over-large ears. I could not see my hellish assailant though, due to the inky blackness behind me.


Now, after my previous Dog Attack by Snappy the Staff from the Dog Dispenser (see an earlier post, can't remember when, the days merge into one when you get no sleep), I have taken to wearing a dog whistle around my neck to help protect me from dog-based maulings, but this creates a dilemma: do I reach for my pathetic whistle and to go on the offensive or do I use my hands to change gear and outrun my tormentor?


All I can say is don't try to do what I did: Both.


I ended up with my head bouncing off my handle bars and actually slowing down as my unseen tormentor closed on me. Ahead was the turn off for the road that I needed to take, there I would need to stop and get off my bike to get up to the road, presenting a perfect opportunity for the creature to take some chunks.


But it didn't. 


Why? Because it had vanished! I know that is hard to believe, I hardly know whether to trust myself in my current mental state, but it is true! I scrambled up to the road bridge over the canal and shone my Super-trooper style light beam down the path: nothing! Suddenly I was filled with horror, fear and despair as I realised that I had most probably been chased by the ghost of a dog that may or may not have died on this exact spot 10 years ago to the second or some sort of spooky shit like that!

ACTUAL MIND-PHOTO OF MY ASSAILANT, EXTRACTED FROM MY HEAD BY COMEDY HYPNOTHERAPIST DERREN BROWN.

MERCEDES NO-CLASS

I recently had to travel on my trusty brand new state of the art push bike to my Dad's house in Melksham from my home in Winsley.

I decided that the scenic route would be best as going on the main roads has certain perils that I won't go into here.  Part of the journey goes on the bridal-path past Great Chalfield Manor. Such a beautiful, but deeply rutted and muddy-puddled roadlet to traverse. The cosy tree-lined path opens up to wide, exposed fields at one point where it then resembles a WW1 trench.

Imagine my utter horror, despair and fear when I saw a Mercedes S Class coming towards me. Anyone unfamiliar with these penis extensions I have included a picture of one below. Now, we are talking a very muddy path here and I was very concerned that the man driving the car had got lost and now his shiny lovely automobile was getting very dirty. Very. He showed no sign of slowing though, in fact his headlights came on full beam and he seemed to accelerate towards me.

SITE OF HAPPENING

Something must have got him spooked.

I pulled over as far as I could to let him pass. I thought I would get a cheery wave of thanks for my actions, but all I received was an impassive, stoney glare. What had terrified this man to the extent that he would carelessly drive towards me like I was a school kid at a zebra crossing?

He drew alongside of me and proceeded to splash down into some large mud pools, the contents of which, luckily I stopped going over the verge (I can't abide a messy verge) with my legs and body parts. He looked down at me and then drove on at speed. 

I scanned the horizon to see if there was anything in pursuit, and to my hideous horror I saw something that filled me with horror of a hideous kind. 

Now, I can't be 100% sure of what I saw, I may have been mistaken, but outlined against the brooding sky was the outline of an enormous deers head and antlers! 

Other people have pointed out to me that this could well have been an old lightening-hit tree in the field, but I can see no other explanation for the driver's actions.

It must have been the ghost of the deer from yesterday's post still pursuing his earthly car-based murder supplier!

RECONSTRUCTION