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.

Blossom

As I was riding along Brassmill Lane this morning a Person driving a Huge Articulated Lorry passed me. As they swerved back across the road towards me to avoid the other Person driving a Lorry coming the other way it violently brushed the branches of the cherry trees that line the road.


Pink white blossom and chunks of wood flew like thousands of butterflies and enormous pencils from the trees, twisting, dancing, spinning and clattering about me as I wobbled into the curb inches from my inevitable doom. Falling like snow, I found myself in a beautiful blizzard of petals and logs on the pavement looking up as the soft, feather-like tree prettyfiers fell on my purple wonder-filled face and twisted bone-heap of a body.


All I could think about as I lay there, the rain starting to hammer on my eyeballs, was "That Person driving a Lorry didn't even swerve to avoid those trees, what hope have I?"


"None" said the trees.


I guess it's time I booked another appointment with My Therapist.

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.

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.

Neck

I have done my neck in again, and will probably be on medication again. I couldn't look over my shoulder whilst riding to see my possible impending doom racing towards me on the streets today. Ignorance is bliss, but a neck injury is a pain in the...er...um...ne...no...er...arse! Yes, ARSE!