Pirate

I once saw a Pirate in the canal. I'll let that sink in.

He was doing the breast stroke, I think. He had a hat, waistcoat, eyepatch and stripy top. He splashed about in the grey brown water for a while, whilst his young non-pirate friends hollered and jeered from their canal boats. After a minute the friends laughs and calls tailed off and he was just a daft man in pirate costume that was about to get a terrible case of diarrhoea.


He swam to the bank and struggled to get up onto dry land. No one helped him as they had all lost interest and were back drinking and swearing at people. I stopped my bike next to his scrabbling hands to help him out, and for one short moment, as my eyes met his eye, we both knew that he would probably do something that stupid again in a pathetic attempt to impress his friends. 

That's just what us clowns are like.

It's hard to be ignored.

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.

CAUTION

Nothing weird to report at all for such a long time, I'm starting to get suspicious. I mean, I have almost been flattened a few times and I got chased by a really vicious dog this morning, but nothing out of the ordinary there. 

What have the Things got planned for me? Is it something so terrible that it is taking a long while to put together the logistics of the event? Fear is building like a demented Lego house being put together by a kid who is jamming spiders between every brick, ready to be released on the unsuspecting parent (me) at any time that I decide I can't look at that crazy rattling Lego house any more. 

Best be at my most cautious...

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.

DRUGS

Riding to work today was greatly improved by being drugged to the eyeholes.

My fear had vanished as I smiled serenely at my grumpy looking car driving friends whizzing past me. I think this may have had a rather negative effect on some of them as they were very aggressive with their language and hand gestures. Still, I am so pumped full of emotion numb-ers that I really couldn't give a fudge. 

I am now back on my bike full time again after an extended Christmas/injury based holiday. The postings will resume tomorrow....

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!

I AM ON HOLIDAY (special)

I do not like going on holiday. I like working and staying at home and stuff. Holidays are for chumps who love to waste their money on fleeting things and feeble memories of forced happy times. Saying all that, I still have to go on holiday sometimes, but I have found a holiday that even I can stand. Centre Parcs, and I have got to say that it is AWESOME TO THE MAX.

Number one: I get to take my bike with me. Everyone is forced to ride bikes, even big fat 4x4 driving important business types who look like walruses having sex with a metal  super skinny supermodel with wheels as they puff red-faced up the almost vertical hills. 

Number two: Cars are banned, and anyone found driving one there is nailed to the road and people on bicycles can ride over their groins over and over again.

Number three: All the animals there are alive and not flat with their insides outside and they run up to you and talk and stuff.

You just crossed the line Flatso!

Number four: it has the best swimming pool in the world. It is just a shame they get all shirty when you try and ride your bike down the rapids when you've had too much booze. Those life guard guys have no sense of humour.

They really should put a sign up to say you can't do it, the fiddlewonkers.

Number four: if you live in a tiny crap hole like my house, well the Centre Parcs chalets will seem like a fonking mansion. They have everything you need and are so lovely I have to be pulled kicking and screaming outside every morning I am there. I will admit that is a bit like when I am at home, but then I am being pushed outside to face the horrors on The Route (to work).

Number five: No Dogs.

Number six: No Crusty Jugglers (they can't afford it. Anyway their whole life is like one big holiday at tax payers expense, eh? Am I right? Yeah, a holiday with very little food, no hope of an end and constant misery, like that time I was forced to go to Minorca.)

Number seven: There's a big sports thing there to if you're into that kind of shit. I stay well clear because that is where the very few undesirables who have slipped the net somehow and got in, hang out, drinking and hitting balls with sticks.

Number eight: The Pancake House. If you try and tell me there is a better place to eat on this bollock ball of a planet you are a liar who should stop lying, because people are starting to notice.

House of heavenly delights, sex with eggs.