Six Nations

So the rugby's started. Every year I hope the final table will look like this (with reasons):

1. England - I'm English; born here, live here most of the time

2. Wales - Land of my Father's

3. France - love the place, and if I hadn't have hit the jackpot by being born an Englishman, being French would have been a good runner's up prize

4. Italy - generally self-regarding narcissists; same can't be said of the rugby team though and I love them for that

5. Ireland - troublesome Celts, but as not as bothersome as they used to be

6. Scotland - more troublesome Celts, and ungrateful ones at that

😉

Stuart Marconi

So last Friday on the train into Manchester I ended up sitting across the aisle from Stuart Maconie, or Stuart Marconi as Mrs M insists on calling him, principally because she loves seeing me roll my eyes despairingly. I seriously contemplated asking him for a selfie for about 10 minutes, until I remembered I was a grown-up man, and not a 16 year old of either gender. Anyway, should you be interested, he was very nicely dressed, he's surprisingly svelte below the neck, and he's got a white iPhone 6. 

But the point of mentioning that was that thinking about him now reminded me of the band Pop Will Eat Itself for some reason. Remember them? Probably not if you're under 40. Maybe I was reminded of their name because I did an Audax last Sunday, and it felt a bit I was contributing to cycling doing itself harm. Now, I'll make no bones about it, I'm the guiltiest of guilty parties here - I only did the damn ride to get a 200km Paris-Brest-Paris qualifier under my belt. I hadn't ridden my bike since last September, and I won't riding it again for some time to come, what with me being entered in the Cambridge Marathon in 5 weeks time. I was riding purely to qualify for another event, not because I really wanted to be there.

If it's any consolation to those of purer cycling credentials than me, I had a miserable time. First off, I'd forgotten what a sodding faff it is to ride a pre-set route during the winter. Overshoes, Garmin, front lights, back lights, computer, food, drink, blah blah....I made the fatal mistake of not writing down everything I needed, which meant I started with no food, no neckwarmer and a bad attitude. The morning in the sunshine was vaguely pleasant, but two punctures in the early afternoon began to sap my spirit. Add in the recurring problem of losing much of my vision on a long ride in coolish weather, a misbehaving derailleur (my fault), and a sense of overwhelming boredom, and, well I've had better days. And on Monday I paid the price of riding 200km with no riding preparation - the groinal channels either side of my Gentleman's Area were redder than a sunburned Arthur Scargill.

But to get back to the main point - there were loads of Audaxers there. Loads of 'em. Some were quite interesting, two in particular - they were doing the ride on Ellipti-trainer type bikes. Weird looking things, and the bikes weren't much different. But there were also many who just weren't in the spirit of things; not only did they not have beards nor sandals nor a tricycle, but they were riding carbon bikes with neither mudguards nor mapholders nor a gargantuan saddlebag. Hell, three years ago they'd probably have been on a golf course. There can be no greater expression of disgust on my part.

So I'm off back to the world of running for a while, but it might be time to start a counter-revolution - time to dust off that mountain bike do you reckon?......

10 Things That Mystify Me

When I'm out running or cycling I generally feel full of vitality, energy and fitness - certainly more than when I was a fat 30 year old with three small children and no opportunity to exercise.  I look in the mirror and I see an early middle-aged looking man; plenty of random hairs sprouting from ears, nose and increasingly (and strangely) temples, all of which have to be removed weekly, but not too many wrinkles by-and-large. (My favourite wrinkles story concerns Mick Jagger and George Melly, who I met once.  Apparently George commented to Mick that he was looking old, and had plenty of wrinkles to prove it. Jagger replied "they're just laughter lines"; Melly's retort was "nothing's that funny Mick"). I wear skinny jeans and listen to BBC 6 Music, and occasionally Radio 1. In other words, whilst I may be 48, I don't feel completely out of touch. But then I see stuff that I don't understand, mystifies me indeed, and in most cases I can only attribute it to the fact I'm becoming an Old Duffer.

Here are 10 of those things.

1. Quite a lot of TV adverts:  I frequently, having watched an advert, have to turn to Mrs Monmarduman to ask her what the heck it was they were actually promoting. God knows what 80 year olds think is going on, though to be fair many of them are probably more on the ball then me. My hypothesis though is that if I don't know what's being sold the ad can't be that effective. However, the products are usually games for Xbox, PS2, that kind of thing, products for women (hair colourants and the like), or payday loan companies. I then realise that I'm not in the target audience for any of these things, so maybe the ad's actually ok
   
2. Why people feel the need to walk down the street sipping from a plastic cup of coffee only marginally smaller than a bucket:  Now, I love coffee; it's one of life's, and morning's, great joys - much more interesting than tea, warming in winter, and a mild stimulant. I drink it most days. But bleak will be the day when my dependency on it is so strong, or my time management is so poor, that I have to drink it in the street (not carrying it; that's ok, it's the drinking bit).  It makes the people who do it just look like upmarket hot beverage junkie; don't do it!
   
3. Trolls and the people who react to them: we all know Katie Hopkins (to choose a recent example) is a deranged publicity seeker, so why give her the proverbial oxygen of publicity by creating a fuss about it? Attention is what people like her and the even more destructive, foul-mouthed trolls crave. Don't give it them. Block them or ignore them, but don't react to them
   
4. People who email or phone to complain about things on TV: you know the sort - "Dear BBC, I was outraged the other day when Charlie Newsreader was wearing his poppy at an angle of 42 degrees instead of the properly respectful 45 degrees. I shan't be paying my licence fee as a result". Who has the time or motivation to do that?
   
5. Why people hero-worship Ed Sheeran: it is, I grant you, refreshing and unusual to see a ginger thriving in his/her chosen field (and I say that as the parent of 1.5 ginger offspring), and his rendition of Stevie Wonder's Master Blaster on the Hootenanny the other night was masterful, the adulation seems to go way, way beyond the quality of his songs. Am I missing something?
   
6. Why anyone gives Russell Brand the time of day: jeepers, I'm not even going to explain this one. He's not making any valid political points, he's just a career-savvy opportunist
   
7. Over-cheerful TV presenters, and I'm not talking about those who present children's TV; they're allowed to be wacky and cheerful. No, the particular offenders I'm referring tend to be either weather people, or presenters of magazine programmes like Countryfile. I don't know whether they think waving their hands around, or walking round a field and pretending to meet interviewees there creates some sort of 'personality' (which of course is one of the building blocks to the modern Cult of Celebrity), but it really annoys me. It's not how normal people who aren't Americans behave. Calm down, and just either tell me whether it's going to rain, or introduce the next item in a calm and considered manner.  That's my 3rd TV-related entry; you can tell it's winter and I've not worked for the last month
   
8. New Year's Eve celebrations: this naturally is a seasonal entry, but yesterday's headlines included "Six Stabbed At The Belfry", "35 Trampled To Death in Shanghai", and "Man Murdered With Axe In Pub Brawl Near Plymouth". We also went out on New Year's Eve, and I drove the few miles home, my desire to drink being heavily outweighed by the downsides of having to locate and pay for a taxi home. In that time I saw three people prone on the pavement, one of whom had required the attention of the constabulary. I don't understand why celebrating things, and NY Eve in particular, seems to involve so much misery. Then again, I suspect some of those who bedded down on the pavement at 1 am yesterday told their mates later that they'd had a fabulous New Year
   
9. Wearing your jeans so low your pants are on show: oh I know all the explanations of where this came from and why Da Youth do it, but still - it's really impractical and uncomfortable. You could say the same about women wearing high-heeled shoes I suppose, but at least there's an aesthetic pleasure with that, whereas low slung jeans and exposed boxer shorts have all the appeal of a week-old turkey
   
10. Criticism of Wetherspoon pubs: maybe we're lucky in Macclesfield, or maybe I just don't go in on Friday and Saturday nights, but I don't understand why Wetherspoons have acquired a reputation for being haunts of the less-refined members of society. I use our local one regularly, and it's a pleasure - an extensive menu and well-cooked food, a wide range of beers, wines and harmless old men in corners, free wifi, and as I discovered today, unlimited coffee for £1.15. What's not to love?  Unnecessary snobbery, that's what.

Right, that's it. My next post is already written - it's very long, very personal and quite heavy. I need to look at it again to make sure I'm happy it being at t'interweb, but if I am, brace yourselves.

Where do we go from here?

Whilst I was walking into town this morning to do a few last bits of Christmas shopping I listened to one of Radio 4's many excellent programmes. This one was called 'The Long View', and today's subject was diaries through the ages, from Pepys to vlogging. One of the contributors - I forget who - suggested that blogs are just a form of diary, and a diary is just an act of ego; a projection of ourselves we want to make to the outside world. This got me thinking - do I write this for myself, or do I write it for anonymous readers? Is it an act of ego; do I want those readers - you - to think of me in a particular way?

I haven't answered those questions yet. What I do know, however, is that there are several times a year when I look back at what I've written in the past. I find it interesting, which leads me to think I write mainly for myself, and if other people ind it interesting too, well, that's a happy accident. I don't look back for a historical record of what was going on at a particular time, more to see what I was thinking at that point. More often than not of course, given the provenance of this blog, it's running or cycling-related stuff. But writing about that stuff week-in, week-out bores me, to be frank. I'm not bored of doing the events, or even the training for them, but the process of preparation and completion doesn't seem to merit a higher standing than any other number of potential topics.

So having written this time last year that 2014 would be a back-to-basics year when it came to subject matter, I'm now rescinding that promise, to myself mainly. From here on, any subject is fair game. I'm a grumpy middle-aged man for goodness sake, I need an outlet for my prejudices, views, observations and disappointments. 

So let's start with one of the aforementioned, briefly today. It's not going to be Christmas-related - that would be lazy and obvious. It's about freedom of speech, and Twitter in particular. I understand why people who make threats of violence via that medium are arrested and sometimes charged, and agree with it. But I read this afternoon that a 19 year old from Sunderland has been arrested for making an offensive 'joke' about the Glasgow bin lorry crash yesterday. I read what he wrote on Twitter yesterday. It was offensive, insensitive in the extreme, and deeply unfunny. But I completely fail to see what law he might have been breaking that would require his arrest. I worry that this is just the latest incident in the policing - official and otherwise - of what constitutes acceptable views. I fear we're going down the path of the censorship of thoughts and their expression. And from there, it's a short step to the undermining of democracy itself. Though I do wonder whether as many people believe in that idea as used to be the case.

On that happy note, it's time for a sweet sherry and to wish you a very happy Christmas.

Running With The Pack by Mark Rowlands

I said I'd be away for a couple of months.  That was 20th September.  Two months to the day later, 20th November, I'm back, but not in the usual way. In the intervening period I've read a brilliant book. I've read several brilliant books actually, but only one that would mean anything to people who do athletic endurance-type stuff (the author is a runner but it would equally apply to cyclists, walkers, climbers I suspect) in particular; the one in the title of this post.

I'm not going to justify or explain why I think it's brilliant. Instead, I'm just going to quote one passage, one of many in the book, that resonated with me. Read it as an endurance athlete and you'll get a feeling of recognition (I hope). Read it an a non-endurance athlete, and you'll get an insight as to why we do it (I hope). Here goes.

"I can say, with confidence, that the run of 26.2 miles I have just completed had nothing to do with pleasure. In fact, I can safely say that it was deeply unpleasant, especially during the second 13.1. Nor was there afterwards any compensating warm glow of satisfaction that accompanies a job well done, something that would wash away the unpleasantness.  I do remember a vague, difficult-to-pin-down, post-race sense of perplexity - a kind of 'Well, what now?' sensation - but from an experiential standpoint that was about it. Nevertheless, I would not be similarly confident in the claim that, both when running and after the race was over, I was not happy. On the contrary, I suspect I was deeply, inordinately, even disgustingly, happy. If this is correct, then it seems I am forced to conclude that not all happiness is pleasure. Sometimes happiness does not even involve pleasure.

When someone talks of 'enjoying' something, they often mean nothing more than they find it pleasurable - 'fun'. This is an age of feelings. It has to be so - feelings are distractions from a life dominated by work. And so, we have come to think, what can joy be other than an especially heightened feeling of pleasure - pleasure deepened and intensified? But what I have called joy went hand-in-hand with a rather brutal form of experiential unpleasantness. So in what sense, and with what justification, can I call this experience 'joy'?

Joy is the the other form of happiness - the variety of happiness that cannot be understood as pleasure. As pleasure, happiness is defined by the way it feels. But this is not true of happiness as joy.....Joy is the experience - the recognition - of intrinsic value in life. Joy is the recognition of the things in life that are valuable for their own sake: the things in life that are worthy of love. Pleasure distracts us from does not have intrinsic value. Joy is the recognition of what does. Pleasure is a way of feeling. But joy is a way of seeing. Joy is something that pleasure is not and can never be. It is the recognition of the places in life where all the points and purposes stop."

The Devil makes work for idle legs

This is the last post on here for a bit, for which there are a couple of reasons. First, I completed the last of this year's aims yesterday, of which more in a moment. Second, this blog (like others I suspect) sometimes achieves the opposite of the 'social' bit in the phrase 'social media' - because other people know what I'm doing they don't initiate contact with me. So time to stop broadcasting, at least for a couple of months.

Before I say au revoir though...some realisations from this year....

- I like doing athletic things with and competing against other people (it's hard to train on your own most of the time)

- events which are long for the sake of it are appealing in theory, but not loads of fun in practice. Anything longer than 10 hours or so? No thanks

- cycling in a warm place with loads of nice quiet roads make sense, running doesn't; cycling in a cold place with potholed, busy roads doesn't make sense, running does

So, my aim for the first quarter of next year is to run a sub 3 hour marathon. It'll be tough getting to that point, but not totally unrealistic. That's what the next few months will be about. Other than the usual life stuff of course.

And finally.....yesterday. The Devil's Pitchfork is not an 'official' ride in any sense; it's just one put together by Pyractif, the lovely business and people we stay with in the Pyrenees. It's basically a ride down to a town (Bagneres-de-Luchon), five 'out-and-back' climbs up sodding great mountains, and then the ride back to base from Luchon again. 112 miles in total, 14,200 feet of ascent and descent. For those that know the area or care about these things, the five climbs are Col de Portillon, Hospice de France, Superbagneres, Col de Peyresourde, and Port de Bales respectively. All different, all hard. To do it all in a day, and unsupported, as we were, is a decent effort - it was certainly a day to rival anything most Tours de France create. (Only they race 20 days out of 22; I wouldn't fancy anything competitive today).

Well, we did it, me and Mendip Rouleur. We weren't fast overall, but we had our moments on the descents. A few 55mph, straightening out the curves and hoping there wasn't anything coming in the opposite direction moments actually. There were no dramas; we ground our way up the five hills, and we hung on for dear life coming down them.

I feel curiously neutral about it today. No sense of achievement really. I planned it, I trained for it, I did it. End. Perhaps because I've had a month in France, even the beauty of the Pyrenees didn't have the impact it usually does. Maybe I need some work, some discomfort, some contrast. Don't misunderstand - I'm delighted I came down and did the ride, and trained for it in the last few weeks. It's just that I'm already looking ahead to the next challenge. And when I return here in due course, it'll be the progress towards that challenge I'll be on about. In the meantime, as they say round here, a bientot et bon journee (with apologies for the absence of appropriate accents).

A Postcard From Home

I’ve been in France for 23 days now, my longest uninterrupted time outside the UK since I was a student, and the house we’ve owned for 4 years finally feels like home-home, rather than a holiday home. Which is nice – I’ve just ‘been’, rather than felt any pressure to ‘do’.

That said, plenty has happened to make worthwhile those long days in airless offices dealing with petty trivialities. In no particular order:

-        T’youngest was here for the first six days, the first time I’d spent any real time with her for many a long month

-        Friends, previously from Macc, now wandering minstrels currently bouncing between the UK and Australia, were here for another five days. I think I may even have created another road cycling enthusiast – he certainly took to thin wheels and clipless pedals as quickly as anyone I’ve ever known

-        The weather has been near perfect. We’ve had 2 days of rain, but the rest of the time it’s been uninterrupted niceness with temperatures unusually higher than even the unseasonably good ones the UK has been enjoying. I finally have a clearly defined, if not yet sufficiently developed for my liking, cyclists’/farmers’ (delete to suit) tan

-        Local life has been embraced. Half the hamlet were round for aperos (aperitifs) at 6.30 last night, which turned into ‘Breton aperos’ – i.e. they stumbled out at 11.30 after too much drink and too little food. And this weekend sees the infamous “Fete des Pommes de Terre” (Festival of the Potatoes), when the population swells by a factor of three, and delegations from Poland, Roumania and Guadeloup arrive to compliment the local Breton growers on the volume, robustness and variety of their harvest of their apples of the earth. There is much drinking, dancing and eating, nearly all of it potato-related. One of the attractions on offer is a helicopter flight over the local potato fields, an opportunity of which Mrs M and I will be availing ourselves; the money is paid, the Sunday slot is booked, our wills are in the filing cabinet

-        I’ve ridden my bicycle. Quite a lot, for me. Three longish rides and 7-8 shorter ones. Whether that’s enough to prepare me for the Pyrenean challenge I’ll face next week is debateable. It’s probably even debateable whether it’s been enough to offset the red wine and puddings that have wormed their way to the table with increasing regularity

-        I did the Icebucket Challenge, despite vowing not to. Results on F/b. I couldn’t ignore the second nomination. It’ll be Medicin Sans Frontiers who get my donation however rather than whatever American charity it was for whom the bandwagon started rolling. Nothing against them, just MSF do great work, as I’ve mentioned before. And there were no nominations for anyone else from me – give, don’t give, it’s up to you, but FFS don’t need a stunt to do it

-        There have been more animals than you can shake a shitty stick at. Aside from the regularly imported family moggy and resident dog that comes 50 yards on his summer holidays to our house, we’ve experienced mice (dead ones; live ones banished back outside to take their chances in harvest fields), sheep (keeping next doors fed and watered in their owner’s absence), donkeys (there was a Festival of them last weekend; yup, there is almost nothing the rural French won’t have a festival to celebrate), and a pair of unidentified furry beasts – lots of internet research has been inconclusive, but I think it was a type of mink we saw frolicking down by the river at dusk

-        And finally……I’ve renovated my French shed. On the outside it was washed, repainted (two coats), stripped of its old roof covering, and re-covered with membrane and sexy red asphalt. On the inside it was stripped, washed, racking added and things replaced with careful consideration. Oh the joy of a personality disorder thoroughly indulged

Right, the day is young, and I have nothing much more to do and all day to do it, blissfully. That said, I’m kind of glad there’s only another couple of weeks of planned inactivity; whether here or the UK, I’d have to start ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’ after that.