Autrefois tu respirais le soleil d’or

I stopped counting how many rides over 161/200km I had done back in 2017. It was at the point that I had pushed my Edington number over 100-Imperial, which had taken a concerted effort over a couple of years, from its previous 92. It was hard enough doing the additional rides, a lot more than 8 in case you are wondering, but it took even more effort to keep a record and plan the intricacies. For once in my life I was able to drop a compulsion, leave it behind, and concentrate on just the sheer pleasure of riding a bike. 

There were still challenges though. The Cent Cols in 2018 still ranks as the biggest and toughest event I have ever, probably will ever, do on a bike. Then I have had health issues, job issues, family and friend issues, all of which take a little bit out of you, and change you, sometimes in a positive way, sometimes not. But I like to think I always learn something productive if I strive hard enough.

One thing I did learn from riding all those rides back in 2016-17 was how to get through the tough bits of a journey on a bike. The hardest part of a long ride, for me anyway, was between the 60-80% mark, give or take a few KM or the odd hill. This has happened consistently enough to make it one of my known rules.  I reasoned a few explanations. At 60% you have already put quite a lot of effort in to be a bit tired, but you are still a fair way off the finish. On a 200km ride that could be 2-3 hours away. Likewise, you may need to eat something, and it will take a bit of time to have a restorative effect. I’m always rubbish at fuelling early, I’m always playing catch-up.  If you are very tired, it’s amazing how restorative a short stop can be, especially when combined with the refuelling.

Last week I was in the Cèvennes, on holiday, tracking down some of the ancestral Huguenot haunts, but also rehabilitating my soul, and my knee, with some moderate hilly riding in very quiet and deserted hills. It was a great break, very refreshing, and a wonderful place to refresh the batteries before the onslaught of an English Winter. There was also plenty of fuelling, but generally of a nutritious kind, and enough activity to also enable the shedding of a couple of kg of baggage.

I don’t know about you but I’m hoping not to die at all, to be the first person to live forever, in a real, literal and physical sense. What’s more I hope to maintain enough physical fitness to be able to ride a bike until eternity, albeit  may have to continue to compromise on the gearing. 

Failing that, like French legend Robert Marchand, I’ll settle for a decent performance into my 11th decade. That being so, tomorrow I’ll enter that 60-80% zone. It seems astounding to me the ride is that far advanced already, it seems like only yesterday I was at the first control, or cresting the halfway point. 

What can you do to slow this ride down? Of course, there is nothing to stop the passing, and the ravages of time. My knee for example, whilst better, is not perfect, and I still have some pain in it. I think I may try some more physiotherapy. But it might also be that horrible of horrible, the “new normal”. But I can still ride up 20% gradients and 15km climbs without stopping, so it is not a disaster.

There really is only one answer, and it’s the same answer as for all those other long rides. Eat something, preferably the right thing, have some restorative breaks when you can, savour what you have accomplished, enjoy the company of your loved ones and your friends, but  more than that, take pleasure from the ride while it lasts.

Chapeau

 Hats off to the Met office. Apparently we have just had the warmest month of May on record in the UK or England, or somewhere. Perhaps the whole world, seems likely. I don’t know exactly where because I haven’t been paying enough attention to the weather over the last 48 hours since I came back from a gloriously sunny ride to the Bere Cider café with Steve on Sunday. We had hoped to go to Langport, but one of their cafés has become decidedly cyclist-unfriendly, and consequently the other was overflowing with Lycra and merino-clad, fair-weather seekers. And fun seekers.

Our family was quite fortunate though as we did benefit from a fantastic holiday in the Maya area of Mexico back in late March and early April. It was hot and sunny every day, and we had a wonderful time. Junior is now 23 and it was very, very scary when he decided to climb a fairly precipitous pyramid in a very isolate jungle site, well out of the range of mobile phone signals, towns with hospitals or anything vaguely resembling health and safety. I suppose it’s good for him, and good for us as parents, to indulge in the kind of moderate risk-taking that I probably thought quite tame back in the 1970s. This is him in the blue shirt going up, anbout halfway to the top, and trust me, it’s a lot steeper than it looks. But I couldn’t watch him come down.

I haven’t seen much evidence of this warmth though in May that they talked about so much. A quick internet search revealed that it was an average warmth caused by a lack of Spring frosts. The daytime temperatures were generally shit, and from what I experienced, murky and/or dull and/or wet. So Sunday was a very welcome tonic. 

But there were as I said, hundreds of cyclists out on the roads on Sunday. Not that I can blame them. As it was my last ride for a while, I too was desperate to get out into the rare 2024 Spring sunshine, and was delighted that the café at Bere was so quiet. A lovely chat and ride before, during and after, enabled by a very fit Steve. Thanks for the shelter back across the moors. In fact it was such a lovely day that we ducked into Sweet’s cafe, immediately post lunch, for a quick ice-cream. To be fair, I did do the longest ride I’d done for quite a while. Although my hill-climbing has suffered by (lack of) virtue of not riding up any hills recently, I have been chugging up and down the back lanes and gravel paths in May. All of which has helped build a certain, if not high, level of fitness.

The reward for which came yesterday, when my knee surgeon gave what I took to be a compliment, saying my leg was in “fine shape”, just before he drew two arrows in indelible marker pen, pointing directly to the right knee. It was oddly comforting to know that despite all the high technology interventions, monitoring and minimal invasive nature of meniscus surgery these days, some things do need an old-fashioned touch. Not that I’m complaining in any way. The internet, home to all medical truths, is full of stories of the wrong thing being done, all for the want of a good marker pen.

The tear in the meniscus was too bad to repair, so it’s been trimmed. Apparently this is a quicker operation to recover from, which is good, a slightly higher chance of future osteoarthritis, which is bad, but then to do nothing presented an ongoing risk of further deterioration requiring major surgery and almost definite bone on bone contact. I did the injury about seven months ago and tried physio, exercises and it clearly was getting no better. It wasn’t fully functional on the bike - I couldn’t go hard or ride long hills, and I couldn’t really walk longer distances than a half mile or so. 

So it had to be done. I’ve got crutches, more to take a bit of pressure off for a couple of weeks, pain is minimal and well-controlled by just ibuprofen and I am feeling confident. Before you say anything I will follow the advice of my CMO (Chief Medical Officer), aka Mrs Mendip Rouleur, not to be too impatient. The most surprising thing has actually been the impact of the general anaesthetic because I’m still tired today, despite lots of sleep, but it has been only 24 hours as I write, since I came round from the operation.

I also know I am very, very fortunate to be able to get it done relatively quickly. It’s also a very, very minor condition and “procedure”, so a speedy recovery is very doable, mainly thanks to those legs being in a fine condition. 

A big thanks to Mark Cox if he’s reading this. Or even if he is not. I was originally supposed to be doing the Somerset 100 as usual in May, but of course all this malarkey put paid to that, even though the operation got delayed by two weeks to the beginning of June. But it was so kind of him to allow me 12 months to enter and complete the course. So here is my plan:

1. Try not to eat too much for the next month.

2. Gentle and easy riding in  July then August, building up to a few hills towards the end of the month

3. Off to the Cevennes in September, for a mixture of warm weather flat road, tree-lined boulevards, hunting the haunts of the ancestors, enjoying the food & culture, and maybe, just maybe a few gentle gradients.

4. Come back and do the Somerset 100 on or near my 60th Birthday. Weather and fitness permitting. If I wimp out and do the 100km, I can call it 60 at 60. 

The hospital did offer me the non-slip socks as a leaving present, but I declined on the basis that they weren’t Rapha, or even Merino wool, and that shade of chartreuse doesn’t quite match the lightweight Brevet jersey I have. But is was a very kind and tempting offer. No one wants to think about the surgical pants.

I do have a big event coming up in a couple of weeks time over in Cardiff, which I’m hoping I’ll be able to go to because I’ll be safe to drive by then. I should be. The nurse told me that if I can crush a matchbox with my foot that indicates I’m safe enough to brake for an emergency stop. I thought about asking her what psi I’d need for that, but decided against. The constant questions about how soon could I ride a static bike, a bike on the road, a bike uphill and a bike in the mountains, had clearly led her to the belief that I was some kind of obsessive freak, and I didn’t want to give her any more evidence. But I’m pretty sure the Principality stadium, middle tier, should be fine. I’ll take the crutches, I might even get the Hat

I do love her music, especially her later stuff. The new album is great as was the last, but it was the two lockdown albums that I enjoy the most. I’m also looking forward to the cultural phenomenon that is a Taylor gathering. Just hope that all the younger Swifties are not trying to stand up the whole time, I may have to deploy the crutches in a way they were not intended.

Just like stand-up comedy and gravel riding, you have to put yourself outside your comfort zones sometimes and just go for it. Put on a different set of clothes, a new mindset and a new hat, and live a little. Or even a lot.

Like an angel on a balcony

I’ve got a lot going on at the moment.

Work is super busy and home life is a juggling act sometimes, with three people now working in the house. Yet again it has felt like a long Winter, with a dose of flu to improve the mood and almost perpetual rain it seems since January. Despite all of my vim and vigour, I’m a bit ground down by the mundanity of it all. Isn’t that how things end? Not with a blaze of glory but a mild disappointment and the slow grind to a halt?

My left shoulder bore the brunt of the brachial neuritis attack in 2021. After my own immune system had done its best to mess up my motor neurones in my arms, shoulders and hands, the differing rates at which all my muscles recovered pulled the shoulder out of alignment. It took the excellent work of a physiotherapist, and great support from a personal trainer to gently ease it back together again. The most complicated joint in the body apparently.

But shit happens to all of us and I was fortunate to have the resources and support in place to recover. Now I have conquered the shoulder I have moved onto the next most complicated joint, the knee. It all started with the acquisition of a titanium gravel bike back in January last year. Unbeknownst to me titanium is quite a slippy material, particularly when you have a carbon seat post stuck in the frame. I had noticed a bit of knee pain, more of a dull ache really, in my left knee in the late Spring, but by the time the late Summer came around it was pretty much gone.

Then just before Christmas all of a sudden I got an agonising pain in my right knee. To cut a very long story short, it transpired that the seat post had been slipping down by tiny increments all the way through the Spring, probably causing the dull ache, until the switch to the carbon bike over the Summer halted the damage. Then switch back to the gravel in the Autumn and boom, a problem. 

Some physio diagnosed meniscus inflammation, he reckoned it would heal over a few weeks, with some leg strengthening thrown into the bargain. I followed the prescribed routines and did see small, gradual. improvements. I also fixed the saddle height, and made sure I measured it every week, and added a stronger clamp. But what I hadn’t bargained for was the impact of some walking. Having walked from Temple Meads to my work office and back last Thursday I was a bit sore on Friday. But all seemed OK on Saturday so I thought nothing of heading out in the cause of democracy to deliver some leaflets in the remote parts of Winscombe on Saturday. Six miles to be precise, who’d have thought there could be that many long drives in Winscombe and Sidcot.

By Sunday morning I couldn’t walk. I could barely bend or extend the knee, put weight on it when I stood up and it kept locking up at awkward moments. Generally once I got going I could hobble about, but it was pretty painful and very stiff.  It’s improved a little today - not locking up and I can put weight on it - but it’s still far from its best self.

 Very, very annoying. But those resources are going to come in handy again, I’m getting the knee scanned on Sunday in an MRI scanner, so I hope at least I know what I’m dealing with. Ironically I did find the 10 yards of cycling on the patio didn’t hurt at all. Getting on and off the bike was agonising and problematic though, so I guess that rules it out as a means of transportation for the time being. If only I was a member of the Royal family - I could have a footman lift me on and off the gravel bike at each end of the journey.

I’m also going to have to fess up to our next MP (I hope!) that I’m going to struggle to deliver her last set of leaflets. If you fancy a good walk in Winscombe, let me know, you’ll be doing democracy and the country a massive service. 

All of this is a proper pain, figuratively as well as literally. I’ve calculated quite a few numbers recently, and all of this time off the bike is eating into my lifetime-available riding days. Anyway, once I get this knee sorted out, however long it takes, I’m not keen to work through more joints, complicated or simple.

Especially as Spring is round the corner. In every sense. I just hope it turns out like Spring ‘97 not ‘92!

We had great fun last week one night after work, a team event making clay pots. Mine is below, and I think it looks amazing. It’s obviously a self-portrait, the likeness is uncanny. From the weather-beaten face, the wispy hair, to the huge ears and ever-growing eyebrows it is 59-year old me made clay.

 In all senses of the word, make of it what you will. I won’t claim to have any technical proficiency, nor monetisable talent or much imagination. Well, not in terms of clay pots anyway. But I tell you one thing. It will take a very clever type of Artificial Intelligence to replicate this in a hurry.

Anyway, just in case you were worried about the downbeat nature of this post, rest assured I am not giving up. That’s not what I do. Quite apart from anything else, I am too stubborn to admit defeat and there are a few people I have to prove wrong before I’m finished. I think Hunter Thompson was a bit of an idiot in most senses, but in one respect he had it right when he said this:

“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow, what a ride!””

At first you never notice then the years go flying by

 In 2020 I wrote 12 pieces on this blog, in 2021 it was 13. But last year I slipped to just 5, and now in 2023, this is just my 4th. It will be the last for 2023 I promise.

It’s not as though there isn’t much going on to write about, nor have I been short of opinions. I suspect that’ll never happen. No, the reason is that paradoxically as life moves on, I seem to be getting busier, with little time to reflect. At least through the medium of a blog which is read by, at best, around 100 people. My attention span, never the best, is ever-shortening too. I read recently of a new acronym, insidiously encroaching on the corporate world - TLTR - “too long to read”.

More is going on, more is happening to us, there are more sources of content, and because of this, we have less time to actually absorb anything meaningful. Or perhaps, our poor, overloaded brains, have less capacity to actually discern the wheat from the chaff, the spam from the insightful.

If you have made it this far, well done, you obviously can still follow a narrative, and I welcome you to my review of 2023. A tradition that I both despise and embrace, deride and celebrate. Life is indeed full of yet more paradoxes that I can count.

2023. The year it finally happened.

January, at last a time for a good wedding. In Irish, in Donegal, with everyone a friend. Some very interesting conversations over quite a lot of drinks. Dancing, singing and much joy to start the year with, after a really awful 2022. See, I told you things would get better.

January was exciting in other ways too as I was back in London, for football, for work.  Also I took flight and went out on the bike across the flooded levels, wow, January looked like a fantastic month. Not sure how 2024 will top that.

But then a new bike arrived in February and my life was transformed again, opening up the gravel tracks and muddy paths to make commuting to Bristol interesting again. There was more London, with my dear brother this time, fantastic hats are they not?

 

March saw me have one last stab (for now!) at stand up comedy, playing to a packed back room in a very small pub in Bath. A few laughs, but not as much fun as last year, I realised I’m a big-time Charlie who does it for the response of the crowd, the joke de vivre and not for the graft. Fun though. I may put a recording up on my YouTube channel at some point. 

April saw us over in Ireland again, this time in Joseph Conrad country, amongst the old days and the event reminded us a bit of the dark times. Still it was a mixed marriage, by that I mean Nationalist and Unionist, so I suppose that is progress of a sort. Not quite as picturesque though and there were distinctly fewer laughs. 

There was also time in April to see Stewart Lee with Steve and Junior, Basic Lee in Bristol. Very good and funny as ever. Going again in 2024.

May, well that was campaigning season, and although WE didn’t win, I think all of the villages of Winscombe and Banwell won really. Hopefully more of that too as time allows. Watch the space. In a couple of years time.

Into the Spring and it was time for more bikes, bees and beautiful things as Pablo fired us into that final.

I’ll come back to June.

So the Summer rolled on and what a washout it turned into. But a massive highlight, probably, almost of the whole year, was a successful conclusion to Junior’s time at University. A somewhat benighted time it has to be said, as the twin ravages of lockdowns and Covid destroyed a University experience. But at least we got to celebrate on a dry day, in some style in Cardiff, and it was a very proud moment for us all.

Then it was onto our Silver wedding anniversary and this time it really did rain. It rained a lot, as only Devon knows how to rain. But that didn’t stop us, we had a great time walking, eating and celebrating in all our old haunts. 

Into August and another old haunt, this time Lyme Regis. Did a 200km ride with my mad friend Martyn. Times like these are what I will remember at the Moment of Surrender.

September had a brief warm and dry spell at the beginning of the month, then it turned wet again so we left the country, well you would wouldn’t you? Ironically our hotel in Cyprus was a kind of paradoxical Brexit central in a faraway land in the EU, well most of it anyway. 65% or thereabouts. We contented ourselves by touring cultural sites, eating and drinking the local food and sunning ourselves by the pool. It was a great break. 

Before we got to that, I’d nearly forgotten (how could I?) the fantastic reunion with my friends of 40 years’ standing, back at my University. With partners, husbands and wives along too, it was a very fun day, and you know what? The weather held that day too.

After a busy period at work, well actually the whole year has been that, but October was particularly manic, the Autumn slowly slid in. Nights drew in, and with the exception of trudging through the weather and the darkness, I looked forward to a Christmas break, nearly upon us. I did catch the sunrise one morning before work at Blagdon Lake, just demonstrating that even if it may be hard to find, there is beauty almost anywhere and any day, if you go looking for it.

I saw Billy Bragg at the Bristol Beacon, very inspiring, entertaining and the acoustics are brilliant. Glad they’ve got rid of that horrible name of the venue too, don’t believe the loud voices, Bristol is a progressive city.

To end the year, two things to finish, what better way to celebrate than by looking backwards. June. June the 7th. 9.30PM BST. Lucas slides the ball into space. Jarod is through on goal, he won’t, he can’t, he does. Mayhem. And that’s just our living room.

Then later in the month, over in the Ariege, a moment of stunning tranquility in some remote valleys and passes, great company, and at last, one last demon slayed.

A climb I’d dreaded for over a year turned out a lot nicer than I thought it would be, and I ticked it off with aplomb in my brand new maillot rouge. All that remains now is to go back next year and polish off  the last couple of km of paved road beyond the official finish. And conquer my fear of cows and hope my knee heals in time.

Always look for the positives eh?

I enjoyed pulling that together, hope you enjoyed reading it. You have to look for the good things, focus on them. It really does make life better, despite the misery and mayhem that swirls around us. People are basically nice and kind, if a little stupid and misguided at times. Apart from the small number of bad and evil men who exploit us from time to time. Usually whilst giving us a very fake smile which we all see through. And the very occasional woman, usually, but not exclusively, a Home Secretary in a Tory government. But I’m hoping that will soon be gone too.

So now I’m looking forward to my 60th Birthday, there will be a ride to celebrate, even if I don’t make it, I expect a memorial one please, and I am also hopeful for my friends and family. Life really is precious and fragile but it is also there to be embraced and enjoyed. 

Let’s do that in 2024.

"If your dreams don't scare you, they are not big enough"

"I have no thought of time" 

59. Almost doesn't bear thinking about does it? But there you go, it's happened and as I myself once so very famously said, what is the alternative? In less than a year I hope to be entering my seventh decade, who knows, perhaps I will live forever?

The Summer has been nondescript. Awful weather with the exception of one week in September and one week in Cyprus, and one week in the Ariege. But the cycling has been good, the afore-mentioned French sojurn, a terrific 200km ride down to Lyme Regis on August Bank Holiday weekend, a wonderful short ride to the sea at sunset at Berrow with Steve, and well, other mucking about on bikes.

 "If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor"

Yet that September sunshine brought a lovely reunion of my friends at our University, more or less forty years since we first made our trepidatious steps there. It was good to see them, the last few years have been so tough for all of us in different ways, but somehow, despite our lack of hair, our wrinkles, our extra baggage, it was like we had never been away. No, better.

Even the slightly mucky and wet day in August brought a kind of charm to the Blackdowns and our associated riding. Even better, that rain held off for the day in Cardiff when we celebrated Junior's graduation. I cried as much as when that winner went in off the goalie's thigh. No, more.

"I gave my blood, sweat and tears for this"

Even work has been good. I really like and respect the team I'm working with, and am beginning to see that we are actually doing stuff that is quite ground-breaking as well as meaningful. It's well-paid too, so what is not to like?

To cap it all, Mrs Mendip Rouleur and I celebrated 25 years of matrimony in a deluge in Devon. Not a metaphor, but at least the storm kept the crowds away and allowed us to enjoy the outdoors almost to ourselves. The cafes were certainly pleased to see us.

"Off with the horns, on with the show"

But now my thoughts turn to 2024. That year. What is it to be? Am I scared of my dreams?

You'll just have to wait and see.

Just like my dreams

 Some things you just can’t put into words. Even as I type these lines, I know I’m struggling to translate those precious moments of delirium, as well as the nice warm afterglow that sits upon me now, into anything that could possibly feel as real as they do.

I first became a West Ham fan in the very late sixties and watched my first live game in 1971. The addiction and attachment have waxed and waned through many phases over the years, with varying levels of resignation and intensity. But it’s always there and will never, ever go away. Many people associate me with cycling, others with my work in law firms, and others as a strong advocate of road safety. All these matter of course, but none have the longevity, or the meaning that comes from being a West Ham fan.

Which is awful really. What about all the personal relationships I have, you may ask? My wife, my son, my siblings, my friends, and colleagues? My son of course shares my attachment, although again, that word does not reflect the visceral connection to abstract notions of loyalty and blind faith that he often possesses. It was me that ensured he was enrolled as a Junior Hammer at 5 days old, bought his first season ticket at 7 years of age, and ensured, through a steady campaign of bribery and propaganda, that he would also have no choice but to be an Iron.

My wife’s situation is more problematic. In the early days of our relationship, it was a “fun thing about Guy”. She didn’t know what she didn’t know. There was a crisis of course, and in our first few years together, and then when our son was first born, there were compromises to be made and logistics to agree. So, we have come to an agreeable way of managing this thing.

My family, in particular my younger brother, well, they just get it. They saw me grow up with it, latch onto it, be subsumed by it, from a young age.

Where were my parents when all this was going on? Well thankfully they were aiding and abetting it. My Dad took me to matches, starting in 1971, and though I remember little of those early days, I can claim to have been there when Bobby Moore scored a rare goal for us on that day. My Mum did the research that allowed replica kits to be bought, badges sewn on, in a world long before the internet and the voracious world of football club marketing. We had to scour the far-flung sports shops for them, and I’m pleased to say that those early 1970s jerseys, shorts and socks have a special place in my collection.  I even had a classic blue and two claret hoops kit in the mid-seventies.

When West Ham conducted their open top bus parade in 1964 after winning their first FA Cup, my Mum stood on the balcony of their flat in High Street North and was just a short pass away from Bobby Moore on the top deck. Within her at that very moment was an embryonic fan in the making. In a strange coda to that tale my son was present in utero when my wife came to watch the game with me where Paulo scored his wonder goal. It starts early.

My brother has his own team, his own cross to bear too, so we have shared understanding. He now comes to occasional games with me, we message each other as we watch the same games on the overpriced TV platforms that serve us our fix when increasingly getting to games is impossible. I don’t have to explain it to him. He is sometimes a voice of ridiculous optimism, trying to get me to be more positive. But he has not been through what I have.

My brother watched me watch the 1980 Cup Final, so he knows. Just as stressful an occasion as last night as I recall, St Trevor scoring in the 13th minute and Willie Young chopping down the babe that was Paul Allen, to ruin a fairytale ending. Years later my Dad was sitting next to Trevor Brooking at Buckingham Palace (really) and I only half-forgave him for not asking for an autograph. Even though I was 36 years old at the time. But we won the FA Cup again, for the third time, much to my relief, and after four trophies in 15 years, it seemed a regular thing. 

But the long wait started right there. 

I really care about my friends, have deep attachment to my work and colleagues, and some have become friends too. Some will understand, some may not. There was a point about 12 years ago where I was thinking of giving up my season ticket, and it was a then-colleague who persuaded me not to. I’m grateful to her, but really it was never going to happen. The attachment is too deep, too much a part of the essence of me.

So all of these relationships matter, it’s just this one matters in ways like no other. It’s more than just tribal too. It’s like all the neuroses and all the joys I ever had, wrapped up into a force that is embedded in my very essence. I will never understand it and I can never explain it. As Nick Hornby said:

“We do not lack imagination, nor have we sad and barren lives; it is just that real life is paler, duller and contains less potential for unexpected delirium.”

I drifted away from it a bit when I was in my late teens and early twenties. University was too cool for football in the mid-eighties, but I still checked the scores and the teams every week. That our best-ever League finish happened during that time is a source of disappointment to me, I didn’t really revel in that as much as I might now. Though of course there would have been crushing disappointment at failing to win the League, and I was shielded a bit from that because of an immersion in politics, music and well, women.

But all it took was a little heartbreak and my first love came roaring back into my life in my mid-20s. I met and became friends with a group of season-ticket holders and that, as they say, was pretty much that. I’ve had a season ticket myself now for over 30 years, and still sit with the same group. Our own children have come and joined the party, and despite the inevitable slim pickings of success, we have become a big club, almost against our own will. With over 50,000 season-ticket-holders and filling our 60K-plus seater stadium every week, how could we not be?

And now this. A trophy. A victory. Genuine success in a way I can barely remember. It feels odd, amazing, deliriously good, tortuously stressful in the final minutes of the game, when we were 2-1 up and all I could say was “please not again”. Memories of Gerard’s fluke, shinned shot into the top corner to deny us the 2006 FA Cup, all came flooding back like some recurring episode of defeats past. As my son said to me today, it’s normally us conceding last minute goals, our hopes dashed but our expectations fulfilled. Homer Simpson so eloquently summed up the secret of happiness as “lower your expectations”, and ours can’t generally get much lower. The fear of disappointment is so huge without that, and the pain that comes from a dashed hope is the most acute of all. The feelings associated with last-minute victory, Jared Bowen’s run and shot finding the bottom corner are all the sweeter for their scarcity.

That I wasn’t at the match leaves me with another discombobulation. Now a resident of Somerset I am used to missing games, but not big games like this. I wanted to be there, but with only 5000 tickets allocated, it was beyond the complexities of logistics and cash to make it happen without a winning place in the ballot. I won’t be at the victory parade tonight either, but that doesn’t lessen the feelings of acute joy, as unusual though those feelings are.

The delirium at the second goal was so unexpected and so joyful, counterbalanced by the pain and stress of the final few minutes. My son came home to watch the game with me, and we jumped and screamed around the living room, incredulous, mad with joy and disbelief. Even my son knows, already at 22 he is well-versed in the agony of being a West Ham fan: “it’s just not our thing to score last-minute goals and hold on to win, it’s usually the other way round”.

It may not be the usual thing, but it is possibly the greatest moment of being a West Ham fan that I have ever experienced.

I have a shirt collection. Of course I do. Every single West Ham shirt, without fail, goes into it. I’m a traditionalist too, I like the kits with largely claret body, blue sleeves. That’s it. Away kits should be dark blue, or nowadays I’ll allow black, or light blue. This year I was appalled. The home kit was awful, but the “third shirt” was without doubt, the worst in our history. A kind of white, but with this mess of orange and yellow and other flaming colours in it. A proverbial breakfast for a canine.

I cursed it, I swore not to get it out of its wrapper, but my compulsive urge to collect would take no prisoners, so of course, I bought it along with all the others. It’s an irony of history that it had to be the shirt we wore last night, wasn’t it? A taunt to my obsession, a tweak to my slavish addiction to this club and its history. That shirt will go down in our folklore, and if I’m honest, I think that we won because I hate that shirt so much. That some mesmeric force somewhere decided that this must be my price for victory. A constant reminder that it would have been so much better in next year’s home kit. 

Do I mind?

What do you think?

It’s a long climb up the dusty mountain

 “It's a long climb up the dusty mountain

To build a turret tall enough to keep you out

But when you wage your wars against the one who adores you,

Then you'll never know the treasure that you're worth

But I've never been a wealthy one before

I've got holes in my pockets burned by liars gold,

And I think I'm far too poor for you to want me”

Today was a great day, no, wait, the best of days. I was slow, so very slow up the hills. Choosing a steel-framed, heavy-wheeled, saddle-bag-ladened and mudguard-equipped bike didn’t help. As Ray asked me, “why did you bring a knife to a gunfight?” Whilst my three companions were on disc-brakes, I was squeezing for grim death on the steepest of gravel-infused gnarly descents on my poor rim-braked 32-spoked wheels, hoping they wouldn’t stop too fast. But in truth, my lesser climbing ability and lower power to weight ratio probably mattered more.

But that all didn’t matter much. The views from the Wellington monument were superb, the lanes with their bluebells were exquisite and the company at coffee, with the camaraderie on the ride was the best.

Lately I have been thinking more and more about what really matters in life. My Dad’s (almost) final words to me was that real life is about relationships. Just because it’s such a cliché doesn’t mean that’s not true. But I think it’s more subtle than that. It’s about sharing the journey, seeing the same things, laughing at the same time, and being prepared to wait for the slow coach at the top of the hill, whilst loving the exhilaration of riding together down the other side.

Today is an anniversary of something I didn’t enjoy or like, but it’s led me into good places. It’s also started something of another journey for me, I don’t know what exactly and I don’t know where it’s taking me, but I’m really enjoying it so far. When I focus on that, instead of the petty stresses and strains that don’t matter, life is much calmer, easier, happier. Try it.

“I ran like a speeding train

Cut my hair and changed my name

Only had myself to blame

For the company I was keeping”

I’ve posted a few short video clips of today’s ride in the Blackdowns on my Instagram (guybuckland77), take a look, it was a lovely, pretty carefree day. Send me a follower request if you are interested. In the meantime, here are a few snaps from today at the Wellington Monument.