I’ll be Summer sun for you forever

 I am pretty sure that I have become Winscombe’s biggest Taylor Swift fan. I was in her top 0.5% of listeners worldwide this year. Judging by my annual review from Spotify anyway. Could anyone have spent more time listening to Pensylvania’s finest in this locality in 2021? I doubt it.

It’s all the rage. Annual reviews from your apps. Strava of course. Garmin, well yes naturally. Then there’s the annual Nectar summary, and all the commercial sites flooding my inbox with reminders, Christmas offers and such. It’s funny because I’m always pretty scathing about annual reviews, round-robin circulars, essentially saying “my life is “better than yours” or “my humblebrag is more downbeat than anything you could construct”. Which of course are the same thing.

I’m also all about how arbitrary all these artificial gateways are. Birthdays, New Year, football seasons. Just markers on the journey from B to D. True progress and change comes from constant review, reflection and action. Jeez, sounds like a Training course.

But 2021. Wow. Just glad my resilience was at an all-time high last January, that’s all I can say. Even the boys in claret blue seem to have got to the end of their resources. Stumbling towards the transfer window, hoping it doesn’t end up like the defenestration of Prague, where they landed in a heap of trouble. So to speak.

All the individual members of the Mendip Rouleur household have had significant health issues, thankfully going in the right direction, albeit slowly in fits and starts. Friends have had tough times too, all of the cycling group in this part of Somerset deeply miss our friend and colossus of the peloton, who unexpectedly died at the beginning of November. Other friends continue to struggle and I feel powerless to help, beyond kind wishes and occasional coffees. It just doesn’t seem enough.

As for the wider world, I have never seen anything quite like it. Quite how the reason and pragmatism has disappeared from the thinking of so many supposedly intelligent people, I will never know. When I was a child I imagined that the world would become more liberal, less idiotic and kinder as time passed. It’s almost as if the Internet and continuing culture wars seem to be feeding narcissism and conspiracy, rather than exposing them for the fools they are.

The age-old cry - what’s to be done? Right now, for me, it’s to find an echo chamber where people agree with me, do their shouting in unison, and celebrate what is still joyful in the world. It’s just easier. This Sunday we get a chance to ride out in the cool of a December day, Solstice-style. A chance for us to come together and forget about the rubbish that’s been going on and just ride, laugh and enjoy ourselves. Let’s hope for more of that in 2022. Because as I keep saying, it’s people that keep us all going, and to those who’ve supported me and my family for the past year, this is for you.

Which brings us back to Taylor again.

This is not a rehearsal

 The greatest cultural event in the history of humanity happened on 18th November 1991. I remember the day as if it were yesterday. I was working as an Assistant Manager at Lloyds Bank in Catford at the time. The branch is not there anymore, and I played a big part in that as I was running the project to close it down. The early 90s, on the back of the Lawson bubble, was not kind to the fortunes of financial institutions, and we were busy closing branches all over the country.

In a way it was a bit of a metaphor for my life at the time. After the heady days of my Graduate training scheme in the West End of a London buoyant with credit, I’d headed over to the fringes of the City of London and my first proper job selling Asset Finance to big organisations. My personal life was going well too and I’d bought my first flat, and thought I had life sussed. 

Then the economy went pop, and I was lucky to survive a raft of redundancies, and found myself running this project in Catford. My flat, down in the South London suburbs, was now the proud owner of lots of negative equity, and meanwhile my girlfriend decided I was not the one for her after all. In the space of a few short months, the heady optimism of excess of the 80s had turned into the cold, hard reality of 1990s Britain. Think of it as a warm-up act for the 2020s.

Just in case you are wondering, I have nothing against Catford specifically. A combination of circumstances had placed it slap-bang on the route of the South Circular road, which was always congested, and meant it was hard for a real vibrant community to form. It tended to be overshadowed by Lewisham to the North, and Bromley to the South, and the wealth of Dulwich to the West. It was in decline already and judging by the news reports I’ve just looked at, not a lot has improved in the last 30 years. But the people I worked with were great, hard-working, sparky, and I kept in contact with many of them for a long time after I left London.

November 18th was a very drizzly, nondescript kind of a day. Damp, a bit cold, with nothing special about it. Like Catford, like my life, and especially like the way that Britain was shaping up in the early 90s. At lunchtime I plodded over the road to the Catford Shopping centre, which imaginatively had a huge statue of a cat perching over its entrance.

There being no record shops in the centre I wandered into WH Smith’s and bought it. It was one of the very first CDs that I ever owned, as being a late-adopter (generally) I had only recently acquired my first CD player. I had been worried about artwork, sleeve notes and the like, but I needn’t have been, for it was replete with a 32-page booklet. Images galore, lyrics, and all the amazing, confusing and diametrically-opposed direction of something quite revolutionary.

Of course, my Fiat Uno 1.3 only had the ability to play tapes, so I had to wait till the evening when I got back to my flat to listen to it. What came out of the speakers figuratively blew me away. What was that sound? It sounded like a cross between someone tapping on a metal pipe and an industrial drill rhythmically blasting out a melody. Then came the distorted guitars, the pounding bass, and finally the voice. 

“Time is a train, Makes the future the past, Leaves you standing in the station, Your face pressed up against the glass”

Out in the wider world of course, beyond Catford, beyond Britain and beyond me, seismic shifts were happening. Two years before the Berlin Wall had finally tumbled. It seems strange to think of, but back then I thought it would never happen. I thought Apartheid would never end, and I thought the “Troubles” would go on for ever. That aside, this opening salvo of a track was the harbinger of a new sound, as well as of a new age. Unification was in the air, not just Germany, but the whole of Europe seemed to be optimistically heading for fresh horizons.

“Well my heart is where it’s always been, My head is somewhere in between”

Not content with blowing away the sound, now all that earnestness of celebrity was being mocked too, the very essence of consumerism - “the real thing” - placed at the heart of the song, celebrity is a job. With slide guitars and slide-on-downs, they were making a statement. The Joshua tree was being chopped down.

“Did I ask too much? More than a lot, You gave me nothing now it’s all I got, We’re one, but we’re not the same, Well we hurt each other then we do it again”

The thing I actually like best about this song is that it is actually about breaking up, or conflict, or grudging acceptance. It is not about being in doe-eyed love, or pulling together for some corporate purpose, and no amount of playing it at your conference will make it so. A song that kindled their re-birth none the same, but with warts and all, it will be played at my funeral, mixing as it does equal amounts of misery and joy, struggle and success. But don’t feel guilty.

“In my dream I was drowning my sorrows, But my sorrows they learned to swim”

The tour that followed the album, was all glitz and pastiche, irony and glitter. The earnestness of yesteryear, and the seriousness of their cause had been abandoned hadn’t it? Look carefully under the surface and you’ll see the faith, coated in a layer of coruscating guitar and clothed in shiny leather, the ego may be at the wheel but his God is always around. But of course the story of betrayal and redemption is broader than one narrow religion isn’t it?

“Took a drive in the dirty rain, To palace where the wind knows your name, Under the trees, the river laughing at you and me.”

Another break-up song? Perhaps. For a few years I had this on wrap-around, misery on misery, all spun out in an operatic yet incisive melody. A tale of regret, bitterness, and longing. A bit like “The winner takes it all” only with real anguish and guitars.

What was next? In the old days it would have been “Side two”, and on my 30th commemorative vinyl it will be. Is it better? Who cares. This track, the opening single, announced the revolution in advance of the album, so I’d heard it before. I’m listening to it as I type, and it stills feels new. Lyrically outstanding, visually, when performed live, it has no peer in the history or future of music. The solo is the best minute of guitar work ever. Fact. 

It’s no secret.

Into the dancing one, the one that brought joy to the man whose break-up inspired so much of this album. Of course it’s great, but less of a favourite, there’s too much optimism in it for me. It’s great live though, for obvious and spiritual reasons.

To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal, If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel.

Probably the weakest track, and it is all relative, deals with all the big issues. I even named my first blog after one of the key, plagiarised lines. To my knowledge it has rarely been reprised live after the 90s.

Sunrise like a nose-bleed, Your head hurts and you can't breathe.

 

Wonderfully the album takes a much-welcomed darker turn for the last three tracks. First up of the bleak trinity is one of my very favourites, illuminated by lasers in 2009, conflating the suit of lights with the sombre nature of the story held by the lyrics. There is a story that before this album, the band forbid the use of the word “Baby” in their lyrics. To underline the different direction, there are dozens of them in the album, not least the title of course. But this song had about half of them.

There is a silence that comes to a house

Where no one can sleep

I guess it's the price of love

I know it's not cheap

 Until the 2018 tour, the second of the three of these last group had never been performed live. For years fans and disciples clamoured for its inclusion, even recording snippets of the acoustic version used at a sound check, deposited  on YouTube, but not doing the song justice. In 2018 it was finally let out into the world, all the swirling, self-obsessive, introspective mess of it, the one we all carry around in our tortured souls. You don’t? Maybe just me then. Rumours were that the song had been just too personal up till that point, for the now soft, flabby and bloated singer to let rip. He needn’t have worried, the guitar solo was aptly described by my wonderful brother as the noise of the inside of his head.

No, nothing makes sense

Nothing seems to fit

I know you'd hit out

If you only knew who to hit

The story concludes with the darkest of them all. Unlike many bands they tend to conclude live performances with slower more introspective songs. This effectively brought the house down on the 1992-93 Tour, immortalised of course on video, now DVD sadly. The misery of love, the inevitability of break-ups, and the only option of the way-out. Or the compromise, the accommodation and disillusion. The perfect antidote to all the sickly, soppy love songs you’ve ever vomited to.

Love is drowning

In a deep well

All the secrets

And no one to tell

Take the money

Honey

Blindness

Imagine being only 31 and knowing your best work was behind you. For that is the truth, they had produced a work of art that could never, ever be bettered. Whereas you and I know our greatest achievements are still to come, and we get better and better with every passing working day, with our bright futures ahead of us, they were effectively finished as a creative force. Not that it matters, they leave the world richer, and the creators of the GOAT. But there must be a little bit of sadness there.

Not for me though. I was inspired, especially after I went to the live concert at Wembley. The old Wembley. Inspired by all this angst I started to turn my life around to become the person I am. It only took 30 years, but it started in 1991. It also started the country’s shift away from the Tories, Blair’s 1997 victory can be directly attributed to the rise in consciousness brought by this album. As can every good thing that ever happened to anyone. Jeez, if I was religious I might even say it was divine intervention.

So tomorrow, on Achtung Baby Day, cast your mind back to those times, when music really did change the world, challenge our thinking, and enable me to end up with a wonderful family, a successful career and a marvellous circle of friends. Celebrate the fact you have the opportunity to listen to this fantastic music. Immerse yourself in Zoo TV, the whole delicious and caustic irony of it. And don’t worry about that sad Bank Manager in Catford. He’ll be fine.

Decisions, decisions

 Recently I’ve been talking a lot about how people make decisions. Partly because I’ve been wrestling with one or two of my own. But mainly because I have spent much of the last month conducting psychometric debriefs with some of my colleagues. It’s an interesting exercise in and of itself, most people like talking about themselves, and when combined with a contextual knowledge and the wisdom that comes from staying alive for 57 years, it can be quite useful.

Immediately before both my latest bike rides I had to decide if I even wanted to go out on two wheels at all. On Friday it was hammering with rain, I was a bit down in the dumps and I did consider calling my friend and calling it off. But I was on annual leave from work, hadn’t been particularly active of late, and knew I needed to get used to riding the steel bike in preparation for the Winter. My heart said “no” but my head told me to shift my butt and get outside into the deluge. I was so glad I did of course, for the rain soon abated, my friend and I toddled over to a great cafe in Baltonsborough, and I felt suitably virtuous as I lolled on the sofa that evening.

This morning it was a similar story, although this time it was the prospect of the wind blowing me to kingdom come. The overnight gales had blown though at pace, leaving gallons of water in voluminous puddles on most of the roads, so whilst there was the prospect of a soaking, it was more the wall of wind resistance that was putting me off. But my friend today was keen to get out and faced with his determination I too battened down the hatches and sailed into the Autumn gales. 

Yet again I was rewarded with a thoroughly enjoyable morning, interesting navigation of the roads, or rivers as they seemed today, along with insightful conversation and an educational stop at the cafe at the Avalon Marshes Centre. A good decision, made on the basis of logic not emotion, which leaves me with positive feelings none the less.

I’ve also had a few interesting encounters with cars lately, necessitating more video uploads to Avon and Somerset Police. After my court appearance last December I thought I’d be unlikely to do much reporting in the future for two reasons. Partly because it’s one extra thing to do at the end of a ride, but also because I was becoming a bit immune to the feelings of danger all around me. I felt that if I was not actually scared, or in fear for my safety, then it was wrong to report it. But after attending a Bristol cycling campaign Zoom meeting, talking to a  local Twitter contact who uploads, as well as hearing from the Police themselves, I started to examine my values and logic around the whole issue.

Occasionally I do encounter an overtly aggressive and malicious piece of driving, but in truth it’s very rare. Even the Court case could be argued to be born of frustration rather than psychosis. The real danger out there on the roads comes from everyday carelessness and judgement, coupled with a complete lack of understanding of the potential harm that poor driving can cause. The truth is that people make decisions about their driving all the time, and because most people never experience catastrophic consequences, and don’t empathise with vulnerable road users they just don’t appreciate the constant danger their decisions deliver to others.

So I’m now reporting examples of dangerous and careless driving to the Police on a regular basis, and so far they have taken action against almost all of the drivers where I’ve submitted video evidence. Even where they haven’t they check for evidence of VED, insurance and MOT, so that too has an impact.

It’s interesting to see reactions to this on social media, words like “snitch”, “grass” and “vigilante” being thrown around by people clearly unhappy with increased accountability on their driving. My hope is that this will change and that effort and energy will instead be focussed on taking more care on the roads. As many are fond of pointing out, the great Peelian principle that established the Metropolitan Police in 1829:

“The police are the public and the public are the police."

Which brings me to my big decision. My Great-great-great Grandfather, Thomas Andrew Camroux was one of the very first Police officers to be appointed under that principle, and he made a very emotional decision to help a woman he found in the street, sick with cholera in 1832. It was a decision that cost him his life, and left my Great-great Grandfather an orphan. Thomas was descended from Daniel and Simon Camroux who I’ve mentioned before, and who decided to flee the  Cevennes in the 1680s in the face of religious persecution. 

I want to tell the story of my family and that will probably take the form of a book. I don’t have high expectations that anyone else will read it, although of course I hope to make it an entertaining and informative read. I just think it will be a fun thing to do, and I’ll enjoy the process of creating the book and telling the tales.

It’s going to take a while to get everything set up to get the project moving. But I have a lot of information and knowledge already, and the internet keeps throwing more at me. Critically, the decision I’ve finally made, and it was a very close-run and balanced one to make, will make it more likely that I finally get it off the ground. Sadly, I am not at liberty to tell you the circumstances of that decision. All I can say is that after examining  and understanding my values and emotions, an objective and logical approach prevailed.

A dangerous idea that almost makes sense

 I love music streaming, it has enabled me to visit so much more available, without the hassle of trailing round record shops, or buying albums on spec, like in the old days. I was recently trying to explain to my son how the small town I grew up in had 3-4 shops designated to selling only records. Well, first, he has little conception of what a record is, but the idea that everything ever recorded wasn’t instantly accessible was incomprehensible to him.

So tonight, I open up Spotify, find an algorithm-generated playlist, and the first two songs on it are the two that had bookended my first post about my illness, back in early February. It’s strange how these things happen, or maybe not.

“Grey November, I’ve been down since July”

How someone raised in a small town in Pennsylvania can write something so perfectly tailored for me is beyond me, but that’s music and art isn’t it? Regular readers (both of you, I’m grateful, really!) will be bored to tears of my lifelong obsession with U2, so we will have to see how things go with Taylor, but the early signs are good, and once she hits 40 I’m sure things will pick up even more. Her last two albums have been masterpieces in my view, some real melancholically-infused art, with just that small amount of optimism and hope to keep me clinging on.

I’ve had a small setback on the road to recovery, or rather the road to recovery is taking a slight detour into the marshes. Differential recovery has caused a problem with my right shoulder to add to the ongoing problems with the left. I could tell you all about it, but it’s tedious, a small setback, and we have a plan to get through the swamp and onto firmer ground. It’s just taking longer and the pace of recuperation has stalled. But I’ll get there.

In the meantime, we have October, and thanks to climate change, the trees are no longer stripped bare. But there is less light, Summer has gone, and the Spring seems a long way away. I never do well at this time of year, Lockdown 2 was horrible for me, far worse that 1 or 3, although as ever I caveat that with the usual comments about my relative good fortune. 

I’ve done my best to stop watching the news, it’s too depressing, and I’ve stopped posting on Facebook, mostly. Ironically I got 7/7 on the quiz on the BBC News website today for the first time ever, and I’ve been doing it for years. So it would seem there is no escape even if you try. Only one thing for it, I’ll have to run away.

On Sunday I’m going to attempt my first 200km ride since January, I’m counting no chickens so we will see how it goes. It’s a mark of real progress to even contemplate it, even if I can’t reach the top of the fridge or carry a suitcase to the car. But where there’s a dynamo and a power meter there’s a way. In any case, it’s the only antidote right now, that green hill not so far away. 

How it started, how it’s going

It’s almost exactly 26 weeks, to the hour, that my right triceps muscle was gripped by a sudden and very painful clenching pain. That was the start of my attack of brachial neuritis, which has dominated a lot of my thoughts, emotions and actions this year. Since getting back on the bike at the start of June my mood has naturally lifted tremendously in some respects, no doubt boosted by my best friends serotonin, dopamine and various endorphins. I’ve come a very long way since January.

Today I went back to my physiotherapist to discover officially that my left supraspinatus  is firing again. I knew this already as my left arm has become a bit more mobile. My performance figures on my bike are still miles off where they were in December and way off my best, but they have leapt forward since the start of June. So whilst I’ve a long road ahead still, the trajectory is accelerating. Good news.

Sadly I won’t be going on a cycling trip this year, at least I don’t think I will be. With my rate of improvement, I’m pretty confident that I would have been good enough on the bike to ride confidently and enjoyably around the Cevennes and surrounding areas in early September as had been planned. Given my double-vaccinated status it would not have taken much to get into France, and I’m reasonably confident the requirement to quarantine on my return would have been lifted by the time we were due to go.

But of course pandemics are awfully complicated things to navigate around. Much as I wanted to go, and would have been capable of going, it turned out not to be possible as my existing riding partner decided to drop out. Unfortunately it was a bit too late in the day to find another willing and sane soul to take his place, so it was best all round to cancel and plan for next year.  More on that next time I hope as preliminary plans can begin to firm up, once a few other local difficulties are out of the way.

This time of year is always always a bit tough to get through. The dead zone between the end of the Tour, and the start of the Football season. It was a mark of how far the Manx missile had come in a couple of short weeks that I was disappointed that he didn’t win on the Champs-Elysee. But then again, back in January I said to myself I didn’t care if I never rode a bike again, just make this pain stop. Hindsight and all that. To be fair, Cav surpassed all of our pre-Tour expectations, certainly proved us all wrong, so who would bet against him coming back and winning the Yellow jersey and the record on stage 1 in Denmark next June?

Foresight on the other hand, is much harder to get right. I had both my vaccines in my leg, I took a few soundings about whether it was the right thing to do, would it affect my brachial neuritis or set off other autoimmune conditions? In the end I decided that as well as being the right thing for my health, it was also the right thing in terms of my obligation to society.

The anti-vaxxers spout a load of guff about it affecting your DNA and so on, in the same way that 5G was spreading the virus back in 2020. That’s easily de-bunked with a bit of research and intelligence. But I also had to factor in the risks to my health, and the probability of another attack. But sometimes we all need to take a step back and make a decision that is just the right thing to do in the broadest sense, put aside our self-interest, our stupid principles and our narcissism. I struggle to understand why any sane person would not get vaccinated unless there were genuine medical reasons not to. 

Meanwhile the chief concern is trying to stay one step ahead of the Covid virus, whilst managing to get out and improve my fitness. I was unfortunate to be infected with Covid in March 2020, before variants had been invented. It was decidedly unpleasant, and (autoimmune conditions aside) I was then in very good cardiovascular health, was pretty fit at the time and had good defences against it. Although of course I’m not slim. But there is the risk of Long Covid, a real illness one of my wife’s family is unfortunate to now have, and none of know how it can affect us. It most definitely is not the flu, and with a pool of the unvaccinated, there is a strong chance of more vicious variants evolving.

I’m looking at our first game at home at the end of August and wondering if it will be safe to go. Fortunately it looks like only the double-vaccinated will be allowed in. As London Transport has also made the sensible decision to continue to enforce mask-wearing on the tube, travel to the ground can be safer as well. It’s still concerning that some idiots will blithely refuse to wear them on some kind of misguided point of principle, but hopefully a good dose of tutting will do for them. 

Anyway, if we are to believe the Government, all the numbers are trending down, and those sunlit uplands are well within reach. In this crazy world you never know what may happen next.

Of almost equal concern is the return of claret socks to our home kit. Just thinking about it boils my blood, everyone knows they should be white. Quite apart from tradition, we always play better when our kit has white socks. Last year our magical away kit, all stealth black, conferred super powers on the players and propelled us into Europe. So do not downplay how important these things are. Our home strip also has a little less blue in the sleeves than I’d normally consider acceptable, but as this is the year of concentrating on what is important, I’m prepared to do an Elsa.

Anyway, this shirt is supposed to be an homage to one that the club is calling retro, it’s a sign of how old I am that I consider it the recent past. Still, Paulo and all that. Just don’t mention the retro socks OK?

Lots to look back on, and lots to look forward to. It feels like a real turning point.

Renaissance man

 Comebacks, don’t you love them? 

As ever Mark Cavendish does it again. Of course this man is my cycling hero, not least for the reverence he treats the Tour de France. I remember standing at the top of the Col de Peyresourde in 2013 and being interviewed by a French journalist about our attitude to Team Sky (as was) and their dominance of the Tour that year. He was almost taken aback by our disdain for their metronomic approach, and surprised that I expressed the more romantic appeal of Cav, with his swashbuckling sprinting, and his struggles over the mountains to make the time cut. Go back to my posts in July 2013 for more.

But it is some comeback, even for him. Although I’d love to be 36 again, it’s not a young age for a professional cyclist. Those of you who have never ridden back-to back 100-mile days will find it hard to appreciate just how difficult that is, physically at least. But then Cavendish has been written off so many times over the years, and has proved his mental resilience is second to none. In the last five years he’s endured a broken scapula, the ravages of the Epstein-Barr virus, as well as missing the time cut of a mountain stage and being excluded from the Tour in 2018. His non-selection for the last two years has been accompanied by mental struggles as he fought his way back from the brink of retirement for another shot at the big time.

He was only selected this years because the other two sprinters on his team were injured. But that drive and will to succeed don’t go away do they? He may be more mellow, have a broader life perspective and all that, but the outpouring of emotion we saw as he crossed the finish line on Tuesday was vintage. Authenticity runs deep, and the relief, joy, euphoria and appreciation of what he’d done, came flooding out. He’s generous too, to his team-mates who worked so hard for him, but also to those who believed in him through the dark days. It’s so important that. In life there are people who will jump on your bandwagon when things are good or easy for them, but as soon as other plans take their fancy, well, they drop you like a stone don’t they? Often more than once if you let them.

Not content with winning a 31st stage, Mark Cavendish surprised no one by going and doing it again today in Chateauroux, a place he’s won twice before. I snapped this image from the TV footage, more measured celebrations amongst the team than on Tuesday, (they could hardly have been less!) but no less joyful.

My son gave me a wonderfully thoughtful present for Father’s Day, a quality silver pendant of a Green Man. It’s an ancient symbol whose origins date from before there was even any stupid notion of England, never mind a semi-constituted country intent on patting itself on the back every time it won an easy football match. I love football, or more specifically, I love West Ham, but winning a last-16 match is not yet an achievement.

Anyway, the symbol, if you haven’t already guessed, is about re-birth. I’ve always loved it and we have one on the gable end of our house, but now I have one around my neck too. Even the chain is hypo-allergenic. 

If you read the link above you can find examples all over the World, illustrating yet again the commonality of our experience and how universal these things are. Again. I bet even Daniel Camroux knew what it meant, in 17th century Occitan (now referred to as France). See how meaningless your labels are?

 I’m over the worst on my brachial neuritis as I said in my last post. But my arms are still only about 50% of what they were before it struck. But, I am re-born, a concept the Christians stole from the pagans, and they probably stole it from someone else. It all got co-opted into churches and now small silver pendants, bursting with with meaning. Because meaning, purpose and love are far more enduring than nations, tribes and petty tyrants. 

Truth is, none of us are outsiders. None of us are elites, or the downtrodden. We can trust, believe, follow the science or not, it’s a matter of choice in the end. We are not Boomers, or Generation X or Millennials or whatever other labels we allow clever marketing folk to pin on us. We are born, grow old, then die. We can do this together, or alone, another matter of choice. But sometimes, on the road to the Arrivee, we are given opportunities to be joyful, loving and even to be re-born. What’s your choice?

 

 

The last refuge

 I don’t think we are very good at supporting refugees in this country. Only last week there was a story in the news about how we had crowded lots of asylum seekers into an old military barracks, with the inevitable result that hundreds of them caught Covid. You only have to look at the tenor of debate, with discussions about who is “deserving” and who is a “migrant” to get the sense that the whole emphasis is on refugees proving they are genuine. This isn’t a new thing either. I listened to a podcast just last week where a woman told the story of how her Jewish parents were “lucky” to have had high-ranking connections within the British scientific establishment, allowing them to be granted safe haven in Britain and escape persecution from Nazi Germany.

Before you go all Daily Mail on me, and start thinking how generous we are, just consider how long it is since we have had a genuine crisis on our own little island, that necessitated large numbers of people fleeing from harm in genuine fear for their lives. I’ll wait.

The last genuine battle on our shores, if you discount the conflict in Ireland (which I have written about before), and being bombed from the air, or terrorist atrocities, or civil riots, was in 1746, the Battle of Culloden in the north of Scotland. The last rites of the Jacobite cause was played out on a heathland near Inverness, and was followed by a crackdown on the supporters of the exiled Stuart pretenders. Some of them left for America, or France,  and there was undoubtedly a cultural genocide of sorts, but it would barely have touched the cultural memory of the English.

If you discount the two-day invasion by the French in Fishguard (really an extension of Wolfe Tone and the United Irishmen’s rebellion) in 1797, you have to go back to 1216 since there has been a genuine invasion of England. That was really a war of ruling elites, each set with landed interests all over Europe, and though their would have been collateral damage, it would not have touched the populace in the way modern wars do.

Oh, 1066 you say? The Norman yoke? Umm, that is nearly a thousand years ago, and of course the native nobility were dispossessed at the time, and the nature of our laws and culture were altered, but again it’s not in our cultural DNA anymore, too much has happened to dilute and wash away its societal impact.

In my opinion I think part of the reasons for our lack of compassion and empathy towards refugees is that we just don’t know what it is like or how it could possibly feel. Without experiencing something it’s very hard to know what it really is like, no matter how empathic you are. Readers and friends will be familiar with me making comments about my French ancestry and the fact that I have a remote link to Huguenots who fled the south of France in the 17th century.

My recent absence from riding has enabled me to delve into their history a bit more, and as well as drawing up that branch of my family tree, I have also read some academic histories of the period and the location. I had long-known that my ancestor, and 8x Great grandfather, Daniel Camroux left Nimes in 1685 after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and settled in Berlin. His grandson Jean Simon Camroux and his wife, Susanne Devaux, subsequently came to London in the late 1740s.  Two generations later the family was giving its children English first names, and by the early 1800s were marrying outside the historic French community. My 3x Great Grandfather Thomas Andrew Camroux was one of the first official Police force established by Robert Peel, and you don’t get more English than that.

I had always imagined Daniel had left Nimes in search of religious liberty and tolerance, but I now suspect that is only part of the story. That intolerance had been building for decades in a time when religion was much more important in shaping your life than it is now in our secular culture in Britain. But with the official law changed, making it illegal to be a Protestant in France, open season was declared. Many villages in the area were eradicated, their inhabitants massacred, men, women and children all. Even those forced to convert at the end of the barrel of a gun were still denied jobs or suffered ongoing persecution. 

Twenty years later there was an uprising of local Protestants that had stayed, the Camisard revolt, desperate to assert their liberty and practice their religion without being murdered. As is the way of things there were atrocities committed by both sides, until a pragmatic peace was agreed. My relatives were long-gone from the area, but obviously I like to think there’s a bit of that resistance to authority in my DNA.

That inter-communal violence, murder and mayhem seems like it belongs to another world. But it’s the kind of thing that still happens the world over today, indeed it happened in the Balkans barely 30 years ago. It’s the fear of persecution, torture and death that forces people to make those desperate journeys in search of a better life. Trekking over the Alps to Switzerland and Germany in the 17th century is the equivalent of precarious boat trips across the channel today.

Given the speed with which I now know Daniel left I now feel it’s likely he was in fear for his life. Maybe his grandson was an economic migrant, but I’m sure London welcomed him into the community in Shoreditch, thankful for his skills and industry in what had become a thriving French community by 1750.

Lockdowns and pandemics permitting, one day I will visit Nimes from whence Daniel fled, as well as the hamlet of Goussargues where other Camroux came from in the 17th century. I also hope to go to the nearby village of Lussan, from where the family originated in the Middle Ages. I know I have up to 30% of my DNA from France, so I suspect there are other migrants or refugees lurking in the ancestry. There’s even some Spanish and Nordic in there too. Who knows what made them all travel from their place of origin.

I like living in Somerset, it’s quiet, peaceful, beautiful. But if one day some band of thugs, or heaven forbid, government soldiers, descended on Winscombe and started killing everyone, I’d like to think that some fellow humans, maybe from as far away as Minehead would take us in. Or maybe we’d have to flee to France or Ireland. You can’t imagine it can you, it couldn’t happen here, could it? 

You can of course retreat to your certainties and search for your quiet life. I’d always balked against that because I had a principled objection to it. But now, well it seems all very personal.

Just like my dreams

 I’m a little bit tired this week. Partly this is because I have been working without any meaningful break since Christmas. Partly it’s the ennui of  continuing to plough through a global pandemic and all the guano that brings. It’s also the ongoing saga of my brachial neuritis (17 weeks yesterday and counting)  and its concomitant prevention of bike-riding, which is now invading my nightly dreams, with all kinds of strange scenarios where I get back on my pride and joys.

You’re bored of all that though aren’t you? I know I certainly am. You want to hear something different. Maybe a little bit uplifting?

But whilst all those circumstances have contributed, the main cause of my mental fatigue this week is a massive come-down I’m experiencing. Back in 2018, hard to believe it was three years ago, I came back from the Cent Cols bike extravaganza in the Pyrenees and experienced the mother of all metaphysical crashes. One that plunged me into depths I’d not experienced for years, and it took me almost a year to recover. This one isn’t like that, but it is a comedown from euphoria, but I’m going to draw on the lessons of 2018-19 to make sure I look at things very differently. In fact, this time, it’s going to be a celebration. 

September 25th will mark my 50th anniversary as a West Ham fan (we beat Stoke at home 2-1, I remember flashes of the game, but most of all I remember the noise!). I hope that we have a European fixture close to that date, and that if we do, I’ll get tickets to go somewhere exotic, like Bucharest or Baku. It would be a fitting way to mark the longest relationship of my life. Like any couple, we have had our ups and downs (once per decade currently, 1978, 1989, 1992, 2003 and 2011), and times when we didn’t get on very well (my late teens to mid-twenties, when politics, music and other things became more important), but through it all we’ve stuck together.

I hope (and it is always that hope that kills you) that the bad times may finally be behind us, and as I approach old age a deeper more contented relationship will supersede some of the more tempestuous phases we’ve had. I mean, if you truly love someone, you can forgive them can’t you? The 2006 Cup Final is not forgotten, but I can look back on it now and see I learned so much from it, just as I did from all those rainy and dull nights together, when I wondered if the relationship was going anywhere.

But now we have someone at the helm who may just know what he is doing. If we can keep the good things on board (Rice, Soucek, Lingard, Coufal) and maintain the wonderful togetherness and joie de vivre that has existed for many of our games this season, who knows where our love could take us. Anyway, they know I’ll never leave them, and so what would be the point about grumbling about that when it’s a choice I freely made many decades ago.

So I’m not going to be down-hearted for once, or cynical, or even pessimistic. I’m going to draw some comfort from the great times we’ve had over the last 12 months, and look forward to more of them in the years to come. I adore Somerset, and Mrs Mendip Rouleur and Junior will always get first dibs on my affection. But these boys? The ones that came before and the ones that will come after? Well, I don’t profess to understand this relationship, it’s complicated, and it’s probably inexplicable to most of you as well. But on Sunday, when I saw that green pitch again, and those colours, that song  with the rest of the crowd singing it, people I don’t even know, well it finds places in my heart that no other thing or person can.

Come on you Irons!

“Yes I’m plodding on, thanks”

 I’ve put on 3kg in the last three months, I’m amazed it’s as few as that to be honest, as I’m back up to ridiculous levels of chocolate consumption But I have to face it, it’s added some timber, and although my fitness hasn’t fallen off a cliff, the constant tramping of the ways paths and lanes of the Winscombe Valley have only managed to slow the decline.

But it could have been a lot worse, and I’m hopeful that there’s a corner I can turn round very soon. I can feel strength returning to my arms. I do not know if it’s adaptation, I suspect it is, as most experts (remember them?) say nerve re-growth takes a minimum of 9 months. Which would be October. But I’m able to type once more, I have learned to write using a different action, and certain movements which were very awkward just a month ago, are becoming less so. That said, I know the critical phase is when nerves are reattaching themselves to the motor nerve-muscle endplate, where too vigorous action can re-sever the connections. I’ve been to square one and I’m not keen to go back there, so I am still taking no chances. 

My physio, who is great, has promised to assess the strength of my arms on June 4th, to see if I’m strong enough to do it again. You know, ride a bike on the road safely. Unless I can, and it doesn’t risk my recovery in the long-term, I won’t go there.

The gym being open helps, as I can do some weights on my legs and a few core exercises (I could do those at home but it feels very, very wrong to do ab crunches in the living room), as well as getting to grips with the Watt bike again. My FTP has been destroyed, and it wasn’t the biggest to start with. I shall enjoy watching the curve ascend again when the time comes. Hopefully accompanied by a descending weight curve.

For now, I’ll keep plodding along. There have been compensations and consolations. Namely I’ve got to see my local area like never before, had time to think, had space to listen to all kinds of podcasts, and found out where all the best trees are. Meanwhile, keeping me going in the real world, are my family, friends (particular shouts to Lord Down of Rodney Stoke - I still think we should make that podcast) and colleagues, who have been such a tremendous source of support and wonderment, alongside Taylor, Miley and the massive West Ham United (including West Ham clips on Twitter -although NSFW!) who unknowingly kept me going too. Excitingly I won seats in the ballot of season ticket holders to see a match in real life the Sunday after next. Just think - I get to moan at them in an actual stadium instead of in front of the TV!

I’ve also found some time to restart some of my Family tree research. Speaking of excitement, I have finally located the exact hamlet in the South of France that my French ancestors came from, alongside the nearby village where the valley was based in the 14th and 15th centuries. Hopefully it will not be long before I can actually go there.

I’ve also become incredibly, and probably unhealthily, interested in blue geraniums, bird feeders and collecting random U2 albums on the Internet. On this last, my brother is a very bad influence. What exactly am I supposed to do with my 10-year anniversary gatefold vinyl album of “No Line on the Horizon”. Sure, it’s a thing of beauty, but my house is already too full of stuff. How can I moan at the others when I too contribute to this pointless accumulation of the collectible creativity?

So here are my favourite pictures from the last couple of months, Spring, my favourite time of year. The time of rebirth and renewal. It has been for me. Whilst I’m not glad it’s all happened, I know it’s given me opportunities that I have enjoyed and would not swap for three months of grinding it out on a road bike. But I am a bit bored now, and whilst I love these opportunities, and I’ll not do anything stupid, I’d like to get back on the bike soon please, if you can arrange that for me.

Many thanks.

The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?

 Back in 1922 when the great and the leaders of Ireland were debating whether to accept the terms of the Treaty their representatives had negotiated with the British Government, Michael Collins, hero of the independence movement, persuaded a majority of his colleagues that the treaty on offer gave the country “Freedom to achieve freedom”. Of course diehards in the Republican movement of the time, cried “sell-out” and refused to “collaborate” with the new Irish Free State. Gradually though the lure of power, and the bitterness of the Irish civil war faded, and one by one the dissenters entered mainstream Irish politics.

There was still a hardcore of dissidents though, keepers of the flame, and from time to time their efforts would flare into conflicts such as the during the Second World War, and the ineffective “border campaign” of the the late fifties and early sixties. To all intents and purposes, to the outside world at least, it seemed that the Irish question had been answered and violent conflict was at an end.

But of course the conditions for conflict, the culture of Ireland, in particular amongst the poor and downtrodden of the North, had never been more ripe for a flare up, and so it proved. From the late sixties to the mid-nineties over 3000 people were killed, as paramilitaries, the British Army and others descended into an internecine conflict of great brutality and savagery. I first met my wife in 1994, about six weeks before the first ceasefire in the so-called “Troubles”. I remember one of the first conversations I had with her was about her accent, I couldn’t place it, and it turned out she hailed from the north-western city whose very name symbolises the conflict that had raged for nearly 30 years.

My first trip over to meet her family was just after Christmas 1995, shortly after which that ceasefire collapsed into a further 18 months of killing and mayhem. I was told not to open my mouth in public, so as not to give my English accent away, believe me it was still a scary place to be. But over the years following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, things changed. Just as the leaders back in the twenties had entered politics, so the Irish Republicans viewed the GFA as an opportunity to work towards reunification over the long-term.

Of course there were more dissidents that promised to keep the literal battle alive, there were very few of them, they lacked community support and critically they lacked support of the moneyed Americans that had funded so much of the previous campaign. 

It appeared to outsiders that the peace was permanent. The outward signs were positive. I kept one of my older bikes over in Ireland for 7 or 8 years from 2010, and in that time as I rode around the roads I noticed how the once brightly-painted kerbstones had faded, and flags (always emblematic of the assertion of territory) became less common and more tatty.

My father-in-law took me to a game at Derry City one Friday night, and happily introduced me to all and sundry. He was a stalwart of the club, its unofficial historian, and knew just about everyone. Never had I felt more welcome at a football match at another ground other than my own.

 Friends often engaged in conversation with me, what was it all about, or what was the correct thing to say? But I couldn’t explain it. Partly because whilst I have as very good historical and contemporary knowledge of what is going on, and I’ve seen the impact of change over the years in changing some of the superficial attitudes, I knew that deep under the surface there were cultural currents running that had been in existence since the 16th century, if not before. It’s hard to explain that, it’s visceral.

But it didn’t seem matter, an accommodation and shared institutions had seemed to not make the divide and the history as important anymore. Initially war-weariness had driven the process of peace, but then a new generation, supposedly free of the old enmities had come to the fore, and it seemed we were into a new era. 

The Brexit happened. 

In 2019, after visiting for a family wedding, I blogged about how all those kerbstones had been painted again, and fresh new flags were flying in the hardline areas. Both sides were gearing up for something, even if they didn’t know what. There’s an old piece of management bollocks that “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, and it’s as true for communal conflict as it is for business performance.

What English people have consistently failed to realise is that the GFA, the peace process didn’t answer the Irish question or solve the conflict. Because there is no solving it. The relative sizes of Nationalist and Loyalist communities in the north (please note small “n”) are too similar for there ever to be a time when both sides would be happy. All you can hope for is to find a way to make the divide not matter.

The second thing English people do not understand is that Irish culture in general, and the culture of the north in particular, is a world away from British, and specifically English culture. Nor do most English know anything about the history of the last 100 years in the northern state, let alone the last 400 or 800 years of Anglo-Irish experience. Common membership of the EU, in particular the Customs Union and Single Market, were the structural framework that allowed the GFA to work. Without it, it will never work as intended, despite all the excuses of British politicians.

Nobody should be surprised at the upsurge of violence in Belfast, Derry and elsewhere. Nor is it enough to blame “criminal elements encouraging the youngsters”. On Friday I listened to two community workers from the loyalist community, erudite and educated people, explain that loyalist rioting was justified because Nationalist areas had all the new housing and jobs. It reminded me of a conversation I had way back with my Father in Law, also an erudite and educated man, about integrated education being the answer to long-term peace. “You see Guy”, he explained, “the Protestants would never agree to it”.

I bet hardly anyone in Britain who voted for Brexit thought about its impact on Ireland and the peace process. Even if they did, I suspect generally they wouldn’t have thought it important. Another “Project Fear” most likely. In any case that ship has sailed now so there’s no point banging on about it. But as I see those petrol bombs flying through the air, and see the water cannons being deployed, I know if won’t be long until the Army is being brought in to keep the peace. It’s all so depressingly familiar.

It’s not the end, by any means, of peace. But we are going to need a lot of fresh thinking, brave people and bold decisions. I hope our politicians can do what they have consistently failed to do for the last five years, and actually show some leadership.

My best days are ahead

 It’s five weeks to the hour since I was sat in the ED of our local hospital. Much has changed. 

My diagnosis is now definitive, and all experts (including me!) are in agreement about its cause, if not about the precise mechanism that it worked through. I have bilateral Brachial neuritis, caused by an autoimmune response to a Hepatitis E infection. Whilst this response has pretty much done its job, and I have comparatively little pain now, I am left with damage to the nerves between the brachial plexus in both arms to parts of each shoulder, arm and hand. I won’t go into details, of which muscles are affected, ask me if you’re that interested. What I will say is that it could have been a lot worse. I briefly joined a Facebook group of people also with the condition. Whilst I really sympathise with the posters, many of whom had been significantly affected far more severely than me, I had to leave the group. I didn’t feel it was conducive to the mindset I need to adopt.

I have a reasonable chance of a long-term full recovery, an excellent chance of a partial recovery, and a possibility that parts of the function may be impaired forever. This latter point is mainly in connection to my right thumb and forefinger, but I’m not worried, I’ll still be able to brake and change gear, even if I can’t write with a pen or do up buttons. Different bits will recover at different times, the speed of this is determined by three things. First, the distance any muscle is from the brachial plexus, the further away, the longer the recovery. Second, the extent and type of damage to any given nerve, (ie is any given nerve simply demyelinated and to what degree, or are the axons destroyed - the former takes a few months to be repaired, the latter could take a couple of years to re-grow). The third will be all about the quality of the conditions that I can create to effect the best possible recovery.

This last part is largely down to me, and although it is not an exact science, there are lots of things I can do to optimise my convalescence. Fortunately I was only mildly impacted systemically by the Hepatitis. I actually saw a Consultant Hepatologist this week who told me that I’d been very lucky to have had virtually no other symptoms of the infection, besides the autoimmune response and raised resting heart rate, blood pressure and liver enzyme function. These are all either back to normal now or very close to it. No fever, no jaundice, little fatigue. His view was that my pre-existing health and fitness had protected me from anything more serious. I’m counting my blessings.

Cook your sausages properly everyone.

But my recovery will fall into three broad phases, the first of which is optimising the conditions for nerve re-growth and repair. This process, apparently, is like growing very delicate flowers in a greenhouse in Winter. So I have to do some moderate aerobic exercise, but NOT to the point of fatigue, eat plenty of fruit and veg, as well as other unprocessed foods that contain Vitamin B12 (I’m allowed a steak a week!), but limit processed and refined foods, particularly chocolate. I also need to get plenty of sleep, eradicate stress, and do what I can to maintain joint mobility.

The second phase will be to re-build the muscle function as the nerve connectivity is established, and it’s important not  to do this too soon, otherwise there is a risk of damaging the motor neurone again before they are fully established. So it will be the lightest of exercises on my arms to begin with. Once I have a bit of muscle strength I’ll be able to do indoor cycling, but not too much to cause fatigue.

Finally once the recovery looks well underway, I will be free to resume more challenging training, but again, being careful to build it up slowly, so thoughts of audaxes and multi-day rides are firmly on the back burner for now. I haven’t set myself much in the way of timescales, just doing the traditional “take it one game at a time” approach. I am positive I will get back on my bike and ride it as well if not better than I used to, and I hope that comes soon. But my priority is restoring my health, so I’m not going to risk that by being impatient. No, really.

Thank you to everyone that has been kind enough to send support and love in what is a difficult enough year already, I do really appreciate it more than these words can convey. 

And I learned new things such as how to get dressed using contortions I would never have thought possible, as well as learning to tie my shoelaces without the use of a functioning thumb. Every day is a school day. To top off this very unusual year my beloved Irons are in contention to actually qualify for Europe, on merit. I’m not getting excited, but it does cheer my spirits to see us playing with skill and heart.

My main activity for the next few weeks is going to be walking in the countryside as much as I’m able to. So the end of lockdown is a welcome sight on the horizon, I need to find new vistas to see and paths to tread. Not that I don’t really value the beauty all around my home and thank my lucky stars for it every day. I think we are all ready for a change, and I for one see the lights In front of me

A little divided

 So eleven days after my last post things have moved on. Albeit glacially, but given I now have use of a few more fingers, I know there has been progress. 

For a start it looks like a diagnosis. I definitely have a virus, and not in the vague, generalised way that doctors often insinuate you have one for unknown or unclassifiable conditions. No, I have Hepatitis E no less. Usually quite a mild illness, although I have hardly any of the symptoms that usually present. Maybe a bit of fatigue, but given the state of arms and concomitant analgesic consumption, it’s hard to tell the source of that. But the latest (of numerous) blood tests threw it up on Thursday, it also explains the raised liver inflammatory markers when there are no other signs of liver inflammation. It must have happened deep within said organ.

It may also offer an explanation for the rapid onset of excruciating pain throughout my shoulders and arms in the last few days of January. The key symptoms of rapid onset, that is, within 12 to 24 hours and no prior warning, coupled with the severity, and location, all point to Brachial Neuritis, an autoimmune response that, guess what, is often triggered by a virus. I’ll have a clearer idea on Thursday when I have my arm nerve conductivity tests (I hope), together with shoulder x-ray and further blood tests. Even if it isn’t that, my arms are not snapping back to life, so I suspect we still need to do what we can to find a cause.

The acute pain is gone, and I’ve cut back on the smarties, as my arms and shoulders are still inflamed, stiff and sore. Sleep has been a big problem, but even that is improving, aided by hot bath, hot chocolate and pillows placed at strategic points in the bed.

I realise I’m probably  getting close to some unpleasant physio, but I’m hopeful that the damage to the nerves is not as bad as I first feared. I still have lots of paranoid thoughts about nasty conditions I may have, as well as bouts of pessimism that this will be a permanent thing. But given I have managed two short walks in the last four days, lends optimism that there is a way back.

My family have been amazing, friends near and far have sent wonderfully supportive messages and encouragement, and my boss and colleagues have been quite simply outstanding. Better than any employer I’ve ever had, and that is high praise indeed. My boss even phoned me one late afternoon to tell me I was doing too much. You can’t buy that.

If you were one of those people who has listened, sent encouragement, good wishes or anything, then thank you, it has been an amazingly powerful in keeping my spirits up like you will never understand. In a cold, dark tunnel, with an icicle hanging over me, you were the light I moved towards. Like this metaphor.

Despite all of this, I’m still in the tunnel, and it’s still a horrible place to be in. I may not have the apocalyptic fear I had 24 hours into this episode. I also know my disablement is mild compared to those of others, and that I am fortunate to have money and resources to be able to tackle it. But the transformation that means I can not turn a key in a lock, or get a tin of soup from the middle shelf, is a stark contrast to the very fit state I had got myself into by the 3rd week of January. But I am grateful I can do things I could not do two weeks ago, velcro shoes are wonderful things.

Since I had my diagnosis of prediabetes at the beginning of December I had lost 4 kg, migrated to a very healthy diet, really upped the level and type of exercise, as well as curbed my enthusiasm for chocolate. Who knows, maybe that level of fitness has afforded a measure of protection. But it feels like a major setback from what I could do before. Knowing what I have and how to tackle it helps, sure, but it is not easy. One very major positive is that all that work has paid off in getting my blood sugar down to normal levels, albeit towards the top of the normal range. It shows I can reverse that.

So yes, it’s got better. I hope it continues as my fragile confidence can not take much in the way of physical setbacks. But I suspect it’s not going to be an easy Few months. That said, I’m determined in my usual way to face it and KBO as one of my friends would say. It’s what I do.

 So please continue to send messages like this.