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.