I’ll admit that I was angry for too long

 I can’t stand anything that smacks of a review of the year. Really detest them, full of smug, self-aggrandising stuff about how I have or haven’t had a much better year than you.

But seeing as I did such a good one last year, it seems a shame to break a tradition, so I might change my mind. I still hold that the turn of the year is an arbitrary date, person-made and of little significance. Or maybe I can argue with myself on that one too, because the end of the year in the Northern Hemisphere is still round the time of the deepest of mid-Winter. This year more than most, so maybe it is a time for reflection, renewal and all that stuff after all.

In reality, all that stuff started for me the weekend of the 12th November, when I finally delivered the output of my comedy course at a showcase in Bristol. It was without doubt the most difficult thing I have ever done, and I was incredibly nervous before it. But people did laugh, which is the point after all, so that’s something. I found it quite a challenge to do two opposing things at the same time. First, remember all the scripted words, in the right order so that the jokes worked. Second, be engaging and interactive with the audience and prepared to improvise or go off script when the opportunity presented itself. 

There is also a very obvious derivative quality to it. You can’t watch one comedian exclusively for 10 years on YouTube, night after night, and not be influenced. And as the great man himself says, “sometimes you have to have something that’s just for me”. The other thing about stand-up comedy is that it is a fiction. Whilst some of my material has its roots in the truth, and in things that happened, it’s exaggerated and twisted FOR COMIC EFFECT! As much of my writing on this blog has been, take a kernel and turn into into a general point. 

That’s quite a clever joke in itself.

What I loved most about the course was the people I did it with. A group that was reasonably diverse, in age terms certainly, but also in occupation, delivery and comic persona definitely. A few of them have already gone on to do some open mic nights, which I really want to do too, really must get round to it!

Hot on the heels of that night, two days later I started my new job, and have now been there for 5 weeks. It’s great to be working with grown-ups again after a period when I wasn’t. See above for comedic licence reference in case of doubt. Lovely people, interesting work, good locations and nice culture. Money is good too, so couldn’t really wish for more. One thing, the cycling facilities are excellent so definitely a good move.

I have also entered the Ariegeoise, and the Dartmoor classic in successive weekends next mid-Summer. So  somethings to definitely look forward to. June is a nice month to go to France, it’s not too crowded or too hot, but still lovely enough to get some good rides in. 

This year I really found out who my friends are, even the ones I don’t know very well. One of the advantages, of having a very large network of people that I know, is that eventually I find out all of the truth about things that have happened. It doesn’t take much digging. A few people in particular have surprised me by their duplicitous, two-faced scheming, when prima facie they appear nice and supportive. Of course I will not name names, nor will I even let these people know, that I know. It’s not for me to dole out the retribution, as Taylor herself says, in this song, “Karma’s gonna track you down, step by step, from town to town”.

On the cycling front it’s been a good year, without being spectacular. Apart from the Ariege, and my solo mini-Tour, which was great fun, if a tad soggy and windy, the highlight has to have been the hottest 200km Audax I have ever done. Possibly the hottest bike ride I have ever done, with an average temperature well into the high 30s. I was never so relied as when I got to a cafe at 5PM having run out of water and feeling like I was melting onto the road. They had air conditioning!

If things really do come in threes though, then the last three years have been as tough a triad as I can remember. But as another friend reminded me yesterday, (and hats off to her by the way for the fantastic work she is doing supporting refugees fleeing the war) no one is bombing me like they are in Ukraine, so yet again I acknowledge my relative privilege in the world. And I am still alive, which can not be said for some close relatives again this year, one in particular taken way too soon and in cruel fashion. 

But that doesn’t mean I can not hope for a better few years now for all of us, despite the tough conditions with which we are faced. To cheer you up, here are a few pictures from 2022, let’s hope we’ve turned that corner. When I look at the photos from 2022 I realise how much has happened away from work, comedy and cycling. 

We went to Italy on holiday, I’ve still got a great family and some fantastic friends, football with Junior, Bono with my brother, and meeting my sister and her partner in Winchester. I visited my parents, I sold my Genesis bike (making space for a new arrival in January I hope), lots of fantastic walks with Mrs Rouleur, the Van Gogh exhibition thing, and so much more besides, some bad, but most, very very good.. I’m a fortunate person. My life is good but no better than anyone else’s. I have privilege and opportunity of course, and I end the year in a much better place than I thought possible a few months ago.

I think what I have just discovered is that it is easy to forget the good things in your life and focus on the ones that raise your stress levels.  

I’m even prepared to admit Liam is as good as Noel.

Rise up

Quite a strange few weeks. Covid. Prime Ministers. Ireland. Sadness. More Prime Ministers, difficult to keep up with it really. I’ve not done much cycling, just content to keep things ticking over as the nights draw in. Despite this I still managed to have a very close encounter with what I assume to be either a very stressed individual driving a white van, or someone so unaware of his surroundings that he could have killed me without even realising it.

Taylor Swift brings out a new album. It’s best listened to when you are in the woods.

I’ve listened to it a few times. Well, about fifteen I guess, and it’s a grower. I’m going to reserve judgement on it, but I think she is on the Mendip Rouleur bus from a musical perspective. I keep finding new parts of me that need a musical hole to fill, and she has certainly made herself comfortable in my psyche over the last couple of years. It’s like a Dweckian equivalent of the musical development. One for the L & D practitioners.

But other new horizons are revealing themselves.

I’m doing a stand-up comedy course right now. The big night -the showcase of the participants- is just 12 days away. I’m quite daunted by this, but I will be taking to the stage, hoping to get a few laughs. The older I get, the more I believe that most things are learnable skills. You may not be capable of becoming the best comedian in the world, but if you follow some rules, apply what you are taught, then you too can call yourself a comedian. In a good way. If you want to find out what it looks like tickets are on sale for the showcase on 12th November in Bristol, very reasonably-priced and the proceeds go to support the charitable activity of the Comedy School foundation. 

Someone asked me just yesterday what made me want to do this course. The truth is I don’t really know, but I saw it advertised and I thought, why not? I think it was in the immediate aftermath of the death of a friend, so that may have had something to do with it. But there has been an ongoing process going on for me in the last 10 years whereby the saying “life is too short” changes from being an abstract and theoretical concept, to a very real and visceral understanding. Death is coming, so I’m aiming to pack in as much as I can before he catches up with me.

(PC Note: Death has to be a man, only a man would want to take on the role)

I’ve seen U2 in concert many times over the last 40 years or so, not as many as my adorable brother, but enough to count as a dedicated fan. The two of us (me and my brother, not me and Bono) met up in Cheltenham to hear Bono talk at the literary festival, he’s promoting his new book.

But listening to him talk, (Bono not my brother) read, and play a few stripped-down songs, was a new experience. A bit surreal and underwhelming if I’m honest. But then I saw him on the TV last week, sitting next to Taylor Swift, and I thought he looked a bit discombobulated, not quite his usual certain self. Happens to everyone I guess.

His book arrived yesterday and I’m looking forward to reading it. No matter that it is over 500 pages. I wouldn’t care if it was over a thousand, his music has been the soundtrack to much of my life. And judging by the first page, there are going to be lots of things I learn about him for the first time. 

Speaking of which, I will soon be working for a living again. In the end it all turned out very well and I’m going back to what I know well and do well. I’m also looking forward to joining a team again, being on your own in a room scanning job ads and re-hashing your CV over and over again is not my personal idea of fun. The F-word that should never be used in work. Or so they say. Them. Not going to say too much yet as some internal communications need to be done. 

I’m also looking forward to my other new role as Chair of Trustees of Wesport. Look them up, a fantastic charity that does brilliant work helping people to get moving more and become more active. I’m a bit daunted by that as well tbh but everyone keeps telling me to trust my instincts and I’ll be fine. Fortunately the CEO and his team are all brilliant and really know what they are doing. Fingers crossed anyway.

We are living in interesting times, and as any student of Chinese proverbs will tell you, this is not a good thing. Old certainties no longer hold good, or so it would seem. Them again. Yet I’m not so sure. Some people are shits but most people are nice. Do the best you can and good things can happen. Or something like that.

But there’s lots of evidence of us getting through far worse than this. You have to grasp whatever life is given to you don’t you? Whilst doing your best to smite bollocks, bullshit and bat-shit crazy people who want to make the world better for themselves even if it means others suffer. I’m running with it. Well, cycling anyway.

It’s nearly 40 years since “War” was released, quickly followed by the Red Rocks concert and “Under a blood red sky”. Imagine not experiencing that at the time it happened? Imagine being from the latest generation, having loads of new ideas, but not remembering seeing Bono with a white flag? Your life would be a pale initiation of one, wouldn’t it?

Time to sing my song.

I’m going to Wichita

 Wow. A pandemic.

If any of you have been reading this blog for a while you will know that I caught Covid back in the Spring of 2020. Actually, more like the late Winter. 

I had been the main organiser for a conference for my (now) former employer. It had been a very stressful and difficult event to organise, and culminated in a day that was overshadowed by the emergence of a new virus. Friday 6th March it was, and after two months when we talked about high-performance, and the next phase of growth, all in preparation for the usual break-out sessions and external speakers, all anyone now remembers is that it was the last “in-person” event for a very long time.

At the evening dinner I was seated next to a rather truculent individual, and spent the evening trying to be polite and pleasant in the face of his repeated moaning. He even moaned about his latest Italian skiing holiday, from which he’d just returned. Yes, you’ve guessed it.

The next day, a Saturday, I rode an Audax. I was pretty tired anyway, and I’m not sure if the infection had taken enough hold of me to explain why I only finished within 20 minutes of the cut-off time. It was a very cold and windy late-Winter day, I rode it on my own after Martyn’s car failed to start that morning, and I was conscious of having had a particularly tough few weeks at work. However by the next weekend, riding down to the Blackdowns with Martyn I really found it hard to even pedal. I turned back, leaving him to it, and on the way home, I had to stop a few times for a snooze as I found it hard to stay awake.

By the beginning of the following week I was actually ill, with all the symptoms of this new emerging Coronavirus, and I spent the following weekend asleep and feverish. There were no tests available by then, but antibody testing in May 2020 confirmed I’d had Covid-19, and since we had been in lockdown since March I knew for certain that my colleague had brought me back a present from Italy. He’d actually infected a whole bunch of people that day, so I guess you could call that Conference a Super-spreader event. I’m glad it disseminated something.

Much has been written and spoken of since then about vaccines, viruses, parties and politics. Friendships have been lost, I’ve taken redundancy from my job at that organisation, and in many ways the world seems a different place to that in early 2020. Back in the early days of the pandemic most people lived in genuine fear of getting the illness. The news media was full of stories of death and hospitals that could barely cope with the wave of sick people. There was little understanding of transmission and no known prevention or cure. The world was full of rules and angry people, one containing what we could do in the name of the greater good, the other railing about restrictions they felt were unnecessary.

Beyond Covid, my world has been through so much too. Major illnesses to all of our household, bereavements as we lost Mrs Mendip Rouleur’s Mum, my close friend, and others we knew. So many people suffering so much disruption. Junior off to the turbulent world of Pandemic University and having a really tough time. Turmoil in the job world for us and just about everyone I know. That’s before you take into account the strangeness of lockdown world, conspiracy theories about everything, me even growing a beard. Twice. If the world was turned upside down in 1649, then believe you me, we are living on St Georges Hill

Nowadays there is barely a mention of Covid in the news. Of course, the death of our longest-reigning monarch has taken over the airwaves in the last two weeks, but even before then the pandemic had become just a small piece of occasional stories, perhaps linked to long Covid, or other less immediate crises. The pandemic didn’t create many of the challenges we face now, holistically in the wider world, or more prosaically, for me and my family. But it’s magnified and exacerbated them, and also created a culture where the small-minded and the weak, feel panicked into making short-sighted and stupid decisions. I hope not to be amongst those feeling that fear. Even if I may have felt the effects of the fearful.

Foreign holidays in all their glory have returned. This seems like a good thing to everyone, but is it? In a world that is being destroyed by rising temperatures and rising CO2, is it right we head out on our tours of materialistic consumption of other cultures, or mindless drinking in hotter climes? Hard to say isn’t it, as with all things? But where does beneficial tourism end and destruction of the planet begin?

Guess where we went? Yes, that’s right, Italy. A lovely week in Sorrento and the surrounding area. Relaxing, eating, sight-seeing and enjoying  a break from the slog of 2022. So it’s with a particularly appropriate circularity that I now have Covid, Omicron variant,  whatever number we are on now, probably. Assuredly caught either on a coach trip back to the airport, or the flight home itself. Or the crowded arrivals hall, or frankly who cares where? Fortunately Junior has gone back to University and remains, a week later, symptom-free and Mrs Mendip Rouleur continues to test negative. Probably because at the first sign of a symptom I hot-footed into Junior’s vacated room and stayed there till she left for work this week in London. 

Actually, I’ve come to realise what a little paradise Junior’s room is. He has the best TV in the house, with the full range of channels, and the best bed, and access to everything he could need. I think I may need to make it a bit more unpleasant, otherwise he’ll be here when he’s 30! At least West Ham aren’t winning anymore, normal service has resumed. 

So now, as I watch my Strava fitness curve collapse again, and cancel all engagements for the next week, what am I left with? Well, a very irritating illness that is a bit more than a cold, with sniffles, coughing, headache, and nausea. (Note the Oxford comma in the previous sentence). But it’s nothing like the feverish fatigue with flu-like symptoms of March 2020. Not does it have any fear attached to it, and nor is anyone really remotely interested in it. For someone with asthma (like me) it’s enough to render my nights quite uncomfortable, but as long as I keep dosed on paracetamol and hydrated, and avoid eating too much, (and quite frankly I have little appetite anyway), I’m fairly sure I’ll be fine in a few days. Physically anyway.

In a way it’s a good time to get this Omicron out of the way. My cycling season had come to an end, limping to a finish a week after I crashed on a group ride on August Bank Holiday Monday, and I probably needed a bit of a break to let my body recover. Oh, the irony. But I’ve also just had a medical, with generally good results although there are some things to work on. At my age (yes it is next Saturday if you want to send a present) people make all kinds of assumptions about what you are capable of. But in many ways my medical has defied those. My VO2 is that of someone 23 years younger than my real age for example, and that’s despite my asthma. I know I need to, and can, lose some weight and improve my diet, but beyond that I’m in good shape. Physically anyway.

Once I have recovered from this current minor hiccup I do have a few projects I want to really get my teeth into. More on that in my next post. Unfortunately, all of them are unpaid, and whilst the coffers are not empty, I suspect the plans our new Prime Minister has will not be filling them anytime soon. So if anyone has any work that I can do to a good standard, with financial reward within travelling distance that makes the effort of commuting worthwhile (or a good standard of shower and secure bike storage), do let me know. I’m not fussed about what it is, as long as I can be good at it, and preferably it involves working with nice people, I’m all ears. Message me, I’m hear to listen. Someone else said that recently, but unlike them, I really mean it.

But I have an unease about both the Pandemic, and about its lingering impact that I can’t quite shake. I’m not talking about Long Covid either, although I feel and fear for the people suffering from that too. With a novel virus its true impact and ways of affecting us won’t be known for some time. This one is shaping up to be nasty, and will, like those in charge of our corrupt government, constantly mutate to try and hide the nastiness.

So is the pandemic over or not? Does anyone care? Are we now “living with Covid” rather than trying to fight it? What does that even mean? 

Last night I watched a particularly bad post-apocalyptic Zombie film called “World War Z”.  Brad Pitt probably did it for the money, but then again, so would I! Aside from the annoying trope of an asthmatic kid (appears in most post-apocalyptic films these days), it did have a ring of a reminder about how fragile our world is, and how easy it would be for it to collapse. Earlier in the week I’d watched Simon Reeve investigate zoonotic illnesses in South America, and how these are becoming more dangerous as we push into previously remote areas. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that the powerful and the scared are allies in these situations, exploiting peoples’ fears and prejudices to feather their own nests. 

But then if you think how quickly our country was gripped again by a strange Royalist-obsessive fever, and how notions of rational discourse and debate are swept aside so easily, well the Zombies are here already aren’t they? Add in unhealthy dollops of fear, an uncertain financial and employment situation, multiply by 100, throw in some unjustified paranoia about strangers, and what have you got? How quickly will people throw up their hands and say, “oh they are all the same, what can you do?” Before you know it, the camps are opening and the excuses are being made. Maybe this sounds like a different type of conspiracy theory to you, it probably even does to me. But I’m worried.

Someone has got to say enough. Someone has got to stop the slide and say, let’s be the grown-ups. We have to create a better world. Those of us that are Snowflakes, Woke, Progressive, Human, whatever we call ourselves, we have to fight back. We have to choose love.

The old Guy can’t come to the phone right now

 What a difference a week can make to your life. And to your resting heart rate. Whether it makes any difference to my cycling ability, well, let’s wait and see. 

For the first time since 2018 I made it to the Pyrenees. They have changed a lot in that time. The roads are stickier, the gradients are steeper and all the bikes are much heavier. Only joking of course, it was all pretty much as I’d left it at the end of the Cent Cols. It was me that had changed. Oh, and maybe the world too. 

I left Bristol Airport on Thursday 2nd June in scenes of pandemonium. Apparently it had been worse in the days before. If this is what a Jubilee does to the transport infrastructure, it’s yet more evidence of the damage having a royal family does to the country. But I persevered, and eventually found myself in the arrivals’ hall of Toulouse airport, on a calm and serene evening. I decided to drag my bike (in it’s box), my suitcase (suitably overstuffed with cycling kit), to my overnight stop (the Hotel Ibis Styles), which was after all just 1km away. I’d forgotten that even at 8PM it can still be very hot in Occitanie. Won’t make that mistake again.

I settled in for the evening, watching the sun go down, and feeling the stress seeping out of me. It felt like home, even if it isn’t. Although in a way of course, it is.

I had intended to potter about the City centre the next morning, but I overslept. I contented myself with a French breakfast of bread, ham, cheese and croissant, with suitable coffee. That blue sky was already in evidence, a deeper blue than you get in England, and I wandered over to Decathlon and bought a new shirt. More of that later. 

Lunchtime arrived and Lee from Cycle Pyrenees arrived to pick me up and take me to Foix. That sounds like it should be a Bing Crosby film. I’m not going to describe every single ride, climb, descent, meal, castle, mountain view, or even any of them. If you want to see any of them, ask to follow me on Strava or Instagram (guybuckland77). If I like you I’ll accept you. 

I’m not even going to tell you about all the things I learned about myself. There wasn’t much to be honest, I was too intent on enjoying myself. If you go to Cycle Pyrenees in Vernajoul (near Foix) I guarantee you will enjoy yourself too. If we meet soon I may give you a standard response about my holiday, but I can honestly say here, in my blog, that it was an outstanding trip and just what I needed.

The highlight for me was the penultimate day, when we all went out for a ride together, and I got to see a castle I’d long to visit for a long time. By then I was still climbing slowly, but I didn’t feel as if parts of my body were going to disintegrate before I got to the top. Yes, a short climb, but also a bit of fitness, a bit of knowledge (thanks Lee for the HR tip), and a lot of perspective.

The company of hosts and fellow guests was excellent. All better cyclists than me, they had inordinate patience to wait when they needed to, or not when I needed them to go up the road and leave me to my work. It may be true that it is harder than it used to be, but I think a lot of that has to do with the unfamiliarity, the absolute shellacking I’ve had in the past few years, and a certain psychological struggle that is receding as fast as my descent of the Col de Port (a PB in case you wondered). 

Which brings me back to the shirt. This picture on the morning I left, with that sky behind me. Or me in front of it. I look pretty good don’t I? I do look my age, but I am also fitter than a week ago. I’m not going to rest easy either. All my numbers are as good as they have been for four years, and I am confident I am going to get better.

I’m not interested in challenges, competitions, status, hierarchy or machismo. I know my place. The question now is, do you know yours? 

A song from the darkest hour

 I finally got to ride the Chalke and Cheese Audax last weekend. Well the weekend before, but who’s counting? Martyn and I had first thought about doing it in 2018, but for some reason we couldn’t make it, so the weekend after we set out to ride the route as an informal DIY. But we got a bit lost in the early evening and ended up slogging around near Mere in the gloom. We both did well over distance but it was not the real deal. 

2019 passed us by, I can’t remember why, maybe weather or football-attendance related or maybe it was the beginnings of the bout of whooping cough, but in 2020 we both entered again. Infamously I had two punctures within the first 20km, and given as I’d had 3 the weekend before I rightly bailed suspecting a wheel problem. Which there was. Martyn however gamely pedalled on and completed it on his own. He’s been doing a lot of that recently, I’m not convinced he knows why he keeps going with the 200km rides?

As for 2021, I think we were all a bit locked down at the time weren’t we?

So it was a relief, and also a joy, to trundle around the delightful route, puncture at 80km notwithstanding and finally complete the thing. It is a lovely route though, and was very well-attended, despite the first four hours on icy lanes in sub-zero temperatures. As for this year’s puncture, luckily the mud, cold and lack of reading glasses obscured the fully-cracked rim - the whole braking surface interrupted by a twisted crack. I’m sure there’s a metaphor in there somewhere. A miracle I didn’t get more punctures or worse.

I’ve just been to the physiotherapist this morning, checking in to see how much recovery still continues on the brachial neuritis. Good news, my grip strength is now “normal”, which as everyone knows is a statistical average, and given it was around 50% of normal nine months ago is great to hear. Recovery is continuing in almost all my muscles, even down to the lower forearms. Still not fully there, but it’s still progressing.

There is however, bad news, the recovery around one muscle, the left infraspinatus, has stalled, with no progress in the last three months. This muscle is a key one in rotating the shoulder and giving it stability. It has also caused impingement in the joint, meaning as other muscles continue to grow stronger, the imbalance will potentially get worse. I’m going for some repeat nerve conduction studies to see if this is nerve damage, and if so how bad, or if it’s something else.

But. It’s a big but, because it’s almost exactly a year since this illness, condition, whatever, struck. It was a strike too, a sudden, nasty, vicious and painful whack to my system. I recently looked back at a WhatsApp thread, I was trying to find an address. But I came across the exchange of messages I’d had during the first week, and on my part they had become the virtual equivalent of monosyllabic. I was clearly less than my normal garrulous state. I remembered how frightening it had been to suddenly lose function, to be overwhelmed by unusual and unexpectedly severe pain, not knowing what it was or where it was going. Or going to end.

I hope it never comes back. I hope none of you ever get this. But, and this is the but, I consider myself very fortunate to have made as much of a recovery as I have. Even if I made no more progress at all, I could live with it. Barring putting on pullover fleeces, and reaching for things on high shelves, (no jokes about short people please) I can do just about everything I need to, and the cycling seems to be OK.  I mean, 200km, done very slowly I’ll grant you, but I never thought I’d get back to that, puncture or no puncture.

This year I have three simple aims. First, stay alive. Second, stay healthy. Third, enjoy myself as much as possible. That’s it. 

I do have other plans, some of which involve bikes, bikes with friends in France, bikes in Devon, other places. Also, learning how to have a real laugh, telling a story, or at least the research for one. And learning to listen better, no not the empathic caring about others stuff, actually getting hearing aids that don’t give me an allergic reaction. 

One of the sayings I like to trot out on a regular basis is this. Most of the things we ever worry about don’t turn out to be as bad as we first fear. So why focus on the worry, when you could focus on better things?

I don’t really know how this shoulder thing is going to end, but I do know this. There have been a lot of people rooting for me in the last twelve months, and a lot of people who have supported me in ways big and small, and in ways they didn’t have to. I’m very grateful and thankful to everyone that has helped speed me on the path to recovery. Even those who let me down have help, in a funny kind of way. That’s my focus, the people who help, not the worry and the people who don’t. Really.

We can all recover. We may be changed, hurt, impaired, damaged, but, and this is the big but, recovery is always possible.

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.