"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.

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.