Normal

I love watching television. But even I have been stretched to the limit in recent weeks as we binge-watch and exhaust the usual sources of entertainment that I like. There are only so many times I can watch the Premiership year 1998-99 (we finished 5th that season) or the best stages of the Giro.

Fortunately the choices of what to watch are rapidly approaching infinite, and there are more boxes available that I can recycle, as well as documentaries galore of all the old bands and dead rock stars. One of the latter was a “rockumentary” on the Boomtown Rats that barely mentioned either Paula Yates or Live Aid, although both were pivotal in the band’s initial break-up.  “Tonic for the Troops” was the first decent album I bought with my own money, and Rat Trap describes my life at aged 15 better than anything I can imagine.  The record was packed with unbelievable tracks like Howard Hughes, Eva Braun and Watch out for the Normal People.

Ah “Normal People” - another great series. All about being young and stupid. Just like we all were and some of us still are judging by the views of people regarding this pandemic on blogs and social media everywhere. You might think there is a complete vacuum of facts and data at the moment to listen to people opining their theories on Covid and its impact on society.

One such case in point is “the new normal”, a phrase I personally detest for a number of reasons. First I hate the evolution of language, if I had my way we’d all be speaking 9th century Anglo Saxon, but there you go, that’s just my outdated desire for something that has long since passed into my mistaken memories of a golden age that never existed. But I do hate jargon.

But there isn’t a new normal, aside from the fact that the phrase means a billion things, meaning it actually is meaningless, the only thing that is normal is a statistical average at a single moment. Time marches on like the rust on an unwashed steel cassette (this is the cycling reference for this post - if you’ve come for cycling, come back another day). I’m sure there were people in 1945 describing the election result as a blip or a mistake and that as soon as the people realised the error of their ways they’d be back to doffing their caps and asking for a job as a maid or a butler.

This pandemic has not been a “pause” life has gone on like a giant Severn Bore sweeping up the estuary, despite the death toll from the pandemic. In my view, life won’t be kinder or more humane afterwards either, there is too much endemic selfishness and too many vested interests manipulating our behaviour to ever make us go back to the Garden of Eden (which also didn’t exist).

But some things have changed. I do not believe work will be the same. Sure people need to meet and interact from time to time, but we don’t all need to do it everyday and spend hours travelling everywhere to do it. There’s a story about a US official saying there will come a time when one day, there will be a telephone in every town. Technology gets better, and soon it we will be able to communicate seamlessly from wherever we want to.

Great social change is underway economically too. Mainly because a lot of people are going to lose their jobs in the UK, And across the world and those that don’t will be paying the costs of the unprecedented government support for decades to come. There will be riots and there will be trouble. But hopefully, from that trouble, something better will emerge, not the gooey “Be kind” nonsense, or the vapid Thursday night clapping. I hope for a sensible relationship between owners and workers, with a bit more equity (in the broadest sense) about the rewards that value creation brings.

I’m watching and waiting on my own life too, trying desperately to be normal, whilst knowing I am not. Nor are you, and we should both stop aspiring to that normality. My Mother would have been 87 this week had she still been alive. I do wonder what she would have made of all this fuss about Covid, after all she lived through the Second World War, albeit as a child, and often told me how normal the wartime conditions became after a while.

I suppose that is my point. You can drift along with the tide, commenting from the sidelines if you like, but essentially you are a Helpless passenger on that tidal wave. Or you can look for the evidence, listen to people, observe what is going on, and either enjoy the ride, or maybe, swim against the current. In that way you can work out where you want to be or get to, and make progress towards it. Like cycling.

Maybe you might even enjoy NOT being normal.

The sorry tale of a lockdown injury

There has never been a better time to visit an A & E department. If you live in Weston super Mare or surrounding villages anyway. That was my experience last Sunday and Monday, when despite all the warnings, as well as my strong inclinations to avoid further strain on our beleaguered health system, I had cause to spend the best part of two days inside one.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, and hindsight and detective work are wonderful things. At times during those two days I was very worried indeed, whereas now I just seem to have an injury that (I hope) is going to be no more than mildly irritating for a while.

So let’s start in the middle. Last weekend I planned to go out for a hilly ride on the Sunday, good weather was forecast, and I could do all of it whilst being no more than 30 minutes ride from my front door. In preparation I fuelled up on pasta in the evening, and as I prepared to go to bed I had a few jiggly stomach pains that I put down to indigestion. I was tired anyway, so off to bed I toddled, looking forward to getting out first thing.

At about 7AM I was rudely awoken by a sharp pain in my lower abdomen, followed quickly by another. Then another. It was if, I imagined, someone was sticking knitting needles into my side, near where my appendix had been removed some 30 years ago. I stumbled out of bed, and the pain intensified, so I got back into bed, and they got worse again. My normal reactions to minor illness is to inflate it into something serious, but this felt serious so I tried to down-play it in my mind.

After about 15 minutes this strategy appeared not to be working, so I knew a bike ride was out. After another 15 minutes I decided to burden the NHS and phoned 111. By now the pain was constant, and I was a bit worried. So was the out of hours GP, who arranged for me to go and see a doctor at an out of hours surgery. This doctor was also worried enough to send me to A & E at the hospital.

I’ll spare you the full SP. Suffice to say I was seen by a succession of people, repeating the same information over and over, having my abdomen prodded again and again, till at last, a student Doctor, albeit under supervision, diagnosed a problem with my gall bladder, I almost certainly have gallstones he said.

I was sent home with loads of painkillers as they were not doing x-rays or scans that day, and they were sure I wasn’t in any danger. I found the painkillers went very well with a bottle of Thatchers and the pain subsided.

By the way, the hospital was deserted, kind of. Very quiet anyway. As it was the next day when I limped in to the X-ray department to have an ultrasound scan. Where we discovered I have a perfectly functioning gall bladder with no trace of stones or anything else that shouldn’t be there. And a very healthy intestine, pancreas, liver and spleen, and an aorta which would look good in a 30-year old.

So far so comforting. But what was wrong with me as I was still in pain, of the dull ache variety, if not the knitting needle category. Another wait ensued before I got to see a thoracic surgeon, late on Monday afternoon. More prodding, coughing, etc. Gentlemen will understand this is not pleasant. Woman can imagine,  but I’m sure experience far worse. Don’t write in.

The final diagnosis? A tear in the oblique muscles of my right-hand side. The treatment? Generally a lot of rest and no twisting or turning or heavy lifting. Painkillers and cider to moderate the pain. Sort of.

Just to be clear, that is not a picture or image of me. I have a bit more timber around the six-pack, and I’m also now sporting a fetching beard. 

So how did I come by this weird injury? I think I’ve pieced it all together in hindsight so that it now seems obvious. Well, I hear you say, if it was obvious, why didn’t you realise and not bother our overwhelmed NHS at a time of national emergency. To which I say, stick some knitting needles into yourself, just east of your tummy button and see how clearly you think.

I blame someone else obviously, for back in February I did do a minor injury in that area, when my PT, a Spurs fan but otherwise a great bloke, forced me to lift weights purely beyond my weedy capability. I took it easy on that front for a couple of weeks and didn’t think anything of it.

I also had a slight ache in that area the Friday before as I cycled up the 14% gradient of a narrow lane near Burrington, but again, put it out of my mind amidst everything else going on. Surely, neither of those two were enough to bring this on?

They were not, and the cause of the trip only became apparent on the Friday just gone, as I walked around Sainsbury’s buying our now weekly shop, fresh food mainly, and such is the appetites here in Mendip Rouleur Towers that I fill the trolley to the brim. I have also discovered the “joy” of that scan-as-you-go gun thing, and devise a system of bag-filling to make life “easier” when I get home and have to unpack it all. Anyone compulsive will understand. What a capacity we have for creating new first-world problems.

 One thing we seem to have an insatiable appetite for in our house is Diet Coke.  And it won’t go in shopping bags in the cases I’m buying it in, so I decided to put those in the trolley first.  At the front. Then go back to the start of the social-distancing journey and get the fresh food. Now bear in mind, this is 5 days after my hospital experience. I’ve done no exercise, the pain has subsided to a dull ache and I’m looking forward to some wheeled excitement at the weekend. No not the trolley. The bike.

I round the corner of the shopping aisle, and it being a trolley, the front-filled Diet Coke loaded thing goes one way as I go another. Instinctively I go to counter balance and get the knitting needles in the side again. The trolley comes to rest against the dried pasta and tomatoes, fortunately everyone is two metres away, no harm done to fellow shoppers. Because I let go of said trolley, no harm done to me either.

Then I remember. Last Saturday, just before my pasta-meal, I’d been lugging a similarly-laden trolley around. Could that have been the straw that tore the camel’s obliques? Quite possibly, I’ll never know for certain, but it seems likely.  I tried a gentle walk later yesterday afternoon, and this morning I’ve woken up with more persistent pain. I’d come off the painkillers on Thursday, now I think the cider might have to make a comeback. We’ll see.

So clearly I have a lockdown injury and the years of home delivery have taken their toll. I need to work more on my core. My legs are fine, they can tackle the gradients OK, I just need to utilise that aorta And toughen up in the middle. I think. There’s going to be some gentle exercise tomorrow, but for now if anyone has any tips, let me know. On this type of injury please, not on shopping, core strength training or cider.

To go anywhere that I please

Who am I?

Ha, you weren’t expecting that were you? I was always a fan of Jean-Paul Sartre, perhaps the finest exponent of existentialism. But not the only one. So (that’s for you Stuart), what is it to exist? Back in my formative decade, the eighties, there was much talk of the dignity of labour, and how work defined so many of our existences. Much concern too, that with mass unemployment amongst the predominantly male workforce we were about to have a crisis in the heads of millions of men.

I could do that.

Of course like any self-obsessed teenage (and beyond), I’ve had my moments. A few of them in the last three weeks as I balance the rational, logical business decisions with my own feelings of hopelessness and despair. I pulled myself together, don’t worry, and now I’m fine.

Don’t make a fuss.

Anyway, the lockdown is fraying, like that gear cable you look at and think, umm, not today, maybe when I get back, or on Sunday. And then one day, you pull on the brake and....nothing, and you wish, oh you wish. Today, out on my officially-allowed exercise I saw the following:

- A group of nine or ten men gathered around a table in Axbridge, pretending to social-distance (what a shit verb), whilst really they were there for a drink and a knees-up

- Quite a few conversations on doorsteps where again people were pretending to keep a safe distance, but really they’d just popped round for a chat

- Motorbikers in groups of 3-4+, with no panniers, boxes or rucksacks. They may have had medical appointments, but they sure weren’t going shopping

- Picnics. Quite a few of these, people parked up roadside chomping away

- Young people. Now I understand if you are 17 (I still do remember, no matter what Junior thinks) being apart from your mates is hard, being apart from your boyfriend/girlfriend is actually the end of the world. A lot of that.

There was more. It’s OK though, clapping and positivity can cure all ills, make up for the lack of testing, PPE and a plan for the relaxing of restrictions without catastrophic economic meltdown. Yeah, too much politics and not enough basic competence. 

So who am I?

Haven’t you worked it out yet? 

People.

And there are  too many pictures to post of the wheels I have followed over the years, great friends, colleagues, fellow travellers and strangers I have met on trains. Somewhere deep inside, you must know I miss you.

For all of those reasons I know that in a couple of years all that feeling of togetherness, Captain Tom, we’re all in this together and enjoying the stillness of the car-free roads, will be but a vague and distant memory. What matters then?

Your values, your compass and your ethics. Believe in a higher power if you want to. But draw on your DNA, those closest to you and your integrity. You don’t need to be able to go to the pub to be free. Or even to debate the regulations and how they affect the distance you can or can’t cycle. You are as free as you decide to be.

Never quite as it seems

Are you losing track of what happened when? I know I am. Junior asked me today when I last shaved and I had to resort to looking at a calendar, figuring what had happened when, the last day I was actually in a real office, to be able to answer. I still don’t know if I was right. Anyway, in case you are bored of boredom, and also fed up with Gary Barlow, and other tedious forms of entertainment, here is my quick guide to Lockdown 2020. In no particular order

Work. I don’t really miss the real office. Unlike the virtual one I’ve been inhabiting for the last whatever. I have just the right amount of social contact and have found my job to be easily doable from home. Meanwhile, it’s all be going on for ‘so long’ that people are already talking about creating better worlds, and the new normal. Like I said, whatever, never mind. I can’t see it happening, I think people have very short memories and will revert to type soon enough.

Music. I’m late to the Spotify party but it’s been a godsend. Just like the virus supposedly. Only more heart-warming. I’ve trawled musical memories and on the walks I’ve taken in the hills and woods that surround my house, I’ve delved into the musical memories, as well as allowing the playlist suggestions to take me to wonderful new places.

Roads. Largely devoid of cars, they have become a true joy to cycle on, if you can avoid the few maniacs who feel they’ve been given some kind of licence that permits excessive speed and driving straight out of a Bond movie. It does get a bit mind-numbing to cycle all these lovely routes and roads on my own, but as we have also been blessed with an abundance of dry weather, I’m not complaining.

More Work. More of it that I can handle. Which is unfortunate as I am now only officially working for three days a week, but it’s amazing how quickly we can all adapt to working without actually being in the same physical place. I suppose we just need to be on the same page or ballpark, albeit two metres apart. But I’m a fortunate son, as I have a job still, for which I am very grateful. If I can do things I like, put bread, or crisps or cream eggs on the table, that’s what matters. 

Facial hair. As mentioned earlier, it’s been about a month. My stated aim at the beginning was to look like a Viking. But actually, as my brain meandered into thoughts of head tattoos and eyebrow-shaving, I was reminded by a friend that it’s really a mixture of boredom and rebellion. A dangerous combination and all too true. It would also make a good album title.

Americans. I haven’t seen my cousins from Oklahoma in quite a few years. Decades actually. But we still exchange messages and the like. In the new normal, virtual way. They, at least, all seem to have their heads screwed on. But some of their fellow Americans, well, I look at the news of demonstrations against lockdown and wonder how they actually became top nation. I saw news that there had been  no school shooting in March, in the USA, the first month that was true since 2002. So I fact-checked it, and aside from a variable around how these things are recorded, it wasn’t true. Because there were eight school shootings in March 2020. Plus ca change and all that.

Virus. Pretty sure I had it back in late March. Classic symptoms, very easily shared with family despite attempts to isolate in the house -how ridiculous is that exhortation - and all passed “mildly” in a little over two weeks. Except we don’t know for sure, because there’s no testing, of either the antibodies, or the infection at the time. I’m not going to the political place now, but if you know me, you’ll know what I think. Where is it going to end? You need to ask? I am pretty certain of one thing, it’s going to be bumpy for quite a while, so I hope we can hold onto the kindness epidemic.

Books. A lot of Julian Barnes, I just love both his style and his substance. I’ve have a trawl of lots of cycling stuff as you’d expect and a surprising journey through early 20th century Irish history (Like I said, plus ca change). Late to the party, but catching up quickly is some general philosophy reference material - I was on a recap of Virtue Ethics tonight. I wonder what a book would look like with all four elements combined. Don’t write in.

I have no insights today, no hackneyed exhortations. Just the best version of my song of the moment. Take care of yourself and those around you. Be generous.

Let's fast forward to a few years later

I'm not going out for exercise tonight. I've been doing low-level intensity stuff for most of the last week, and I need a bit of a break. Slobbing on the sofa, that kind of thing.

Anyway, I have something to say, even if I can't say it. Even if no one is listening.

By all accounts, this is the biggest medical, social and economic shock to our society ever. Well, if you believe that you have no concept of history. I dare say that there were a few people around in 1348 who if they were still around now might argue the toss with you. But I get the point.

In recent memory anyway. Which means the last fifty years. Or eighty at a push. Maybe even 95 if you are being particularly obtuse. But the central point of my point is that in all the clapping, the crappy videos, (and yes, I know I'm as guilty as anyone), and the self-congratulatory emails about adaptability and the like, we seem to have lost sight of something.

We've forgotten how to be human. I know I have. The truth is that bad things happen and we get through them. Sometimes we make a fuss, and sometimes we don't. Whilst it is true that the NHS workers are doing a wonderful job, so is the bin man who goes out collecting our rubbish, not knowing if it's covered in virus particles. No one claps him at 8 o'clock on a Thursday night.

The woman in the Co-op serving her customers, with the risk one of them will sneeze all over her. The supermarket shelf-stacker, toiling away at all hours of the night so you can go and get more toilet roll. Or even the local council apparatchik, bravely sat in the corner of his spare bedroom, plodding away at his laptop, not knowing if his employers are going to make him redundant tomorrow.

I've been amazed at how quick some people are to judge, criticise and demonise the actions of their fellow citizens. Maybe everyone could do with a little bit more understanding now. More listening. There are encouraging signs, but we are not there yet. If there is really going to be something good to come out of all of this, I hope it's that.

The truth is, life is difficult for everyone right now, and all of us are doing our best to make sense of it, in whatever way we can. My way is Netflix and music. Occasional exercise, to the degree I'm allowed. Yours may be something else.

But if ever there was a case for not judging, it's now.

Enjoy your evening. Thanks for listening. Oh, and keep your hands clean.

Easy for you to say

Cycling and aggression seem to go hand in hand in the UK these days. I ride to work about once a week, and it's a rare commute that does not involve someone driving aggressively around me, or more usually casting some casual abuse in my direction.

But occasionally some interactions with the motoring public almost defy description and analysis. These was one, last Friday, that left me more befuddled than annoyed, and for once, there was no outright aggression. This time it was wrapped in a not-so-invisible cloak of passivity.

I was riding home from work, through a village called Nailsea. For once I was on a well-lit, quiet street, with few parked cars, two carriageways and (shock) a smooth surface. Topically, and topically, I was ablaze with lights like the proverbial Christmas tree, with lights, reflectives and hi-viz galore about me.

My on-bike Garmin sat-nav was doing glitchy things, so I pulled over into the side of the road, under a lamppost (for illumination), but also to make myself extra visible, to sort it out. The road was residential and quiet (Whiteoak Way if you want to look it up), and quietly fettled. A couple of minutes, and a couple of cars, had passed, before one drew up behind me and honked on her horn. I looked up, saw the whole road was clear, and gestured her to use the empty space on the other side of the road.

She pulled up alongside me, wound down the passenger window, and the conversation went like this.

"When I beeped you, there was a van coming the other way, and I couldn't get through"

"Well it's clear now"

"But I couldn't get through with you there"

"Well just wait then"

"But I have somewhere to be, I need to get somewhere to get to urgently"

"Well, you're wasting more time now talking to me"

"But I'm being very polite"

"Yes, and so am I"

"But someone might run into the back of you"

"I don't see why they should, you didn't! I'm well-lit, in a very visible place, there's plenty of room to pass..."

It was at that point that her time-pressure must have overwhelmed her and she drove off.

This interaction left me perplexed for days, and I chatted it through with a few people, all of whom had interesting perspectives on it. Maybe she'd had a bad day, and I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe I was looking at the situation differently to her, you'll find a lot of people who will say I should have got onto the pavement, which to be fair I could have done.

But in the end, whether the aggression was active or passive, it was still there, and it came, in my opinion, from a sense of entitlement. As in "this is my road, not yours, you get out of my way". It's something I think we have more and more of in our culture. Not just on the roads, although it's pretty bad there. But in many of our interactions, in shops, workplaces, and most prevalent of all, in our political discourse.

An expectation of our "rights", then drives all kinds of horrible behaviour, whether it be passive-aggressive, shouty trumpeting of self-righteousness, smug gloating about getting one over on others, or outright aggression and violence. All driven from this believe that if my rights are being challenged, someone else should be on the receiving end.

By contrast. Christmas Eve, cycling home (no Chris Rea jokes please), through Dark Lane in Sandford. A car driver patiently waited to pass me where most don't, until the road opened up and the way was clear. The car drove alongside and the window was wound down, and the woman in the passenger seat, exclaimed to me "Merry Christmas". So it is possible. Better.

A new decade is coming next week, my seventh. One that always seemed so far away. I'm not saying I always react in the way I'm preaching about here. But I'm going to do my best to do so from now on. Put me straight please if you see me displaying a sense of that entitlement, and not enough kindness, empathy and understanding. Our roads all lead to the same place and I believe we would be better off if we all realised that a bit more, and turned our paths away from the road we are on now. It's not a nice journey.

Enjoy your road.

 

 

Take me to that other place

I used to laugh at those circulars you get this time of year. The ones that attempt to tell you all about how much better other people's lives are than yours, but don't. What else is a blogger's end of year post but that?

Anyway, in times like these there's no real need for any of that. Most of us are so narcissistic that all of our witty. clever, erudite lives are all over various forms of social media. Believe me, no one is listening. So let me be quite clear, to quote one of our recent clutch of Prime Ministers, I'm doing this for me. Prime Ministers are like West Ham managers. They used to last for ages and now they come along faster than London buses.

I've been ill a lot this year. So fewer (thanks Stannis) kilometres on the bike than for many a year. But what with Everything that has happened around all of that, I'm feeling very optimistic about my cycling for 2020. I think I may have finally have kicked the habit of kilometres for kilometres sake, and the gym work I've been doing seems to be paying real dividends in terms of the metrics.

But. It's still about Joy. It has to be. I have won the lottery of life to be fair. Born at the right time in the right circumstances with a lot to be thankful for. As I'm fond of reminding people, none of us are going to live forever, I've had a pretty good life so far, and the overall quality, if not the elasticity of my face's collagen, seems to be going up.

I know that for many, many people life is tough, unfair, a struggle, sad, depressing, achingly lonely. I count my blessings. I also know that by and large, most people are doing their best to be kind, friendly and decent.

With the demise of Game of Thrones this year, it's hard to find heroes. But we actually don't need them. There is more that unites us than divides us, if you want to be. As a wise woman once said to me, "do you want to make a difference or just a point?"

And if Game of Thrones teaches us anything, it's that Dragons and big armies don't win you love or kingdoms in the end. So as an even wiser woman said to me, "Be Generous", because if you want it to be, every day can be a beautiful one.

Merry Christmas