My Sixty Seventh Week as a Budding Author

One of the fantastic things about being human beings is the fact that we get to name things. As far as I am aware we are the only animal that does this unless there really are dolphins called “squeeeeeek” or a world full of confused dogs all called “woof”. Naming pets produces a particularly fascinating challenge in the modern age as vets log their names onto computers and spam their owners with mailings about the latest defence against sarcoptic mange mite or something.

In the years that we’ve had pets I’ve always managed to get one up on the vet’s computer by judicious use of the convention that states “one’s pet should be named after one’s interests”. So, we have had sarcoptic mange mite letters delivered to:-

“6X - A Damn Fine Bitter Barter”

Which clearly fitted into the envelope address window. So after 6X the cat departed the next incumbent was named:-

“Wembley, Wembley, we’re the famous Swindon Town and we won at Wembley Barter”

This not only foiled the envelope address line, it nearly killed the vet’s computer which really only had enough disk space for “Tiddles”. The next cat will be named “Please redirect this mail to sender” which is why Helen has informed me that we won’t be getting one anytime soon. 

Now you may wonder what on earth this all has to do with writing a book, there is a link and it is a little tenuous but it is related to a tweet I was party to in the previous week.

 

“That book title” refers to “Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder” and the implication is that I lifted it from somebody else’s website and applied it to my recently published book. Furthermore I am accused of being a “boy”, which is particularly annoying at the moment as I have bucked Movember convention and entered into a dare with my family to live an entire April away from the razor. 50% of the new facial hair that has sprouted is grey. If meths were to decide to advertise to bench dwelling alcoholics, I’d be first in line to apply for the job as their “face”.

Anyhow, let’s answer the accusation by going back in time a little bit, which conveniently allows me to use my mocked up time machine photo that I think is hilarious. The comedy is in Eeyore’s expression, he clearly does not want to be part of the time machine mockup and is doing it under duress. Surely you can also spot the genius of using a Kaiser Chiefs CD for the rear? Did any of you see the film?

Back to the book title. Somewhere round about July last year I had decided that I would turn a few of my musings into a book. At the time I was considering publishing this blog (and I warn you that I may still do that). So I sat down and wrote the first few pages of the introduction. If you have read them it clearly outlines the kind of obsessive character that I am and so I jotted down a few ideas for a title into my journal.

I was toying with the themes of cycling and obsession, you try it yourself and you will quickly come to find that “obsessive compulsive” comes to mind. This is entirely due to those poor unfortunates who really do suffer from a proper medical obsessive compulsion. In fact I’ve worked with a guy who had a series of rituals that meant he had to be the last to leave rooms and hence clearly became a little stressed if you attempted to work later than him.

A quick brainstorm came up with the titles you can see on the page above. Forgive the handwriting and “Holiday in France” is not one of them. The shortlist was:-

• Disorderly Cycle
• OCD Cycling
• Ten Years Two Wheels
• Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder
• Biwheel Curious/Curiosity

I binned the project for the next six months as it was becoming a distraction but picked it up again in December 2011 when I realised that I needed to get out and publish something in the name of experience. I worked on the intro further and sent a copy to a friend early 2012 entitled “Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder”. The title had been chosen at Christmas.

There was a simple reason for the choice. It has nothing to do with anyone’s blog/book/cat/website/twitter account. The reason was that in writing the introduction I realised that I genuinely am obsessed with the bloody sport and not in a “do it quite a lot way” more of a “have to buy or try every single aspect of the sport in the pursuit of further happiness”.

I’ve owned just about every single type of bike, I’ve ridden almost every variant of cycling event and I’ve cycled at least 7,000 miles per annum every year for the past ten years. My house is jam packed with cycling books and magazines. I’ve had to build an extra shed to hold the bike fleet and it is a bloody good job that the kids were born before the cycling obsession as they’d be very embarrassed to answer to “Merckx” and “Fausto”.

For me the title was obvious. I spent exactly zero minutes checking the web, the only check I did was in the ISBN searches to see if a book with a similar title existed. All I came up with was a long list of medical texts and a book scientifically proving that God exists. The decision was made and I got on with writing and publishing my magnum opus.

In February I received a tweet from @Specialized_Guy where he asked how I had come by the title of my book. So I replied and then twitter-followed him and went for a look at his blog. Lo and Behold! It was entitled “Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder”. Interestingly my first reaction was that he’d nicked it off me. We exchanged a few tweets and that was that. I came back to his website later for a proper read and it became clear that whilst we are both obsessives we manifest the obsession in completely different ways.

@Specialized_Guy is an aspiring cycle tourist. He’s packed up his life into a bike load of panniers and waved goodbye to four walls for a two year trundle around Europe where he will be working his way round organic farms. Fair play to the guy and I hope it goes well. He’s clearly put a shed load of effort into planning and preparing for his ride and his website documents his quest. However, cycle touring could not be further from my own brand of cycling obsession.

You see I really, really like to ride my bike. In fact I enjoy riding it ten times more than the things I see as I’m up in the saddle. The whole of 2011 was a quest for the perfect ride as I shagged myself out around the UK trying to chase down the best roads, the hardest climbs and the most thrilling descents. Quite frankly, I bloody hate stopping. I never go down a small lane to look at a neolithic fertility rock and it would be impossible to draw me into a museum of cup cakes.

Touring just is not my thing and ladening my bike up isn’t either. Anything that detracts from the pure riding experience ends up deleted from my two wheeled “todo” list which explains why I rode Lands End to John O’Groats with only a change of clothes and folding shoes stuffed into a bar bag. Even then I cursed the bike’s weight as I tried to climb up onto the Long Mynd like Pantani but felt like Jo Brand instead.

So the two of us have completely separate obsessions and I hope that we can agree to both covet the title in our own separate ways. Because truth be told, even if I had known about the blog title I’d have still used it as the title of my book. It perfectly describes the contents and perfectly describes my continuing obsession with the sport.

However, I’m going to take some preventative measures to ensure that this doesn’t happen again by offering an early public glimpse. There’s a clue about one of my forthcoming titles in this blog already. I’m staying cagey about the name though as I think it is “pinchable” I’m happy to tell you that I’ve also got the following in the pipeline:-

“A long space with ME in the middle” - will be my next Kindle book, I will leave you to guess the rest

“Setting the Record Straight” - is the planned title of my Year Record book

“Sublime LEJOG” - is the piss poor working title of my Land’s End to John O’Groats guide

“My Dad, the Idiot” - is the new book my thirteen year old daughter is currently writing

Sadly the only writing progress this week is the sixteen hundred words you are reading now along with a small chapter that I wrote about Tommy Godwin’s childhood. The rest of the hours have been taken by computer based hackery as Andy and I toil towards the first milestone of our new business. My return to full time programming has necessitated the removal of the swear box from the shed. It’s been a really frustrating week as I’ve discovered that the things I want the computer to do can’t be done in the way I’ve spent two days trying to do them. Days of graceful retreats and optimistic advances have ensued, but I end the week with an app that fires up on my mobile phone screen and proudly announces “Hello World”.

Dave

13th April 2012

ps. Forgot to say, I'm buying a new bike soon hahahahahahhahhahhahahahahhahahahhahahahahahahhahahaha!

My Sixty Sixth Week as a Budding Author

If you have a cyclist in the family that shows even slight tendencies towards a proper two wheeled obsession then take my advice and ensure that under no circumstances are they ever exposed to skiing. Reason number one is that skiing done properly requires an element of finesse, something that the vast majority of us cyclists lack in spades. Most of what we do ends up in a sweaty, greasy mess of human/clothing/metal that utters phrases along the lines of “Never again”. The rare beasts that do exhibit some form of two wheeled style live in Italy and bleed expresso.

But cyclists can exist upon the slope without finesse, I’m living breathing proof of that as I muscle my way down runs graded way higher than my talent, saved only by strong cycling legs that somehow keep a wobbling torso upright. Reason number two is far more important, skiing is probably meant to be a soulful pastime where participants gracefully descend the mountainside enjoying the vista and performing a mini ballet of carving and pirouettes. It is not and should never be a hardcore quest for statistics, and that’s where the cyclist will immediately go wrong.

Give one of them a piste map and they’ll be looking at run gradings, lengths, heights, speeds and any other combination of numerical target that they can wilfully apply to their skiing holiday. Grace, serenity, scenery and finesse will be discarded in favour of numbers ready to litter their facebook and twitter feeds. For one solitary week a year their online friends will be spared the epic mileage/climbing performance only to have it replaced with a list of difficult pistes they have survived their way down and the resort mileages they’ve managed to achieve.

How do I know this? Simply because I am one hundred percent guilty as charged. And what’s worse I’ve dragged a minor along as an accomplice.

As you may have guessed it is Easter. Time me for and the family to slack off to the Alps in the Motorhome for a bit of plank on snow action. We’ve perfected the art of doing it on a budget and a decent eBay session has funded much of the trip. On arrival we bought lift passes and were presented with a piste map. Immediately the cyclist within came without and I stared at the Les Arcs map wondering, “Could they all be done in a day?”. This thought lay dormant when the sun came out and so I let the serenity, finesse and scenery come to the fore. Anyone who knows me will understand that the previous statement is a complete lie and should really read that I “stumbled my way from slope to slope looking like Peter Crouch nailed to two tea trays and blindfolded”.

Anyhow, on day three the weather went to pot, clouds appeared, rain and snow fell and it was all starting to get a little bit hard. That evening I unfolded the map in the motorhome and beckoned my son to the table. “Look Jake, we’ve skied many of these runs, do you reckon we could travel up every single ski lift in a day?”. Jake’s fourteen year old brain looked up “reckon” in it’s database and immediately came back with the response “yes”. That’s how male teenage brains work, there is no concept of logical reasoning or prior performance analysis. You simply present them with a challenge and they immediately assume that it is achievable. Interestingly, some forty year old brains work in a similar manner.

Therefore it was no surprise to find myself and Jake lined up on day four ready to take on every single one of Les Arc’s lifts. Twenty two of them in total and quite a lot of skiing to be done between each one. The weather chose to smile upon us, sarcastically. By becoming totally and utterly atrocious. We ticked off the Cachette lift by touch alone and felt our way to Vallandry by using a mixture of trees and French skiers. Then it mixed rain and hail in equal measure forcing Jake and I to ski down to a lift in the desperate hope that we hadn’t travelled up it before. The furthermost lift from our starting point was Combe 72, but on arrival we found the lift and its associated red run shut. A quick discussion modified our rules for the day. Shut lifts were deemed to have been ticked as long as they were closed when we arrived at their base.

The father/son team worked well as we groped our way around the Peisey/Vallandry area ticking off all of the biggies and even straying into a ski school’s beginner session to nail a very short drag lift. I distinctly heard an ESF instructor shout “Parallel de schkees” as I skidded my way past him.

Somehow the weather got worse and on the Grand Renard lift I only just managed to make out Jake sat next to me. But against all odds we were on track and had completed almost a third of the entire resort with a good five hours yet to go. Smugly we dismounted the lift, high fived then pushed skis into the road of porridge marked on the map as “Dents du peigne”. The snow up here was truly awful. Each turn was like side shovelling cow pats and was wrecking havoc upon my skinny little pins. Conditions were made worse by upturned English people who hadn’t quite mastered the art of surfing on custard. The French simply smoked fags and sneered as they skated by with finesse, serenity etc…..

Our plan required an extended trudge through this mess right down the Vallee de l’arc in order to tick off the Pre Saint Esprit lift. The word “Esprit” says “speed” to me as it reminds me of a slightly fast Lotus car. The lift sadly does not live up to billing as it squeaks and groans its way back up the valley almost as fast as I could walk. Jake and I found ourselves urging it on like a reluctant mule and were forced to race a mini-downhill to the Bois De L’Ours lift and back into the valley where we had begun. We were finding that the logistics of our quest caused all sorts of strange ski run combinations. I’ve subsequently looked at out GPS trace and it’s as if a pissed up giant ant skirted the region drunkenly looking for its lost house keys.

The weather remained desperate as we crossed back into the Arc 2000 bowl and blundered up and down the valley nailing the Plagnette, Arcubulle and Grand Col lifts. Things were not looking good for our venture up really high onto the Aiguille Rouge at 3226 metres. We ate our remaining food and stared out into the surrounding cloud from the bubble. When suddenly we popped out of the cloud into glorious afternoon sunshine. On reaching the top we found that conditions could not have been better. Most skiers had gone home, the light was perfect and the snow looked fluffy and deep, ready for a few poorly executed English turns.

Earlier in the day Jake had mooted that a son/father ass kicking would be handed out on this run. Therefore I exited the lift and pointed ski tips down the slope with reckless abandon. The lumps of snow did their best to direct this high speed buffoon down the black run he should not have been on and by chance some other lumps of snow served purpose to deflect his following son away from his optimal line. Nearly a thousand metres of descent later I stopped to wait for Jake, who pulled the “I was venturing off piste” excuse. We continued down fixated with keeping up with each other, which all went badly wrong as I face planted into a field of rice pudding at the base of the Aiguille Rouge run.

The two of us shook hands on a truce as yet another slow lift in need of oil wearily dragged us back up the hill. We were supposed to repeat this section on the Lanchettes lift but time had moved on all too quick and it was clear that we’d have to sacrifice this one to make it back home.

By now we were properly fecked. We’d not stopped at all in nearly seven hours of skiing and still had two more lifts to go. Comborciere took an age to get us to the top of the Mont Blanc run which we were forced to repeat in order to nail our final lift. The two of us basically fell down this final run. My legs were a symphony of singing sinew as every single muscle fibre wrote a letter of complaint to the brain. I could tell that Jake was equally suffering as he’d avoided the tree runs and was looking for snowboarder trails through the hill covered in white porridge. We collapsed into a cafe at the bottom of Arc 1600 one lift down. The GPS said 62 miles of skiing and 35,000 feet up and 35,000 feet down the hills. We’d had a few fortunate lift closures that had aided the task but silently regretted that one missed lift. An earlier start might had got us the lot, but we’re on holiday, surely a lie in’s allowed?

The walk back to the Motorhome was torture and on the way I announced my executive decision that Thursday would come with an additional one hour’s lie in allowance and that I’d be practising “technique” on easy runs for the day. I had to laugh though, where the hell will this stupid obsession with numbers take me next? This is why I studiously avoid golf, never enter casinos and ensure that I minimise my exposure to mountaineering. To be frank I’m looking forward to getting back home and going out cycling for a rest.

Dave

6th April 2012

My Sixty Fifth Week as a Budding Author

There’s an old saying in my family that goes something along the lines of “If it ain’t broken, don’t let Dave near it”. A very sage bit of advice that would be well considered by anyone coming into contact with myself. Were the bible to be re-written for modern times the casting team wouldn’t even bother advertising for Jonah, they would simple trek to my door and offer me the job on the spot. I cannot think of any single object that I have ever touched that hasn’t malfunctioned in some sort of manner.

This week I’ve been particularly plagued by the gremlins who have taken umbrage with my entire personal inventory from bike related objects to the radio spectrum. It all began with my track pump, how on earth can anything go wrong with a track pump? It’s simple a long handle with a bit of rubber on the end that goes up and down in a metal chamber. Robots of the future will thank us cyclists for inventing their sex life. Anyhow, my track pump decided that the anniversary of transferring into my ownership warranted a particularly special celebration, so announced this by letting out a huge explosion of air as the tyre reached 80psi and blowing the pump head off the valve.

You cannot possibly understand how annoying this is. I require 95 psi in my tyres in order to perform at my optimum speed upon the bike. The weather is currently very conducive to optimum speeds yet I am 15 pounds per bloody square inch down due to the malfunctioning track pump. It’s all been a bit Basil Fawlty in the garage again as I’ve jumped up and down waving two fingers at the thing and subsequently gone in search of birch twigs to beat it with. The next ceremony this particular pump will be celebrating is it’s own burial at Swindon Recycling Centre when it joins our previous 6 washing machines in a metallic grave.

Having redecorated the garage door with pump shaped impressions, I toddled off to Devon in order to write the remainder of my cycling book. The rest of the family stayed behind optimistically clutching tickets to watch Swindon Town play in the international football festival globally known as the Johnston Paint Trophy. Their opponents, the mighty Chesterfield FC. Swindon Town should have sacked me as a fan years ago as the outcome was clearly preordained. Dave had been near this team previously, they’re going to lose. So I don’t even need to type the next paragraph do I? Suffice to say I had a sullen phone conversation with disappointed wife and kids that Sunday evening. In hindsight I should have driven up to Chesterfield and declared allegiance to the town of bent spires.

Next in the line of things broken by me was the wifi connection in Brixham. I rely upon a BTOpenzone connection when down there which is very important for writing the book. This is all down to my Dictafone ride notes which often go along the lines of “Just rode through the very scenic town of ‘Can’t Have One’”. Clearly there is no such town and it takes an extended period of googling to ascertain that I was actually transiting through Caernafon and the “Bloody great thing on left made of bricks” is possibly the famous castle.

Therefore you can imagine my distress when after a few hours of wifi connection my laptop gleefully informed me that a “Connection Timeout” had occurred. I cannot hide my contempt for error message authors. I’m not bad at wielding the old electronic spanner but I need a bit more information than two words that offer no clue as to where this time occurred, is it me or BT? and are there any possible remedies that I might want to consider? I wouldn’t even mind a bit of honesty from the laptop along the lines of “Dave, it’s broken, give up and go to a cafe with free wifi and make some coffee last ages. All the reboots and reconfigurations in the world are not going to fix this one”. But the piss poor “Connection Timeout” gives one hope that after a while the time-out will time-in and all will be well. I spent days trying again and again to reconnect. After many futile attempts I resorted to attempting the hack the neighbour’s wifi with password guessing attempts. Being in Devon I couldn’t resist some stereotyping so their security logs may read:-

25-03-12: Failed password attempt: “fisherman”

25-03-12: Failed password attempt: “clottedcream”

25-03-12: Failed password attempt: “grockelsrule”

25-03-12: Failed password attempt: “ohforfuckssakepleaseletmein”

25-03-12: Failed password attempt: “iamaciderdrinker”

Having clearly killed the wifi, I turned all of my powers of object jinxing inwards. Last week I banged on about writing 20k+ words in a period of 4 days. Three days in, I had 15k done and it was all looking to be on track with an extended session on the Monday planned to nail the final 5k and finish the book. I woke up early that morning and struggled to leave my bed. The descent of the stairs took hours, as I stopped to mournfully read the chairlift adverts in the back of the previous day’s newspaper. I had contracted some weird form of lurgy that mixed stomach complaint with absolute and total lethargy.

There is no greater form of torture than staring at a blank screen with a self enforced deadline and a total and utter inability to function at all. I tried it for a few hours occasionally distracting myself with a “Connection Timeout” but inspiration just would not come. I even tried flushing the whole system out by eating an entire can of stewed prunes followed by a large pot of natural yoghurt. Trust me that this works, but it takes 24 hours to kick in. Whilst many areas of the country are currently suffering a petrol crisis, Brixham is currently wondering where all the toilet roll went.

Forlornly I struggled home in the car and spent Tuesday attempting to get back on track. This was almost achieved and I am happy to report that I’m within a whisker of completing the text. A business meeting intervened and proved to be the only unbroken thing this week as some major progress was made, major revelations had and cursory plans were solidified. I drove home from this meeting begging the car to not break and see me home in time for us to pack for an Easter holiday with the kids.

Suffice to say that I made it. Helen had studiously sorted all of the packing and administration in my absence. My only task was to fill up the van with diesel ready for our Thursday evening depart. In a normal world this would have taken ten minutes to achieve, a quick dash to the petrol station, an emptying of wallet and a smug return home. But seeing as this was Dave it was all destined to go wrong. The whole country had decided to go diesel shopping based upon Government advice. David Cameron had clearly advised that the best “no panic” action to take in the event of an imminent tanker driver strike was to “top up”. Being the loyal subjects we are, every British citizen complied at exactly 7pm on Wednesday evening.

Luckily we are all a canny lot and know where to get a bargain. Therefore all of the Swindon garages with diesel priced slightly less than gold by weight had morphed into car parks. The one shining beacon of light was the Texaco garage a few miles from my house. As a public service to us motorhome owners they’d jacked their diesel price to £1.50 a litre, therefore clearing a tiny space on the forecourt where a desperate motorhome owner could pull in and place the equivalent of a new bike into their empty tank. To make things worse the van was behaving oddly on the way. I could only get 3rd and 4th gears to work. Which is not a problem in a 2.3 diesel engine with a lot of torque, but seemed odd anyway.

Returning home, I attempted to reverse the van onto the drive. The Jonah force within me grew strong and left my physical form via the gear lever transferring itself into the gearbox giving everything it had.

All gear selection failed. The van was blocking the road with the engine idling merrily away and a whole cul-de-sac’s worth of curtains twitching. It took ten minutes of swearing for the gearbox to concede and I managed to get the van to at least go forward and park up. The kids were happily bragging to friends outside about their forthcoming trip as I announced to Helen that our holiday plans had taken on a subtle new path down the avenue of “f**ked”. What does one do in this situation? In the old days one phones a garage and merrily laughs off the phase “fully booked, Easter mate innit” then cancels all plans. However, we’re kids of a modern age and so we raced to Google.

A plethora of Fiat owners had spilled their frustrations with this gearbox online. Apparently it was a common fault, equally apparent was that advice ranged from handing over one’s wallet to a mechanic to hitting it gently a bit. We took the latter option and would you believe it worked. The problem was remedied by Helen sat in the cab wriggling and me under the van hitting. Wiggle, wiggle, hit, hit, hit. That’s all you need to know if your Fiat gearbox will not select reverse.

Clearly we’re tempting fate by driving a van repaired by bashing over 500 miles down to the Alps. Fate is tempted even more by placing Dave in said van for the duration and who in their right mind would subsequently place Dave on skis when he’s Jonah’d everything else in the previous five days? The family have packed gypsy lavender, rabbits feet and will be saluting magpies for the next seven days.

Dave

29th March 2012

ps. Rumour has it that Amazon are going on strike next week so you may WANT TO STOCK UP ON EBOOKS as soon as you can

My Sixty Fourth Week as a Budding Author

Business lunches, I have to confess I don’t think I am very good at them. I’ve watched other colleagues in action over the years and they are the model of restraint and professionalism as they sip gently at wine and stimulate conversation down avenues that without fail end up in multi-million pound sales for their organisations. Or in one of my previous business incarnations, an order for a football pitch booking form, not earth shattering but it paid for the printer stationary that month.

My approach will never be found in the “How to do business” manual. Because my hunter-gatherer instincts invariably come to the fore when presented with free booze and food. The booze is usually the most expensive item on offer so I head for it first with a vengeance. This creates that alcohol fuelled hunger that focuses the mind and mouth on the food once all available free wine and beer has been consumed. It’s been my downfall many a time over my long and undistinguished career, reaching a high point when one boss took me aside and suggested that I need to send Nicola flowers as soon as practically possible.

So you can imagine my trepidation as I lined myself up for a business lunch this week. A relatively important meeting with two people who I was keen to impress, one of them had worked with Nicola. I spent hours in front of the mirror the previous day, moving through all possible combinations of shirt/suit/t-shirt/jeans trying every possible look from seasoned IT professional to carefree Californian type start-up guy. In the end I settled for the clothes most recently purchased as they were devoid of red wine and canapé stains.

The day of the meeting came and we sat talking for a number of hours before lunch. This seemed to go mostly to plan and most of what I said was received with nods rather than mimed wanker signs. After a few hours our time in the room was done and we vacated the hallowed halls of the Royal Society of Arts and headed out into London for lunch.

Now, I’m going to blame Kate for initiating what happened next as it was her idea that we order wine. She’ll counter that as a responsible adult, she is more than capable of handling a lunchtime glass and then remaining productive for the rest of the day. However, Kate has clearly not been on the receiving end of my poor business lunch performance and knowing me from a distance business past I’m surprised that she hasn’t picked this up by hearsay.

Anyway, the wine turned up and we began to chat, from my point of view it was all going to plan and I was acting the model of civility. Until I mentioned my book. By the way, have I mentioned that I’ve written a book? See that last sentence, Kate and Jason looked at each other and flicked eyelids into space then turned to me and in pure “Young One’s - Yes We’ve Got a Video” tone asked “Really, Dave, we had NO idea that you’d written a book!”.

Oh dear.

I’d been banging on about the book too much. This was clearly down to the wine and so I “Ha ha ha’d” along with their piss taking whilst silently resolving not to refer again to my book. Problem is that the very act of “not referring to the book” became front of mind. Every single snippet of conversation had to be steered away from my book. Jason said something about golf, within seconds I had launched into a highly amusing monologue about my hatred for the sport and how I’d written an entire section of the book about this very subject. How smart, sit down with a potential future business partner, get slightly pissed, bang on about some crappy book you’ve written and then dig your hole even deeper by referring to the fact that it pours scorn on his favourite sport.

After a while I think even I got bored of me banging on about the book so I managed to shut up about it and we talked about skiing and cars instead. Kate abandoned us after a second glass of wine and at 3pm in the afternoon Jason made a tenuous reference to real ale. Three glasses of wine down I launched into a tipsy soliloquy concerning my life with real ale and the lessons it had taught me over the years. I managed to weave in family heritage as I pulled my dear departed uncle Alan into this speech and his valiant efforts to ensure that the country was continually supplied with the joys of 6X.

Jason called my bluff.

It’s been a while since I found myself in a London pub on a Wednesday afternoon four pints of real ale down. I dread to think what the two of us discussed and can only hope that I didn’t spend the time swaying from the bar and banging on about my book. To make things worse I was booked for an evening appointment with some other business type colleagues that would also involve beer. At 6pm I made my excuses and somehow got myself from Charing Cross to Faringdon by swaying alone.

I’d like to describe the rest of the evening in words but I can’t. I’m pretty sure it involved a cigarette that I shouldn’t have smoked and I know for a fact that I banged on about my book. The rest of the stuff will remain lost to the mists of time but requires more notches in my bedpost of business dinners where I’ve definitely disgraced myself. Somewhere near 10pm my homing instinct kicked in and the power of swaying took me back to Paddington where I stumbled onto a train.

I’ve been in this situation before and woken up in Bristol twice. So this time I was determined to keep myself awake and actually get off at my appointed station. I found a seat and programmed the iPod to fill my ears with a continuous stream of eighties punk rock. It got a bit desperate around Dicot when I was shocked to find that “Dead or Alive” still existed in my music collection. I’m also pleased to announce that “Cars” by Tubeway army not only keeps you awake, it helps you drive fellow passengers mad by humming it out of tune.

The two mile walk home from Swindon station morphed into four as I weaved my way backwards and forwards across the pavement eventually making it to my door. It took five minutes to extract house key from briefcase and ten seconds for Helen to give me that “Oh God, another business lunch, another bunch of flowers” look.

Anyway, back to the picture near the top. What the hell has 32,445 words got to do with anything. Well, as part of banging on about my book I also banged on about the next few days when I’d be working on the bike rides one. I banged on about writing nearly 25,000 words in this period and Kate and Jason immediately picked up the bottle of wine to look at the alcohol content.

I wrote about this last time. I’ve got to get the fecking thing finished so have relocated to Devon for a few days to sleep off the hangover and nail those 25,000 words. Two days in and I’ve done 13,000. For once in my underachieving life I’m actually ahead of schedule, so to celebrate I opened a bottle of wine. I’m sat here typing alone and banging on about my book to the telly. It’s kind of therapeutic as the telly doesn’t take the piss. Well that’s not strictly true as it just showed me a full 1/2 hour of “Take me Out”.

Anyway, seeing as I’m mid-wine and writing and one could consider this to be a business lunch I’d like to bang on about the book. From humble beginnings, Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder is heading towards a healthy sales figure. Mum, for goodness sake stop spending your pension on it and let Dad buy himself some new slippers instead. Meanwhile I need to sleep this second glass of wine off and keep this productivity up. 12,000 words in two days. I can speak that many in an hour after two glasses of booze so surely writing them should offer no challenge at all. By the way, do you think I can add these 1,450 to the total as well? No? thought you’d say that.

Dave

24th March 2012