My Seventy First Week as a Budding Author

Through this blog I have managed to alienate a fair few people in the relatively short period of seventy one weeks. For starters there’s those who are looking for some unique and meaningful insights into the process of writing a book. Within four weeks they quickly realised that all they could ever expect was a sort of anti-manual. Basically a documented list of things not to do if you’re ever going to get a book to market. These people are not alone, I’ve had a go at motorists a few times, vented my spleen in the direction of facebook boasters (hypocrisy it’s what makes us human) and even taken the piss out of a little old lady on a mobility scooter.

There’s nearly one thousand words somewhere having a go at a bloke who dared to suggest that road cycling was a little bit crap and as for the woman on her mobile phone in B&Q car park, she took both barrels. This week the alienation continues, but it’s a really dangerous group that I’m about to have a go at. A group that could potentially wipe all traces of any meagre readership that this blog currently owns. In fact I think this group would be the key to starting the one truly effective British uprising. Deprive them of their things that-do-exactly-what-they-say-on-the-tin and our government would fall within weeks as militant wheelbarrow attackers laid siege to parliament square.

Yes, I’m talking about gardeners.

Now this rant is a really risky one indeed. Almost all of my relations garden. including my closest family. I grew up surrounded by small pots of horseshit with green things growing out of them that we were then made to eat. My Dad took bits of his planes home from work to use as propagators and we spent many a merry evening in front of Benny Hill peeling shallots for the pickled onion jars. I’m still not sure who ate them all? I even had gardening friends in my student days. Staunch anarchists who’d be “fucking the system” one minute and then watering things in the bathroom the next. These things were quickly buried after a visit by the CID one evening, which seemed a shame as they’d grown really well and the cats loved them.

Anyway, gardeners, bastards. Or more specifically, gardeners with those leaf blower things, bastards. Or narrowing it down even more to attempt some alienation damage limitation, gardeners with those blower thingies who blow stones onto the main road leading down into Kingswear, bastard.

I’ll explain. Last week I spoke of my deadline. So this week I made my way down to Devon to complete some outstanding photography. This was planned for Saturday, therefore on Friday afternoon I took the bike out for a trial run. Or a bit of a sneaky bike ride as it would be better described. I chose a route from Brixham then round Totnes, which included the ferry from Kingswear to Dartmoor. It’s a cracking little ride kicked off by a forty mph descent down to Kingswear on a well surfaced, quiet main road.

This is where the pillock with the blower was hanging out ready to ambush me. Five miles into the ride I sped past a set of white gateposts and heard that terrible cycling duet of both tyres flattening instantly followed by the thud of rims hitting the deck. Somehow I stayed upright, pulled to the side of the road and looked back up the hill. The gateposts area of road seemed to have a smattering of something upon it. I dragged the bike back up there as it was the safest place to sort the punctures and lo and behold here was the green fingered pillock.

This guy was nonchalantly using his blower to clear his drive of small stones, leaves, twigs and vagrants by blowing it all into the road. He’d done a bloody good job, his driveway was spotless, the road looked a shambles in comparison. I looked down at two flat tyres and back up at Al Quaeda’s Percy Thrower. He hardly even noticed me as he spotted a beetle ambling across his property that need to be forcefully removed using air.

I puffed out my chest and strode over to confront him. “Excuse me mate, I don’t think you should be doing that as I’ve just shredded my tyres on the stuff you’ve blown into the road”. I felt that was fairly polite and imagined that he’d give me a look of contrition and then offer me a lift home. Instead he shrugged his shoulders and wandered off back to his house. A large number of swear words bounced off his head as he made the journey home but they had no affect at all. He honestly could not give a shit leaving me to the woeful task of a double puncture repair.

Now. you’ll be surprised to know that I am fully prepared for such a situation and always carry a spare tube, puncture repair kit and two packs of “speedy” patches as back up. I started with the front wheel and removed the tube. A stone had cut right through it below the valve which had torn almost free. No point even considering a repair. The spare would go in the front. Next the back wheel, on removing the tube the news was very bad indeed. Two half inch long pinch cuts within a centimetre of each other. A very difficult repair.

I’ll spare you the pain. After an hour, all of my rubber patches, 3/4 of the speedy patches, a weird sort of dance where I shook the pump at the tube whilst rotating around it. I gave up. There was no way of fixing this tube as each inflation simply increased the tears and lost me patches. I sat next to the bike looking down the tosspot’s driveway where I spotted five green bags full of grass. In another life I would have emptied them all over his drive and then entered his house and throttled him with the ruined tubes. But a moment of calm convinced me to be the better man and walk home with my tube between my legs (I don’t have a tail).

Feeling very sorry for myself I started to push the bike up the hill. It’s a very big hill nearly a mile long and the sun was out for once. Then another cyclist came hurtling down. My hopes were raised that they would stop and give me a tube, instead he waved. I was confused for a moment and then realised that he thought I was knackered and had got off for a push. How humiliating, and to make matters worse I was in my club kit thus letting the side down.

Typing this I struggle to believe what I did. But it clearly shows that cycling has now not only taken over my life, it’s made its way into my DNA. I picked up the bike and carried it the rest of the way to the top of the hill. I did this to remove any illusion that I’d got off and walked. This was a clear message to anyone passing and waving. This bloke would ride if he could, but his bike’s shagged. So instead he’s going to burn a few more calories with a carry.

Five miles and a few hours later I was back at base. The legs felt decidedly odd as SPD-SL cleats make you walk funny and five miles of walking funny hurts a lot. I was also smarting after having to walk the gauntlet of Brixham’s finest hoodies who took a keen interest in my blue and orange lycra and could apparently see my willy. Which makes a change, I did say the sun was out.

Fortunately the tyres were intact and I was able to replace the tubes for Saturday’s photo shoot. This went surprisingly well and another chapter is in the photographic bag (I hope). I even managed to alienate someone whilst take piccies. On Dartmeet hill I set up the camera and rode up and down a few times to try and capture the steepness of the hill. The lady in the photo below was clearly not impressed, mainly because she was completely wasted after trying and failing in the first fifty metres of the hill. But what wound her up the most was the idiot sat by the camera tapping his fingers and hoping she would get a move on out of shot. I bet she’s a gardener as well.

Dave, August 12th 2012

My Seventieth Week as a Budding Author

See that title up there, week seventy. Just to recap if you’ve still got the will to live, around about week minus 12 I resigned from a proper job with a suit, tie, pension and as many bullshit bingo business phrases as you can fit in a large suitcase. The grand plan was to spend the following 52 weeks writing a book about cycling and then become a millionaire upon the proceeds. Like all grand plans, some tolerance needs to be applied. So if we take objective number one, I’m about 38% out on that already and objective number two is in a bit of a sorry state as well, hanging around the 0.005% mark.

Sadly Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder does not count as the book about cycling, as I’d written half of it before I even started and it’s mostly a series of chapters taking the piss out of me. A proper book about cycling needs to be all serious with lots of nice photos, interesting diagrams and some stern words about being safe and wearing helmets. But proper books about cycling are hard. I learnt a lot from self publishing OCCD which can be summarised in the sentence, “Writing a book is about one third of the work necessary to get it published”

There’s loads of other tricky things that need doing once you’ve got the words typed. You’ve got to lay it all out in a design package, then proofread it, then lay it all out again after you’ve bust your layout in fixing the myriad of spelling mistakes. Facts have to be checked, fonts have to be made consistent, photos need cropping, processing and editing to get the idiot’s thumbnail out of shot.

Now I’m not scared of the odd bit of hard work, if you don’t believe me, I’ll point to the fact that I still live under the same roof as two teenage children and the case will immediately be dismissed. But doing all of this and trying to be all entrepreneurial at the same time was causing a few conflicts of interest. On one hand I know that I should be swearing at Indesign, but business priorities meant I’m required for swearing at javascript instead.

A few weeks back I had a bit of a cold sweat when it became clear that there was a scenario whereby I’d park the whole project and wait until I had more time to finish it. Thing is there’s never “more time” in the Barter household. Even if I made that million pounds mentioned earlier, it would soon be spent on tradesmen to complete the scroll known as “Dave’s DIY, gardening and general administration to-do list”. It became very clear that if I was going to get this cycling magnum opus to market I’d need quite a lot of help.

I’ve dithered before about publishers, naively put off by a fag packet calculation that showed I could make a better return publishing myself. Well OCCD taught me a stark lesson to the contrary. I’ve sold a fair amount of copies to date but the royalty share is shocking. Amazon hand me a mere 22p for the 77p list price of the Kindle book and even worse 53p for the £7.75 they take for a paperback. I need to sell millions of copies in order to pay for the groundsman and plasterers I require.

Raising prices won’t really work at my stage of the game either, “Who the fuck is Dave Barter?” narrowly loses out to “Oh, only 77p what can go wrong?” and people will take a punt which is what you need to do when your marketing budget only stretches to a lot of gobbing off on Facebook.

So, I decided to revisit the publisher dilemma. I wanted to find out whether they could help me with layout, proofing and marketing and what the commercials would look like compared to striking out on my own. Being bit of a fussy bugger I spent some time looking around for the types of books I’d like to buy along with the authors that I rated. The thinking being that these people and products would be attached to publishers who would understand my own personal cycling quest. One name popped up across several books so I took a punt and dropped them a long email going on about me and my various projects. Luckily they employ a resident psychiatrist and he was despatched to find out what this idiot was going on about and whether he had any good ideas they could nick.

We met in a cafe frequented by outdoor types. The owner nearly hugged me when I ordered the most expensive shortbread as everyone else was sat there with bread, jam, tea and body odour. I arrived first, all keen and eager with a few sample chapters and photos on my iPad. I kept this hidden under the table just in case any of the outdoors types were to spot it and make it known that these new fangled gadgets were unnecessary when all one needed were an elastic band, a few dead pigeons, the neighbours pigs and a rickety shed.

Anyway, the publishers psychiatrist saw through the pathetic beard growth (read back a few blogs) and pronounced me relatively sane. He seemed to like the photos (particularly the one above) and the concept hadn’t driven him to go and join the walkers for some jam. I was dead surprised when we loosely shook on a deal. Surprise turned to shock when this week an agreement dropped through the letterbox which read along the lines of:-

“We the undersigned slightly mental publishing company hereby promise to layout and check Dave’s book fairly pronto as long as he finishes the photography, dots the “i”’s, crosses the “t”’s and finishes off the statistics pages he’s been dicking about with. When it’s done we’ll make it and sell it and give Dave some cash”

I stared at the thing for ages. In the detail section was a deadline, I stared at this for even more ages but it was the deadline that convinced me to sign. The royalties and revenues section was all very nice but I needed a proper kick up the arse to get the project completed. Here was a bit of paper offering some help in return for a share of the spoils. Some furious calendar action showed that as long as I gave up weekends in June the photography could be done. Malcolm-over-the-road has been recruited for a long weekend of Scottish photo-bitching in May and as I type this the long suffering Helen is working on diagrams on the computer in the kitchen.

The liberation comes in the designer/proofreader working in the mad publisher’s office. He/she/it will do all of the really hard work for me that I’d convinced myself I could do but reality turned up with a big wet fish round the face and stated the contrary. My lot is done by August, then it’s over to them. We’re planning to have it published in October/November this year. It allows me to go back to what I do best, gadding about the place taking quirky pictures and writing some associated lunacy whilst some of poor mug tries to format some sense out of it.

The fiscal objective is still clearly out of reach as the agreement had a set of percentages, the largest of which was definitely not mine. But at least the publishing one is now achievable and it also allows me to be that annoying twat who comes out with the phrase “I was talking to my publisher the other day...”. Does anyone want to be my agent?

Dave

7th May 2012

My Sixty Ninth Week as a Budding Author

As all proper cyclists countrywide are aware the weather pattern has clearly followed the UK economy into double dip recession. I think I can dimly remember a brief recovery somewhere in March, but at present all climatic indicators point to deep depression and approaching stormy fronts. By the way, the “proper” that I casually slipped in previously is a clear dig at those who think turbo training or the use of indoor gym bikes constitutes cycling. In my world the noun cyclist needs tinkering with and I would like to propose the text below:-

cy·clist/ˈsīk(ə)list/

Noun:

A person who rides a bicycle, outdoors in a wide variety of weather and light conditions completely unperturbed by the strange looks they receive or the cowshit sprayed in their face from the front wheel.

Synonyms:

bicyclist - cycler - rider - idiot - taxifodder

I have tried hard to fight the climatic recession by sticking to a rigid training regime of riding my bike whenever I can and hoping that it is doing me a modicum of good. Sadly, work has intervened and my weekly mileages have declined. To the extent that there have been extended periods where the only exercise I have managed to get is the use of my fingers when furiously typing “How the fuck do you get anything to work in javascript” into Google. This is made worse by my obsession with cycling statistics and the computer screen that in no uncertain terms reminds me that I am 865 miles down on this time last year.

Last week I was determined to do something about it and on Sunday morning I stood away from the keyboard and headed off down to Swindon Town Hall, the hallowed meeting place of the Swindon Road Club Sunday run. I used to be a regular attendee of the club run many years back, but had lapsed mainly due to Saturday night wine drinking coupled with the ride’s 9am start time. I limited myself to a mere two bottles of ale the night before and had even fitted a rear mudguard to avoid being sent to the back if it rained. As it turned out it was not a “being sent to the back” day with a reasonably brisk wind coming in from the west.

Not a lot had changed since my last Sunday run guest appearance. I turned up and was relentlessly mocked across the whole spectrum of cycling faux pas including silly bumfluff beard, mudguards and the time honoured who-the-hell-are-you? Eventually they lost interest in my derision and we set off into the wind. I felt an obligation to do my bit for the group and therefore made my way to the front for a long turn into the wind as we wended towards Wootton Bassett and on towards the Marlborough Downs.

Now, attending the Sunday run does come with a certain amount of obligation. One of which is that we tend to ride at 18mph+ as a group. This can vary depending upon attendance, but looking around, there were not many fatties out today. So the 18mph+ was upgraded to 20mph which added some further stress to my load as my partner on the front was up for a chat and the wind had picked up further pace.

Clive: “Hi, Dave, haven’t seen you for a while, how’s things with you?”

Dave: “Good” <enters severe oxygen debt after wasting a litre of air on one word>

Clive: “Bit blustery along here isn’t it? How’s that book you are writing coming along?”

Dave: “Good” <heart rate now stratospheric, the word “good” was formed by belching to attempt to find air from stomach region instead>

 This carried on for nearly eight miles until Clive uttered that glorious phrase “I think someone else can have a go now” and let the group come through. I slowly slipped away from lactate threshold and latched onto the back. This lasted for about a mile when a mix up at a junction rearranged the group into me on the front with someone even faster than Clive. To make matters worse we espied splinter groups ahead riding the White Horse Challenge sportive, thus an unspoken chase began. I’m so glad my companion was a surly type, as at 24mph into the wind I’d have only been able to converse by sign language.

Four miles later I made my excuses and returned to the back. I was surviving but there was a definite level of discomfort in riding so fast. We carried on through Calne and at the bottom of Blacklands hill I met my nemesis. You’ll have to read Obsessive Compulsive Cycling Disorder chapter 22 to find out the full story, but let’s just say that his name is Rob and the two of us had a chequered history of making the Sunday run hard.

Rob joined the group and somehow yet again I found myself on the front riding with him into the wind. We egged each other on towards oxygen debt whilst attempting to catch up on old times. Rob noticed that his shoelace was undone or something and retreated to the back, leaving me to face the wind with an over eager partner with a tendency to half-wheel.

It’s possible you may not be away of the heinous cycling crime of half wheeling. I only discovered it after a particularly vicious bollocking from a club member who’d suffered the same from me. It’s the act of going a little bit faster than your colleague on the front thus overlapping him by half a wheel. He speeds up to bring his wheel in line, which in turn makes you think he wants to go faster so you speed up..by half a wheel. You get the picture, every time he manages to catch up you drive the pace harder. It happens subconsciously as you’re basically trying to ride at your pace forcing him to up his tempo usually way beyond comfort zone.

This was happening to me as a pair of legs that had spent miles at the back came to the front to take a brief turn. Half wheelers always “take a brief turn”, show how strong they are and then disappear rapidly to the back for a rest. In the end I gave up and left him to it, so he pedalled gracefully up the road leaving me alone to tow the rest of the group.

After nearly 30 miles we finally turned out of the wind and I hoped to get some sort of rest. A couple of riders had already made the Captain Oates speech and sauntered off home on their own. But the group did not get the message, some of the strong lads came to the front and we were strung out into a furious pace line often touching 30mph. I suddenly understood what my recent training had lacked as I fought really hard to stay in contention. My winter legs had not seen much speed with the chain a real stranger to the big ring. The cafe stop twelve miles later proved welcome respite and here I made my biggest mistake of the day by opting for a mere sliver of cake when my body was clearly crying out for a full meal.

I should know better than this. I’ve been riding bikes for so many years across so many miles and often at very uncomfortable speeds. It’s very rare that it doesn’t hurt a lot in many ways but the golden rule is that you’ll usually be OK as long as you eat and drink. On Sunday I ripped up the rule book and decided that starvation would be the best strategy for surviving the remainder of what was proving to be a hard ride.

The pace remained high after our brief stop as we flew towards Marlborough and an appointment with the long climb up towards Hackpen Hill. I was by no means comfortable, but seemed able to hold the wheels on the flat whilst avoiding any attempt to go to the front. In Marlborough I even managed a glimpse of former hill climb glory as I passed most of the group on the climb out of town. One mile later I utterly died on my arse.

There’s nothing worse on the bike than suffering the bonk. Runners call it “hitting the wall” whilst I think in darts it is referred to as “completely pissed”. There are no warning signs or indicators. Your body has been trying as hard as it can until it suddenly decides “fuck it, I’ve had enough of this, he can continue on his own”. To make matters worse, it usually occurs when your drink bottles are 3/4 full and jersey pockets stuffed full of food. As happened in my case.

One minute I was on the front with Chris doing 24mph on the flat, the next I was watching the arse of the last rider in the group disappear up ahead. The bonk swatted me out of the peloton and turned the world into slow motion. The wind was blowing across the road now and I craved the sanctuary of the bunch but they were going far too fast for my properly wasted legs. Further ignominy descended in spades as this was a climb I usually attacked and waited for the rest at the top. Now it was my turn to grovel up as if on a shopper bike and fend the semi-sarcastic “Are you OK?”s.

Utterly exhausted and alone I began to severely question my lot. I’d worked hard on the front into the wind and now those who’d benefited were up the road enjoying a fast paced trip home. Why weren’t they coming back to help me? How long had their turns been? Don’t they remember how fast I used to be up this hill? However, this was all pointless self-justification. The fault was mine alone. I clearly was not yet fit enough to do so much early work and should have grovelled at the back of the group. I’d not eaten properly either, a fatal mistake on any club run. And I’d paid the “climbers” price, nobody waits for the man who hadn’t waited before.

The remaining eight miles home were not pretty. The bunch had waited at the bottom of the hill but by then the climb/wind/lack of food had taken its toll and I waved them on so that I could ride at “recovery pace”. Luckily my driveway faces downhill otherwise I’d not have made it into the house. I spent the rest of the afternoon eating and constructing excuses for the next meeting with the Sunday riders. Maybe I can blame it on rubbing brakes or a weird tropical disease contracted in Devon or writer’s cramp. But the truth is I had transgressed two of cycling’s golden rules.

Rule 1: You must ride your bike, lots

Rule 2: Energy bars are for mastication not ballast

I fully intend to remain within the law during May.

Dave

28th April 2012

My Sixty Eighth Week as a Budding Author

In an idle moment this week I was reminded of one of my heroes. Everybody needs their heroes as without aspiration none of us would ever do anything remotely interesting. Heroes drive us on in the belief that “if they can do that, well maybe I could do this” and hence are responsible for all the men in bras running the London marathon. This particular hero of mine is an odd one, both in the fact that I have selected him and also the fact that he is distinctly odd.

It’s Brian Blessed.

Now you immediately think that I idolise Brian because of his seminal performance as Prince Vultan in the film version of Flash Gordon. I must admit that this certainly did have a profound impact upon my life. My student digs resounded to guttural shouts of “Gordon’s Alive!” every time any one of us emerged into the breakfast area before 12noon. However, whilst Brian’s Vultan was definitely Oscar material, it is not the reason for my own personal adulation. I’m a huge fan of Brian simply because he is a dreamer.

Immediately all three of you reading this will chorus back, “But so are we Dave, idolise us as well”. And I will, as long as like Brian you actually act upon your dreams. You see Brian is not only a rotund, shouty, very hairy actor, he’s a climber as well. In fact he’s been climbing since his youth and from an early age dreamt of setting foot upon the summit of Mount Everest. Many of us would have left it at that, but not Brian, he had a bloody good go at achieving his dream, culminating in a age/height record when he hit 29,000 feet in 1991 at the grand old age of 55. This was his third attempt.

And that’s what I love about Brian. He is probably one million miles away from the standard Himalayan climber profile. For a start, he’s a big lad and hence has a distinct disadvantage in comparison to the whippet like sherpas who seem to commute to the summit on a daily basis. Then there is the lack of oxygen at high altitude. With a voice like Brian’s you need all of the air you can get to power your way past those massive vocal chords and create the bassoon like sonic boom that accompanies his every word.

But Brian “pooh pooh’d” these clear disadvantages and had three determined attempts at the summit before calling it a day and retreating to Satnav voice narration instead. In my view being a trier holds so much more credence than making the cut, and serial trying at the same thing after failure shows proper character. I have to say this as I’ve made double figure attempts over double figure years to wrap bar tape onto my handlebars and consistently failed every time.

Brian has even given me some personal advice after my sister asked him to autograph his book "Blessed Everest" for me. He wrote "Dave, follow your dream".

So recently I have taken great inspiration from my hero Brian and put up with weeks of tribulation, adversity, discomfort and derision. Sadly my own assault upon Everest remains a dream instead I’ve attempted to grow a beard. The attempt stems from an idle conversation with the kids. Whilst away on holiday I couldn’t be arsed to shave for a few days and some feeble blond stubble was the result. The kids did the usual point and laugh, then asked if I’d ever grown a beard. My repost was “no”, with my hair and hormones you’d end up with the incongruous sight of an ageing face smattered with bumfluff. As if teenage Dave and his granddad had melded into one.

You can never argue with kids though, as they replied with “How do you know” and I didn’t really have an answer for that, so stupidly stated that I’d let it grow for a month and we would see. I am now over twenty days into the experiment and like the vast majority of my spoken words, regretting their utterance.

Firstly, let’s tackle the appearance. Here is a photo of the three week’s growth. As you can see I am the polar opposite of my hero in every single way. He could encircle fingers round my waist, my voice has something of the soprano about it and the only bush that could possibly describe my beard is the biblical burning one after it had been put out.

Suffice to say that in ten days time this feeble gathering of hair shall be removed and donated to a charity specialising in making scatter cushions for door mice. I reckon they might get two or three out of that lot. Every time I meet someone new I have to advise them of “the dare”, just in case then wonder why on earth I have this pre-pubescent growth dangling off my face. To make things worse, half of it is grey, a stark reminder of the point of life I have reached.

Next there’s the itching. How on earth do proper beardies cope? I am scratching at the bloody thing every waking hour. One fellow facerugger suggested conditioner, I applied it liberally and it improved the smell but the non-stop itching persisted. Even when the itching subsides, the urge to play with it doesn’t. My fingers find themselves stroking all sorts of patterns around my face as if I am perusing important works of art or pondering deep philosophical questions. Neither is true, all I’m thinking is “Hmmm facial hair, how novel, how annoying”.

Finally I have to mention the subject of food. This is probably my prime motivation for despatching my chinmuff as soon as we enter May. Every single thing I eat leaves a little message behind on my face. I’ve had to adapt my feeding schedule to include a post nosh mirror inspection followed by extreme towelling session to remove the post dinner detritus. And this is with a beard as pathetic as mine, I bet there’s more growth on Brian Blessed’s arse.

Nope, beards and me are clearly incompatible. However, my respect for Brian has gone through the roof. Not only is he a great actor and dream follower, he does all of this encumbered by the biggest bloody beard in the world. The man pushes physical suffering to new levels and I offer him the largest salute possible conveyed from these paltry few words.

Now there’s a cryptic picture above. It’s responsible for the greatest productivity loss of the week. My friend Andy posted this up as a recent Facebook status:-

“so I've got Bernie Eccleston on the phone when Boris Johnston saunters up with some junk mail. Bernie's trying to buy his way onto some "Into the Alps" bike ride that a business parter has organised. Every time he gives me his number Boris starts yakking and I can't hear him. Beats naked exam revision I suppose.”

Now Andy has a PHD in Chip Design, which I think is pretty damn impressive as I’d thought they were either rough cut or formed into thin fries. Clearly there is a whole science that I am not aware of. Anyway, seeing as he posted what appeared to be an incredibly cryptic message and is also very clever, I thought it was a puzzle challenge for us mere mortals so set about the task.

I spent hours picking the words apart and looking for hidden meaning. A breakthrough was made when I realised that Bernie Ecclestone was “Mr E”, or “Mystery”. I then turned to Boris, or “The Mayor” or “May your” and carried on working with “junk mail” (spam), “naked revision” (cram barey - cranberry). I was convinced that Andy had cryptically buried the lyrics of a song in his message. Mel C became a candidate as she had “May your heart” as one of her songs but sadly no “mystery” or “spam”.

I trawled around google further, wrote combinations of words on paper and finally on Friday I cracked and asked Andy to tell me the answer. “It was a dream I had” came in reply. Fantastic. Nearly half a day lost to following Andy’s dream. There’s definitely a moral here isn’t there? If you’re going to follow a dream, make sure it is one of your own.

Dave

20th April 2012

ps. I’ve managed a whole blog without banging on about my book. So as an end note can I mention that I am now booked as an after dinner speaker for one of the most innovative and progressive cycling clubs in the country. I’ll not embarrass them online but will definitely embarrass myself as I chunter on to a room full of cyclists (hopefully) about Tommy Godwin. I’ve done this once before to the Swindon Women’s Institute and pride myself on a single statistic....only one sleeper.