My Fifty Sixth Week as a Budding Author

Earlier this week our house was scene of a terrible trauma. A woman sat with head in hands in frustration wondering how this had happened and what on earth was she going to do about it. Now, seeing as there is a committed cyclist in the house you will immediately jump to the conclusion that her strife is linked to either the purchase of a new bike or oil marks on the carpet. It was neither. Helen was attempting to complete her annual performance appraisal for work.

Of course I showed due sympathy with a Cheshire cat grin and several air punches. I am now free of this yearly ritual that out trumps Morris dancing in its total pointlessness. For those that have not been through it, the annual appraisal is akin to being thrashed naked with birch twigs in the snow outside of a Swedish sauna. You are told by someone that there is huge benefit in doing it, but the execution and aftermath do not appear to uphold their proposition.

It is supposed to be frank and caring exchange of views between employee and employer. The employee’s performance against objectives is discussed and all sorts of human resource type things are then triggered like pay reviews, remedial action, training plans or moving the employee away from Stacey ‘cos she omits the Impulse underarm most days. Human Resources will tell you that this appraisal is necessary for employee motivation. It makes them feel wanted and gives them a chance to express themselves and raise any concerns that they may have.

The real truth is that appraisals are the HR equivalent of the British railway system. They cause untold anguish to many individuals, cost their organisations millions of pounds annually but never seem to actually move anything on. And before any of you HR or managerial types get all up in arms, sit back and have a think about appraisals in real life.

Imagine you wanted to appraise your peer group in order to improve their performance and effectiveness each year. Consider the paths available to you. Firstly you could meet each one of them individually in a pub, but before this meeting you should present them with a fifty page form that they must complete concerning their performance as “your friend” over the past year. This form must be completed in addition to all of you other demands as a friend, and to help them you must supply a one hundred page long manual to aid them in its completion, which they must read as well.

Then you must have the meeting. It must follow a strict set of guidelines and be the same as all the other meetings that you will have with all of your other friends but at the same time make them feel they are being treated as an individual. You must suppress the fact that you are an argumentative, opinionated, short tempered oaf with a minuscule attention span and for this one meeting become the ultimate diplomat. You must listen without judgement and document your friend’s views, jointly agreeing a course of action for any areas that require attention. Then you should set a series of objectives for your friend’s performance in the coming year. These must all be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, Timely (SMART, HR love a good acronym). For example:-

“Dave, you must brush your teeth and lower your halitosis to a level of “Steve can sit within three yards of you” by the end of January 2012”

This applies specifically to me and my teeth, can be measured by Steve’s proximity, is attainable as I own toothpaste and a brush, is relevant as Steve won’t come to the pub unless I don’t, and has a timescale.

All of this must be carefully documented and presented to a third party so that all of your peer group appraisals can be “levelled”. Essentially, this means that the ratio of friends who are “brilliant” or “crap” must be small and most of them should be deemed to be adequate. Having been through the levelling process an action plan must be put in place and regularly reviewed throughout the year to ensure that neither party strays from the agreed path.

So, it all seems straightforward. I’ve applied a common business practise to the real world what could go wrong? Quite a lot actually. Firstly, I think I would receive several punches in the face for suggesting it in the first place. A few more lampings would occur during the meeting and after the levelling process I would be quietly driven to a dark woods and buried alive. You just would not treat your friends like this. Making them do most of the work in telling you all the things they are crap at. Making them write it all down and then telling them that they are not allowed to be statistically “very crap” as too many of them are so they have to be simply “crap” instead.

The way it would work is much more straightforward. It happens in cycling all of the time. You do something wrong, your friends berate you incessantly until you stop. You either stop and so do they, or you don’t and they depart. But Human Resources would not be happy with this as it isn’t a uniform process and some managers would not do the beration to company policy. Agreed. But life at work is not one long uniform set of processes is it? Did Steve Jobs dream up the iPod after following a series of flow charts. Success would be dealt with as it is in real life, with simmering resentment and talk behind the back.

And how many Human Resources departments can honestly hold their hands on heart that they have read through every single appraisal and continuously acted on them. In twenty years of going through this I know of exactly zero people for whom life at work has measurably changed after appraisal. Pay rises are decided by Finance, promotions are based upon either tongue based rectal cleaning or tactfully losing at golf to the boss and training courses are only allowed if you work in HR and need to learn about appraisals.

I suspect the process is one of filing followed by retrieval if and only if disciplinary action is required. The best appraisal I ever had was conducted by my manager Robin. He called me into his office, said “You seem to be doing OK”, ushered me out and then turned his attentions back to his Danish secretary. I fully appreciated his brevity, the lack of onus upon me to do anything but more importantly his priorities which were clearly focused in entirely the right direction.

I sympathise with Helen’s pain and obviously I am an embittered ex-corporate who used to be part of this process himself. I had a simple strategy though, I just told all my staff they were ace. That way they don’t mind filling in the forms and if you get them done early enough you can fill up the corporate “ace” quotient before any other department gets a chance. But Helen’s pain has made me think about my performance in the previous year when writing this book. So, I’ve decided to conduct my own personal appraisal in full public view.

But before we dive into my self flagellation can I quickly show you a view?

Not bad is it. A nice little harbour vista from what appears to be a wooden window frame. That is exactly my view as I write this blog. And what is much much worse is that it is MY view. Helen and I have gone and bought another house. Our entire family have all facepalmed in unison. “Why on earth are you two increasing your outgoings at a time when one of you is basically just dossing about?”. There’s a simple answer. “Why not?”.

We both fell in love with Brixham many years ago. I miss living by the sea and we have a house full of sea based fun stuff like kayaks, diving gear and fishing rods. Hardly any of it ever gets used. Stupidly we kept an eye on the property market in Brixham which recently freefalled (freefell? I don’t know). Coincidently a small house in need of repair was struggling to be sold. Many weeks of spreadsheet hackery and kids toy selling liberated the funds necessary for us to make our move.

A speculative low offer was surprisingly accepted and a bit more negotiation reduced the price further until a point late last week when our solicitor demanded the funds and his fee and we suddenly owned another house.

Depending on your point of view, Devon is a cyclist’s heaven. Basically, it is one bloody great hill. They cannot be escaped. They’re all incredibly steep and there is usually only room for a single vehicle regardless of its nature. I’ve been down here sorting things out and doing a lot of writing as well. Today I nipped out for a cheeky forty miles. This turned into a three hour long sufferfest as I had completely underestimated the climbing involved, somewhere in the region of 5,000 feet. The ride out of Dartmouth was a highlight, looking down onto the Dart estuary whilst suffering like hell on an 18% gradient that leads into the clouds. I think I’m going to like it here.

Helen and the kids are on their way down for the weekend and I hope they bought jumpers. Because, just like all of the other houses I have bought in the past, the heating is bust. I get the feeling I am to become very well acquainted with a large number of Devon tradesmen and that’s before I even had a chance to visit the docks. The owners clearly left in a rush and as part of the deal we took over the house “fully furnished”. Some of the items left behind are slightly bizarre though, I don’t remember seeing hair clippers, golf clubs, piss smelling wetsuits or car alloy wheels on the inventory. Put that lot together and you get the picture that this place may have been a sadomasochists retreat before we took it over. No change there then.

The house purchase does come with an imperative in that there is a clear mark in the calendar beyond which I have to generate funds. Last week I wrote about focus. This week it has been tattooed on the inside of my eyelids and so I’ve been a pretty productive chap hammering away at the keyboard like Rick Wakeman on speed. Just about all of the English rides written up and way over 10,000 words for the week. I’ve also done some really secret stuff that I’m not allowed to tell you about which makes this an incredibly pointless sentence that only I can fully appreciate.

Oh! I nearly forgot my appraisal.

Well, apart from the clear financial irregularities I appear to be doing OK. Please pass me my Danish secretary.

Dave

27th January 2012

WEEK 57>>>>>>>>>>>

My Fifty Fifth Week as a Budding Author

Spike Milligan has to be one of the greatest authors of all time. I am blissfully aware that that statement would probably be deemed heresy were it uttered in within earshot of any academic concerned with English Literature. But it’s true. Reading anything written by Spike should always be done either on the toilet or near one, as he littered his text with hand grenades of wit clearly designed to force the reader to piss themselves on the spot.

Take this little snippet from Puckoon.

“Suddenly, nothing happened. It happened suddenly mind you”

Absolute literary genius that eclipses any “All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players” in my book. I’ve read just about everything Spike Milligan has ever written, listened to all of the Goon Show recordings and still remember scenes from the TV show “There’s a lot of it about”. Spike was an amazing musician, a comedy genius and a highly prolific author but reading his biography exposes a darker side of his character, he was plagued by depression.

In his worst periods Spike would spend weeks on end in bed simply staring at the ceiling and refusing all contact with others. Out of the blue a thought would trigger him out of his mire and he’d return to productivity as if nothing had happened at all. Reading these words I began to see Spike as a human curve as illustrated in the diagram below:-

Spike appeared to oscillate regularly over time through a familiar pattern and in understanding this I began to clearly empathise with Spike. We both share similar characteristics. I hasten to add that it is not “genius”, “amazing” or “prolific” in my case, it’s the oscillation. Some weeks I’m flying high at the top of the curve and extremely productive, others just seem to be seven days that passed while I appeared to be alive.

The last few weeks have been some of the later. I’m sure I’ve been working on something? as the playstation has a coating of dust and the garden is in a right state. But I can’t for the life of me work out what? Book progress has been glacial, an arabic shoplifter would have typed out more words than I have over the past three weeks. So I sat myself down and asked, why?

A few minutes of staring at the floor and shuffling shoes ensued. Then I owned up to have been “fucking about doing other things that aren’t really the book”. The inquest gathered pace and we began to catalogue just what it was I’d been up to.

Firstly, there’s an extended piece of IT consultancy I have done for a client interfacing with Government IT systems. It should have been a “piece of IT consultancy” but I chose to ignore the word Government before I took it on. How foolish. What was supposed to be a few days worth of javascript hackery turned into ten days of hair tearing frustration with civil service first line support technicians. I’d ask a simple question, they’d seek clarification from IT support who would respond with “tell him to switch it off and on again”. This works in many cases I’m sure, but is slightly lacking when asking for further detail concerning XML interface specifications.

I formed a special bond with my IT caseworker “Simon”. He tried his hardest to track down answers. I suggested to him that some examples would make things a lot easier and received this:-

“We did think about creating official examples some time ago, but the cost to us as a public body was deemed to be prohibitive in the current climate.”

Well done the Government. “We would like to encourage you to use our electronic services as it would save us money. But helping you to use our electronic services would be too costly in the current climate, so we’ll write some crap documentation and you can guess instead”.

We gave me a right bollocking over this one invoking the “Thirteen years in Royal Mail..you should have known better clause”. All IT consultancy is banned until the book is finished.

Next there’s the business opportunities. Leaving a structured work environment goes a long way to freeing the mind. Ideas that were previously constrained by budgets, defined strategy, skillsets or common sense are now free to come to the fore. Additionally, many ex-colleagues believe I’ve finished the book and are getting in touch with equally mad paths to future wealth.

I confess I’ve been caught up in a few of them. Some are just discussions, others a bit of code hackery and one almost has a business plan. I’ve got to knock most of them on the head though We have an attic full of my unfinished Airfix models, testament to an ability to start with enthusiasm but never complete.

Bollocking number two. “Dave, focus on the book, fanny about with business ideas in your spare time or when it’s finished, and by the way, someone has already invented a mobile phone linked doorbell” (well they patented it, I thought of it in 2003).

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Finally we come to me. I don’t mind admitting that I have a little bit of the Spike in my makeup. Sometimes I’m bouncing around like an Italian cruise ship passenger. Other times I’m a little more introspective, wondering whether it’s going to work, whether I’m up to it or whether anyone gives a shit either way. Self doubt can be a huge driver, it can also eat away at a project until nothing remains.

We had a chat about this as well. We’ve decided that the weapon of choice is obstinacy. The few friends that I have will argue that there’s no shortage of that, it just needs application and focus, so that’s what we’ll do.

There are numerous other distractions that have also raised their head in the past few weeks. The car failed MOT and a huge argument with the garage ensued as to cause and more importantly cost of the remedy. We built a shed, yes, another one, ready for the next army of bikes that will make its way to my front door. I’ve done some more research into the Year Record and met a whole new bunch of fabulous people with amazing stories to tell. We’ve de-cluttered and downsized our life a bit. Ebay is flooded with the contents of our attic and I’ve now got a large collection of “We’re sorry you are leaving us” letters. This is partly due to looking at the bills we paid in 2011 and wondering how on earth we paid them with me out of work. The truth is we didn’t. My savings account made up the rest and it’s worked out that we can do without cable TV, heating insurance, contact lenses that are never used and subscriptions to magazines full of adverts for stuff that costs money.

So suitably chastised I’ve returned to the original plan. I’ve also returned to this blog. The benefits (to me) clearly outweigh the cost as it provides a weekly tape measure of the distance travelled and the distance yet to go. Also, writing it allows me to vent a little steam and somewhat relieve the pressure. This week may have seemed a little morose but stay with me, as next week Helen and I do something incredibly stupid in the current financial climate. Trust me, we’re only doing it for your entertainment.

Nine weeks left to complete the project. We started with Spike so let’s stay with him at the end and finish on a rather apt poem that tickled my spotty youth.

“The boy stood on the burning deck,

Whence all but he had fled -

The twit!”

Dave

17th January 2012

WEEK FIFTY SIX>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My Fifty Second Week as a Budding Author

Just to quickly recap the last 52 weeks, I’ve chucked in a good job, ridden my bike a lot around the country, vaguely tried to write a book about it and also hammered out a weekly blog entry to keep myself and my Mum entertained. There’s been a bit of freelance writing and IT hackery as well to break up the monotony and attempt to keep the wolf from the door. Frankly, the life of a full time cycle dosser is quite exhausting and thus what better way to end the year than how I’ve spent most of it, on holiday. So grab a cup of coffee and a few matchsticks for the eyes as we set out on an extended blog describing our wonderful trip.

In the days when I had a proper job our family had an annual ritual of pouring half of our accumulated wealth into the French economy, or skiing as it is more usually known. This has been going on for five years or so ever since our fist trip to Morzine with friends. I had reservations before we went, due to my obsessive nature, and it all came true as I was immediately hooked. Helen watched in a resigned manner as I purchased the latest skiing gear, threw myself down runs that I was incapable of skiing and started booking multiple holidays per year.

Anyone who has ever gone skiing will feel her pain. The sport has no concept of “cheap”, everything from lift passes to ski goggles not only attracts a premium but has an “upgrade path”. It is possible to find ski holidays that cost more than my house and the vast majority that we have been on have cost at least a bike per family member, and we’re not talking Halfords specials either.

However, this year we made an exception to the annual ritual and decided to go camping instead. A single regular wage just can’t afford a skiing holiday per year, in fact two household incomes can barely stretch to it either. But as Christmas approached the news in Europe became more and more dire. Our lack of ski holiday booking coincided directly with the collapse of the Eurozone. Not only were we missing out on the elation of falling hard into the snow, we were denying the Greeks their Christmas presents as well.

Helen and I put heads together, rubbed our temples and then began to brainstorm “budget skiing holiday”. Given that we were looking to go after Christmas day this seemed nigh on impossible. Flights were expensive, accommodation was at a premium and most places were booked anyway. I mooted hitchhiking and a four man tent as an option, Helen asked why would I want to hitchhike on my own carrying a four man tent. Then in harmony our eyes turned to the driveway and we caught sight of our motorhome standing forlornly on the driveway. It had not been used in weeks. We could drive!

The seeds of a plan were sown. As usual we’d overstocked on Christmas food, we’d load this into the van and live on it for a week. Winter ferry prices were pretty cheap and a campsite in Bourg Saint Maurice could host us all for £18 a night including electricity. All we’d have to do is drive to the Alps the day after Boxing Day, hire a few skis and hit the slopes..what could possibly go wrong?

Well for a start we could have decided to have the entire family around for Boxing Day. This requires a frenzy of cooking and house cleaning made all the more difficult by the two bottles of sparkly, red wine, whisky and Baileys consumed on Christmas Day. The frenzy occupied a time period where we should be packing the van, consequently our guests were a bit confused as to where Helen kept disappearing to and why was she carrying duvets.

As soon as our guests had departed the house reverted to military rule. Helen and I barked orders at the children and each other whilst furiously running round in circles chanting the mantra of “What have we forgotten? What have we forgotten?”. At around about 11pm it seemed that there was nothing too forget as every single skiing or sleeping related item was now in the motorhome. We then commenced the time honoured ritual, the evening before departure, of going through all the relevant documentation required.

Passports, EHICs, Travel Insurance, ferry booking, campsite booking, Euros and toilet roll were all checked off the list. Then we came to European breakdown cover for the van. Bollocks, it had expired. Fortunately it was in Helen’s name so I could apportion all blame to her whilst secretly kicking myself for filing the renewal letter in the same cupboard as the special offer vouchers we never use. In an attack of blind optimism I phoned the office number, a recorded message informed me that I should “Sod off as it’s Christmas”.

There was not a lot else I could do apart from ponder what happens when your motorhome fails in a foreign land and you’re not in possession of many Euros? We all went to bed ready for an early start and long drive the next day. I managed about 3 hours sleep and awoke grumpy as hell the next day. We drove to Dover in silence.

The ferry crossing was uneventful as was the drive to Troyes. At 1am French time we decided that enough was enough and pulled into a service station for some kip. France is much acer than the UK in this respect. Our service stations are plastered with notices informing us that any stay longer than 2 hours is chargeable. In France, just pull in and settle down, no questions asked, in fact many towns have “Aires” specifically reserved for motorhomes to encourage tourism. We have height barriers instead. However, France was not quite so ace tonight as the first stop was full, with a pack of lorries having taken all available kip stops, as was the next.

It took another 30 minutes drive to find a suitable spot which was dead noisy but we were so shattered that within minutes we were all snoring away. The next day we awoke to fog and an interesting 150 mile drive to our campsite. As we entered the mountains the fog dissipated to reveal sun drenched ski slopes screaming at us to kit up and come and have a play. Unfortunately the campsite had closed for tiffin forcing us to retire to a coffee shop and practise our French on the owners.If I moved there my staple diet would become Croque Monsiour, Chocolate Chaud and du Pain, I haven’t got a clue how to order anything else.

The campsite opened at 3pm and we were there on the dot. There was a tense moment when we were informed that we’d booked for three nights, Helen had definitely clicked the button marked “4”. We hung on every mouse click until she smiled and said “No problem”.

Everywhere was decked in snow including our campsite. I’d told Helen that we’d have no problem dossing in Bourg Saint Maurice as it’s low and hardly ever gets the snow. I probably should have added that I’ve only been in late March as she stared quizzically at the snow drifts and half buried caravans. The drive to the pitch was not straightforward, as the ground had at least an inch of hardpack snow cover. I nearly donned the snow chains but we skidded our way into the mass of vans, hooked up to the electric point, plugged in the heater and blew the campsite fuse.

More tense words with the proprietor who fiddled about in the electric box for a bit before plugging us back in again. The heater fired up and we cooked tea whilst gazing dreamily at the mountains covered in snow. We’d made it, tomorrow we’d ski.

And ski we did. We were up early and tramped a mile from our campsite through some woods to the Bourg-Saint-Maurice funicular. Skis were hired from Polair Star very conveniently located at the bottom of the Les Arcs funicular and even more conveniently run by an eccentric British couple thus negating the requirement for my piss poor French.

Sadly the sun had gone on vacation to Wiltshire, only to be replaced by wind and cloud. Our first few runs of the day were fine until we headed down towards Villaroger and dense fog. We’d committed ourselves by skiing down past a lift and visibility went from perfect to “what the hell is that thing on the front of my face”. This was our first experience of skiing by braille, many tense minutes later we’d groped our way to the bottom of the run. “Higher, higher” became the mantra, skiing meets “Play your cards right”, Brucie would have been proud.

It became clear that the weather was moving round the mountain and we needed to place ourselves where the fog wasn’t. We had an entertaining day dashing from lift to lift in search of the visibility. At one point Jake and I travelled as high as we could go, the Aiguille Rouge, or Red Eagle pinnacle. The fog had followed us up and we gingerly picked our way down the steep higher slopes. Then we heard cheers and saw other skiers and were smacked by sunlight as the wind blew fog away. A father/son chase down the mountain ensued. Jake won easily. I’d been waiting for the moment when youth, courage and talent would eclipse experience and this was it. I was the same old raggedy type skier, he looked “right” and descended fast.

We rejoined the girls and skied some more fading sun prompted a look at the watch. Hmmm, we were a long way from the funicular, had two sets of mountains to cross and 40 minutes to do it in. I shuffled everyone onto a lift, probably the slowest in the resort and reassured Holly we’d be OK whilst furiously calculating lift times and average rates of descent. It was going to be tight. a quick pep talk at the top of the next lift, “No falling, no off piste, no snow plough, no stopping” we had to ski hard to make the final lift. But the family did me proud, we made it with five minutes to spare. Holly asked me what we would have done if the lift had shut, I think the response “Cry” did not fill her full of confidence in her father.

We slept bloody well that evening which is a good thing as the night was filled with horrors that were best ignored till daybreak. I awoke first to a strange tip tip tapping sound on the top of the van. I opened the door and all I could see was white, white on the ground, white falling from the sky and white skin as I’d forgotten to get dressed. It hadn’t just snowed in the night it had monsooned. The van was surrounded by a few feet of the cold white stuff and it was still coming down. Some cars had disappeared altogether. The kids were in raptures, what better way to spend a Christmas break than messing about in man sized drifts. All I could think was “how on earth am I going to get out?”.

Fortunately I’d packed a spade and did my best to dig a path from the van to the shower block. We then attempted to walk to through the woods to the ski hire shop where our skis resided. It was futile as the snow was waist deep. We reverted to the roads which only had an inch of cover due to the snow ploughs and traffic. Another area where the French clearly trump us, no matter how hard it snows they are ready. Straight out in their cars to buy fags and baguettes and ensure that snow has no chance to settle.

Ascending the funicular we discussed whether we’d be able to ski. None of us had ever seen so much snow on the slopes, let alone an extra few feet overnight. We needn’t have fretted as this snow fell as powder, beautifully light and easily parted by skis. It was the best day’s skiing I’ve ever had.

Normally I’ll trend towards the harder red and black runs to test myself whilst giving the French another abject display of something they are much better than us at. Today there was no need. All of the runs were deep in snow, all of them were lumpy and challenging..and fun! We stuck to the same few lifts which appeared to occupy a break in the snow cloud formation. Visibility was good and the conditions were amazing so the kids and I went in search of trees, bumps and jumps (well the kids did the jumps I looked on in a supervisory manner). We skied in waist deep powder, took lines I’d never consider on a normal day and laughed ourselves stupid as we fell and were buried.

We were even more tired that evening, but the skies weren’t and they did it again. Another morning, another metre of snow! Discussion turned to our impending departure and what we would do if we couldn’t get out. But the weather had an answer, and as we skied the temperatures rose and snow turned to rain.

Returning to the van that evening it was clear that the snow was receding. I practised affixing the snow chains ready for departure and dug all round the van to clear our way out. This was New Year’s Eve, we were in bed by ten after a single glass of plonk and a game of cards. I reflected upon the three days and our simple routine:-

• get up, shout at the kids for thirty minutes, check they aren’t dead, forcibly eject them from bunks
• brew coffee, tea and bad farts from last night’s thrown together meal
• open van door, shovel snow out of van, dig path to shower block
• send eldest child to reception to pick up baguettes and croissants
• breakfast and make sandwiches, accuse each other of farting
• fight each other in confined space to don skiing gear, retrieve goggles, find helmets, hide chocolate and argue who carried the cameras
• break trail through the snow to ski hire shop
• moan for ten minutes as feet are forced into boots and new bruises are found
• ski, morning shift, furtive farting, occasional crossed ski
• take refuge in mountain restaurant make a coffee and hot chocolate last an hour
• furtively eat sandwiches outside restaurant (have you seen the food prices!!!)
• ski, afternoon shift, close shaves and miscommunication about which way we’re going
• return to ski hire shop, moan for ten minutes attempting to remove boots
• break trail back to van
• lukewarm shower listening to Belgium men discuss yodelling whilst pooing
• cook dinner from packets of stuff and leftover Xmas cheese
• agree dinner was best we have ever eaten
• send kids out to do washing up on premise that we cooked dinner (ie. opened a few packets)
• retire to bed and snore

Three days skiing in these conditions was plenty for us. At the end of the last day we were shattered yet fulfilled. This eased departure day, but the inch of ice around the campsite didn’t. I have no idea how the van made it to the entrance because even with snow chains the steering wheel had little effect. I passed a group of campers walking their dogs, they thought I was waving, the gesture was more along the lines of “For f**ks sake get out of the way I have no control whatsoever over this vehicle”.

Fortunately the ice ended with the campsite and the roads out of the mountains perfectly clear. Helen and I did 150 mile shifts between us. The kids plugged themselves into stuff like iPods and Nintendo DS consoles totally unaware of the tedium surrounding them. I lucked out with two calm weather shifts. Helen pulled the short straw navigating a monsoon on shift one and horizontal rain slabs shift two. But the driving was easy. I can’t put my finger on “why” but French traffic seems to flow better on their motorways. Maybe it’s because they are all smoking and have Grandma in the back berating them to slow down.

Eleven hours and six hundred miles later we rocked up at the ferry port in Dunkirk. It was 10pm and we had the option of getting a midnight ferry. Tiredness overruled. Helen and I were all driven out and attempted to convince the kids to bed down for one more night. They did not respond. So we pulled out their headphones and asked again.

A huge collective sigh of relief was exhaled the next day as the van rolled off the ramps and into Dover. We’d gambled with the European breakdown insurance and won. Never again though. Halfway through the drive back I’d noticed white smoke coming from the exhaust. It took a long while and a lot of bowel control until I realised it was spray from the road hitting the pipe and vaporising.

I drove the last shift home and occupied myself with some virtual accounting. The trip had cost us approximately £375 per head door to door. This included everything, ski hire, lift passes, food, petrol, tolls, accommodation and the machine on the ferry where you use a crane to try and grab a furry toy. For non-skiers this will seem a lot, for those who have paid to go before I hope you’ll agree that we pulled it off and really did do it on the cheap.

It was a fitting end to the year and over three thousand words will prove a fitting end to fifty two weeks of continuous waffle with only two breaks. I set out to spend the year writing a book. Like all good estimates it needs some tolerance and 25% seems a good figure to me. It will be done in April trust me on that, my only excuse is that I’ve not done it before so cut me some slack in my planning.

However, completion requires focus on the task in hand. This means using the hours spent writing the blog to write the book instead and fifty two weeks is probably fifty one too many. So I’ll sign off with a “thanks” for the comments, sarcasm, encouragement and eyeballs that you’ve given me each week. I’m not stopping this for good, you don’t get off that lightly, it’s the “weekly” that falls by the wayside. Here’s wishing you a Happy New Year and may all of your dreams come true in 2012. Well most of them anyway.I had a weird one about a having a job last week, makes me shudder reliving it again.

Dave

3rd January 2012

WEEK 55>>>>>>>>>>>>>

My Fifty First Week as a Budding Author 

Christmas is a sad time of year for us freelancers. We sit in our sheds jealously following the tweets and facebook updates of our properly employed friends and their office parties. Mournfully we look to the phonebox outside of the house where our office do will be held and wonder just how on earth we are going to manage to get off with ourself after Babycham number 6. Walking into town earlier in the week I stared jealously at all of the pavement pizzas, signatures of a wild night out on the town.

Fortunately I didn’t burn all of my bridges after leaving my proper job. I am still a card carrying member of the Swindon Thursday Night ex-jugglers society. A motley crew of ageing gentlemen who have retired from throwing things in the air preferring to meet weekly and imbibe alcohol instead. Basically we’re a support group for geeky middle aged men who struggle to admit that they have a penchant for Scalectrix and sideburns.

The Thursday night crew have a number of traditions that are religiously maintained. We only ever meet in pubs that serve ”proper” beer. We often purchase crisps to accompany our pints, but never Ready Salted. We debate a huge range of subjects each week ranging from cycling to cycling and every year in the week before Christmas we meet up for a curry.

This year was no exception and on Thursday I sat in the Jewel in the Crown surrounded by my old friends, and I mean old as most of them are knocking on the door of fifty. But whilst we all are now forced to get up in the middle of the night for a wee, we’re young at heart. As I listened to the reminiscing and troughed curry I reflected upon the experiences that the ten of us had shared over the years. The birth of our children, the death of close relatives and Hugh’s willy surgery along with the graphic photos that he had emailed to each one of us.

However, there is one Thursday boys experience that requires documenting when three of us slipped briefly into a watery grave and almost didn’t return.

Another of our traditions is the “annual experience” where we kid ourselves that we’re not as old as we think by doing something mildly exciting. These experiences have included mountain climbing, mountain biking, white water rafting, paintballing and surfing usually interspersed with beer. One fatal year Rick suggested that we have a go at coasteering, jumping into the sea wearing wetsuits and life jackets, what could possibly go wrong?

I pondered this as we stood like a troupe of aged penguins in a Welsh car park but our guides seemed jovial, reassuring us that we’d have a great time..but don’t forget your helmets. For some reason they made us wear shorts over our wetsuits as well. I’d chosen my best mountain biking baggies for that “do not approach this man he’s clearly disturbed” look.We were then led from the car park to the Irish Sea.

The safety briefing was exactly that, brief. Basically if we got into any kind of trouble we had to raise our arm in the air and our guides would come to the rescue, but we wouldn’t need to do this as coasteering is perfectly safe. Guide number one climbed down to a watery gully jumped into the sea and motioned for two of us to follow. Steve and Rick obliged. It looked relatively harmless as the two of them bobbed about in the waves so I decided to take the plunge and dived in after them.

I think I managed to surface briefly, I can’t be sure as suddenly all I knew was water. I appeared to be under an awful lot of it being thrown around as if inside a Dave sized washing machine. This started out as a novel experience, all part of the coasteering lark, but quickly morphed into blind panic as I realised that I wasn’t about to surface any time soon. I was completely and utterly disorientated in my attempts to kick and thrash my way out. There were no points of reference to tell me which way was up and the water was so rough that bubbles were moving in all directions.

My helmet hit rock and the penny dropped, I’d been sucked under water and into a cave. This was it. Dave consigned to Davy Jones locker. Time to die. It is no exaggeration to state that I truly believed my number was up. I’d not had time to take a proper breath and really needed to suck some air in. I hit the rock again and could see no other option, I was stuck in this cave and the hard coded breathing reflex was too strong to fight. It was a profound moment that will stay with me forever when I accepted that this was the moment I was going to die.

You read about life flashing before you, maybe it does when you snuff it properly. I’m not looking forward to this as I’ll have to see some of my haircuts from the eighties and relive the moment when I poo’d myself getting ready for school. In my case it was as if a question that had been troubling me for years was finally answered. So THIS is how I’m going to die, I’d always thought it would be some tragic garage based accident involving power tools and a hammer.

I opened my mouth and sucked hard, air flowed into my lungs, I’d surfaced. I had no idea where I was and remembered the safety briefing shooting my arm in the air. I looked left and saw Rick with his arm in the air to my right was Steve with his arm in the air. Ropes were thrown and the three of us were dragged from the sea closely followed by guide number one who was looking pretty unhappy as well.

The whole group was visibly shocked. Apparently a freak wave had swept into the gully and held us under in its grip. Our friends had gone from laughter to panic as the seconds had ticked by whilst we remained under. Nobody was sure of the timings but we reckoned 30-45 seconds which may seem trivial but is hours when you’ve not had the chance to take a proper breath. The swell had knocked me sideways into the rocks thus explaining my perception of a cave roof. I must have made things worse by trying to swim my way out as I’d been going sideways rather than up. 

Steve and Rick had experienced similar panic. All three of us affirmed that we’d believed the end was nigh. Our guides attempted to diffuse the situation by stating that they weren’t really worried and it had all been under control, one of them attempted to laugh it all off. Their eyes told a different story, they’d nearly lost three clients plus a guide and they knew it. The sea had it’s final say with me by dishing out a comprehensive debagging. My shorts had been ripped off by the wave and were making their way to Ireland. I still wonder whether the Irish coastguard has called off a fruitless search for a coastal mountain biker riding round in his pants.

We were rapidly shuffled away to a safer bit of coast and spent the remainder of the day throwing ourselves off rocks without incident. Later when we peeled ourselves out of the wetsuits the damage became apparent. Steve, Rick and I were a fine tapestry of cuts and bruises we’d taken a real battering under the water. Jokingly I asked guide number two for the phone number of Claims Direct, he laughed but his eyes went all funny again.

Writing this has proved therapeutic in a number of ways. It’s allowed me to come to terms with a near death experience and morbidly realise that when it does come I think I’ll be OK with it, as long as it doesn’t involve crabs or dentistry. I’ve realised that I don’t miss the office party as I’ll always have the Thursday night boys curry but most importantly it has distracted me for an hour from actually writing the bloody book.

I’ve managed over 13,000 words in the last few days but they have been hard won especially with a wandering mind such as mine. Banging out some inane waffle about coasteering keeps the mind fresh. On that note, I think it’s time for me to log off and spend some quality Christmas time with my lovely wife and kids. So here’s wishing my reader a great Christmas and Happy New Year and if Santa delivers an experience voucher labelled”Coasteering”, you know what to do.

Dave

23rd December 2011

WEEK FIFTY TWO>>>>>>>>>>