My Second Week as a Budding Author

Well here it is, Friday on week two of my new career as an author. I’d hoped to present lots of highly positive news about huge amounts of progress made into “The Project”, however, I’m afraid that the converse is true.

Monday morning was completely written off by the dentist, two fillings, a crown and a fee akin to bankers bonus distracted me from any writing. |n fact the whole experience had a tint of the surreal about it. My dentist spends his exorbitant fees upon gimmicks, lying in the chair the patient is treated to an LCD screen mounted upon the ceiling, which was aptly showing the Jeremy Kyle show. He also has a Bose stereo system that is permanently tuned to Classic FM.

The combination actually works pretty well, there’s a strange sort of beauty in watching fat chavs gesticulate at each other set to Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers. It’s like Swan lake, but set in Penhill. So Monday afternoon saw me sat in front of the iMac feeling sorry for myself and not managing to write a whole lot. I planned routes instead and have a big chunk of Lands End - John O’ Groats in the bag and ready to be ridden.

I did manage to do some proper writing later in the week though and the word count is now knocking on the door of 5000 which would be good if any of it made grammatical sense, which none of it does. But I have learned a lot of new stuff about Romans, rights of access to the road network and the genesis of the leather saddle. I’ve also watched some seriously dodgy youtube videos and spent far too much time on internet forums. I think I’ll have to install a web proxy and create an internet access policy for weekdays.

Midweek saw me traveling up to Leeds for a final meeting with my old work colleagues. I attempted the journey by train, always an experience ever since the government decided to outsource the housing of mental patients to Network Rail. I had the luxury of a reserved seat, or so I thought, and as I boarded the train at Cheltenham I made my way to seat C19. On arrival I was met by a man who looked like a ferret and a suitcase larger than him blatantly occupying my seat. I politely informed the ferret that I had this seat reserved and I would be eternally grateful if the suitcase could be relocated to the luggage rack in order to facilitate my arse taking its rightful place.

To say he went mental would be an understatement. He completely lost the plot akin to a five year old child who has been denied Oreos in a supermarket. “Oh my fucking god” he protested, “It’s going to take me fucking ages to move it, for fucks sake mate look at the fucking size of it, jesus christ, for fucks sake..anyway there’s no reservations, for fucks sake etc....”. I looked at my ticket which clearly stated that there were reservations and that I had one. However, I’m no slouch at spotting potential psychosis and decided to locate myself elsewhere. He was still ranting. But as a final act of internet spite, the bloke on the 15:12 Cheltenham to Glasgow train in seat C20 who looks like a ferret, you’re a cock!

I sat next to a normal looking sort of bloke who was plugged into his iPhone and devoid of any outward symptoms of madness. That was until he reached into his bag and pulled out wine gums. He popped one in his mouth and somehow made the loudest, most ridiculous chewing noise ever. How the hell can you do that with wine gums? They are soft, malleable and possess no physical structure that allows them to “crunch” but somehow he managed to make a bleeding racket that got more and more annoying. After 5 more wine gums I was contemplating going back to the ferret and pushing him to move his case. Luckily the woman on the seat opposite left and so did I, straight into her seat.

The madness didn’t end there. I arrived in Leeds at around about 6pm, checked into my hotel and bought a sandwich. I then settled down in front of the telly trying to while away the time until Shameless came on the box. At 7.30pm I got a text from one of my ex-colleagues asking me “Are u coming tonight mate?” At first I thought he was accusing me of watching hotel porn, then he phoned and informed me that they were sat in a restaurant waiting for me...at my leaving do. They’d forgotten to invite me.

Corporate life certainly has its ups and downs but not being invited to your leaving do surely takes the biscuit. I guess I must have made a real impression in the 3 years that I was there, so much so that they decided to celebrate my leaving without me.

I got revenge at the meeting the day after by browsing Facebook in the breaks whilst they were all earnestly hunched over their Blackberries dealing with crisis situations.

That’s just about it for week two then. Not as much progress as I would have liked but “The project” is definitely taking shape. Week three will all be about riding the bike, so I’ve spent most of Friday fettling and now all of my road bikes sport lovely Campagnolo gears. I think I’ve waved goodbye to the tendonitus, we will see on Monday. If all goes well I will have Wiltshire nailed by the end of the week and hopefully a whole load of sentences that actually carry some sort of meaning.

Dave, 14th January 2011

WEEK THREE >>>>