Category: People

My Left Foot (Part Two)

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

One of my New Year Resolutions, alongside the trusty favourites of losing a stone; writing a song that people would be interesting in listening to; and generally being harder on Jr Emu#3 (a NYR shared by four other members of the family), was to write 12 blogs that people would actually read during 2016.

So far, so not so good, as the score currently stands at: Year Expectations – 4, Emu – 1.

As ever, I’m keen to blame others for my inadequacies, and in this instance, I’m placing part of the responsibility on the ever fragrant Mrs E, who imposed something of a super-injunction on my last draft. I’d spent a reasonable chunk of February preparing what turned out to be a combination of an open letter to Jeremy Hunt, and a love letter to Mrs E, who, as a nurse, is one of his most long standing and long suffering employees. As it turned out, putting the blog in front of her before pressing the ‘publish’ button was definitely the right thing to do, as it received a response along the lines of:

‘There’s no way on this earth that I’m letting you publish that. I’ll lose my job, you twat’

There are few things I really fear in life, but being married to an unemployed nurse who bears me a major grudge would definitely be one of them. Mrs E is already making noises about a third dog to continue her child replacement therapy, and had this episode gone wrong, I could just see her going down the ‘attack-dog’ route.

Anyhow, that was the blog you didn’t get, which was about as negative a read about the NHS as you could experience, and this, by contrast, is the blog that you do get, which, happily, is about the best experience ever, yesterday, also at the hands of the NHS.

For a bit of context, my left foot has been something of a burden to me in my efforts to be a vaguely adequate marathon runner. The big toe, in particular, was hurting like seven shades of hell when I went to my GP at the end of last year – he had a painful poke about and diagnosed an ingrowing toenail. An ingrowing toenail is one of those conditions that you think is way down on the minor list of ailments, but it’s not until you have one that you realise what all the fuss is about. It’s like having a really sensitive part of your foot constantly tattooed by a degenerate biker, so when the doctor said that I needed to have the toenail removed, and that it was a simple procedure, I could have jumped for joy. Obviously I didn’t as I had a fair idea of what landing would feel like, but you get my drift.

‘Can it be done quickly?’ I asked. ‘It’s just that I’m going into a sixteen week training plan, so I need to fit it in with that’

My GP has what I believe is called a ‘lazy eye’, and it’s often quite difficult to tell if he’s staring at you intently or looking up at the ceiling in a a state of disbelief. I like to think that in this instance he was doing both. Anyway, we agreed that I should save the NHS the bother and get booked in for a quick BUPA procedure in February.

Come the great day, and I pitched up for the appointment, had a fairly large needle shoved into my toe, then watched on in awe as the toe was cut open, part of the nailbed removed, and the whole thing cauterised with what looked suspiciously like the last soldering iron I bought in Maplins. (And which, incidentally, brought back some shuddering memories of my vasectomy. The smell of burning flesh will, I think, always remind me of that sunny afternoon in a surgery ten years ago, with my wife and the doctor merrily gossiping on the other side of a green cloth screen. I had naively expected her to hold my hand at the customer end of the transaction, but she mentioned something about ‘professional interest’ and that was the last I saw of her.)

Anyway, I rested up for a few days, got back to running, got the toe nicely infected by doing a twenty miler in the mud in March, got some antibiotics and took ‘constructive feedback’ from various healthcare professionals (see above), and by the start of April, all was reasonably well. Not the prettiest toe you’d ever seen, but vaguely functional.

Then, about a fortnight ago, it started hurting again. Then really hurting. Then ohmygodthatissof’ingpainful hurting. So I went back to the GP, who did the whole intense stare trick again, and sent me off with some antibiotics.

‘This will clear the infection up by the marathon’ he said, filling me with optimism.

I tried a run on Tuesday this week and pretty much had to hop the first couple of miles. It was really, really painful, and probably not that sustainable an approach for the marathon, so the next day it was back to the GP. He looked at me quizzically (I think).

‘I could drill it’, he said, ‘but I’m not sure that’s what it needs’.

Well, if he wasn’t sure, I wasn’t going to encourage him to experiment. So he decided to ‘phone a friend’. He called the podiatry department at a local hospital, told them what he was worried about, and said that this was ‘important, as the patient has to run a marathon on Sunday’. He genuinely said that, not because he necessarily thought it was properly important, but because he knew that it was to me. This was after 5, and whoever he spoke to said they’d have to see if anyone could help, and they’d call him back. They did:

‘Can you do 10 tomorrow morning?’

Yes, I very much could. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but anything was going to be better that the current situation, and so I pitched up at the hospital on time the next day.

And was seen, on time. By two lovely people, who, if they weren’t in the podiatry business, could probably have eked out a living in light entertainment.

Within 2 minutes of me taking my socks off and giving them a brief rundown, they’d agreed on the problem – the nail bed hadn’t been killed off and the nail had grown back, in spikes, back into my toe.

They’d also agreed on a fix.

‘We’ve got two options; either we do the procedure now without an anaesthetic’

<pauses for patient to take this in>

‘Or we do the procedure now with an anaesthetic.’

I don’t think it was the first time that the joke had been told in that room, but I guess that’s ok as long as it’s new to your audience. Which it was. Anyway, we settled on the second option, which involved the familiar big needle being shoved in.

‘This is going to hurt quite a bit. We encourage you to swear’

Yep, it did and I did. And then various bits of jagged nail were poked about, cut off, dragged out, and waved in front of me like fishing trophies. The whole thing was over in a few minutes and pronounced a big success.

‘That should be fine by Sunday, we’ll watch out for you’

Hurrah, I thought, quickly adjusting my race plan.

‘But you’ll need to have the nail bed cut out again.’

Uh-oh, I thought, expecting a three month wait.

‘We’ll do the paperwork now so you don’t need to come back for a consultation, and we’ll send you an appointment for May’

Time to take that uh-oh back then.

I know that all of this doesn’t say anything about the resources and the queues and the beds and the cuts and the overcrowding, and all the other awful things that are happening to the NHS at this time. And I know, that, in the scheme of things, removing an recalcitrant toenail from an otherwise fit bloke primarily so he can indulge himself in a running race doesn’t really stack up against the need for ECG monitors, or decent treatment for Alzheimer patients, or reasonable salaries, or meaningful community care, or any other of the big issues.

But, on the other hand, some really lovely and caring and professional people went out of their way to help me this week. They understood the person they were helping, they stopped the horrible bit from hurting, they could see exactly the problem and the solution, and even told a few jokes to ease the pain. When we shout (and we should) about losing what is dear to us in the dearest of our institutions, we shouldn’t forget that the little things define it as much as the big things. So let’s shout about those as well, ok?

 

PS: Had a bit of a setback on Thursday night as I managed to run over my own left foot while taking the bins out. In my profession, we’d call this user error.

Adventures In Home Plumbing (part 4)

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

We have a What’sapp group for me, Mrs E & the younger, yet taller little E’s. This allows the elder two to continue to take the mickey out of their parents and brothers whilst still maintaining a safe distance of several hundred miles. This., for those of you with a psych-techno bent, is pretty much a distillation of why any technology actually exists these days, but in fear of going off on a tangent in the second sentence of this blog, let’s not.

Instead, let me share with a posting from #4 to the group, with the caption ‘DIY with Dad today’:IMG_0229

This struck me as particularly ungrateful, given that it was a result of putting up a noticeboard in #4’s bedroom. This exercise needed four holes to be drilled in about the right places. The picture above shows what happened on hole number 2. Hole number 3 was reasonably successful, but was followed by hole number 4, which was delivered with matching plaster crater. Fortunately the full recovery plan was fully invoked by the time Mrs E arrived home. Even more fortunately, Mrs E was away for the week, thereby allowing a certain amount of contingency, including time to dry the recovery paint.

I made the mistake of complaining that I was feeling a bit put out by all these challenges. At least I’d never put any of them in danger through these antics, had I? Within a couple of hours, #3 had posted the photo below, with the caption ‘Dad says we need to help out more with household chores’:

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In retrospect, balancing delicately on a 45 degree slope in sandals, with a 12 year old on your shoulders wielding a rusty pair of shears might have been seen as a bit irresponsible, but I don’t believe there were any lasting negative effects. He may have a recurring nightmare about giant barbers, I’ll have to ask.

Anyway, shortly after the apparent delivery of a top of the range noticeboard installation, I was invited to review the challenges of the downstairs cistern. Well, invited might have been the wrong word. As you might have gathered from parts 1-3 of these blogs, Mrs E is loath to invite me to do too much on the construction front, for fear of turning our house into a death trap. I think she fears that, in the style of Father Ted, that I might start off with a small dent to knock out:

father ted first

…then, a couple of hours later, end up with something like this:

father ted

To be fair, she has many years of watching, listening and learning on her side. But with the cistern, I really felt that the time was right to take matters in hand.

The challenge had been building up for some time. If someone needs to visit the bathroom in our house, they go downstairs. So, at the best of times, there’s a certain amount of through traffic. Coupled with a cistern that was taking about 15 minutes to fill up, there have been some fairly embarrassing situations, say at parties, where someone has, let’s say, left something available for display that they’d rather not be witnessed, with no means of hiding it. So they stand outside the door looking embarrassed and blocking the way, or just inside the door, frantically waiting a few minutes, flushing to no effect and then finding that the cistern needs to fill up again from scratch.

Being the householder, and given that the majority of throughput these days is teenage traffic, I think it’s very grounding for them to be thoroughly embarrassed now and again, but sometimes it impacts me or Mrs E, and then Action Must Be Taken. I think the trigger point came a few Sundays ago, when my friend G came round and decided he needed to perform an evacuation procedure ahead of our long run together. Twenty minutes later we were still waiting indoors avoiding eye contact, keener by the moment to experience the fresh air outside.

Naturally, I embarked on the ‘ getting the cistern fixed’ task, later that day, almost to the minute of the advertised DIY store closing time.

“Are you sure that’s wise?” said Mrs E, which was code for “Please don’t do that, you hopeless cretin”

“Yes, I know what I’m doing”, I replied, which was code for “I am blatantly lying to my own wife”

Water off, cistern drained – check. Remove all fittings, check. Disassemble all parts, ensuring that none are lost – check. Understand how the cistern fills up and valve assembly works – check. Find a solid piece of pesky limescale that had been blocking the valve – result!

Everything reassembled and fully working, all within a couple of hours. Water back on, and very very little left on the floor.

“My work here is done”, I called out gleefully, which was code for “I’m not actually going to make a fuss about you clearly not trusting me to carry out these complex practical tasks. But if you poured me a large drink and showered kisses on my upturned face, that might not go amiss”

“Really?” she replied, which was code for “I’m not entirely sure I’d put too much store in what you’ve said, never mind what you’ve just thought”.

As the next few hours wore on, the overall feeling of suspicion dissipated. At no point in the evening had I had to call out an emergency plumber. There were no evident leaks in the bathroom. At around midnight, it was time to go to bed. Mrs E deals with the dog, I deal with the hamster, and I decide to have a celebratory pee, having had a pretty good and disaster free day.

Which is how the evening would have ended, had I not actually made the mistake of flushing. I’d noticed a slight vibration in the earlier commissioning test stage of the process, and not thought much of it. This noise that we got now though was not really in ‘ignoring’ territory. In fact, it wasn’t really noise, as such. The whole house was vibrating, and the noise that was being made was like the foghorn from something slightly larger than the Titanic. It was pretty awesome, as it happened, it was like the entire house had forgotten to change out of a high gear on a particularly long hill climb.

I spent a while marvelling at the wonders of what a very small amount of water could do to create a house that was managing to announce itself to a three mile radius. All that money that we spend on early warning systems – the government could just employ me to install some small bathroom cisterns in strategic locations.

I wasn’t alone with my thoughts for long. I looked upstairs and there were various members of the family, framed in a similar way to that iconic Beatles picture, looking down amusedly at the hapless twit below.

beatles

“Sounds like you’ve fixed the toilet, then”, said #2.

You’ll be pleased to know that after some mercy dashes to Screwfix, where I was treated with undeserved patience on all of my three visits, a new fully working cistern was installed within 24 hours. I wasn’t even phased by having a conversation involving a ‘bottom entry system’, avoiding both eye contact and the prospect of turning into a Rik Mayall character.

“All fixed”, I said, when my wife got home on Monday evening.

“Right”, said she, perhaps extending the ‘igh’ bit of the word a bit unduly.

Flushed with success (really, these jokes are just writing themselves), and needing to prove myself a little further on the DIY front, I noticed that there were some headphones that needed fixing; the little bits that go in the ear had worked loose. Finding the tube of superglue, I got them all fixed within a couple of minutes. There’s another story to tell about how superglue doesn’t actually dry instantly, and that you should be in too much of a hurry to test the dryness…but that’s too painful to tell now.

Until next time, be careful with those sharp tools.

Speckled Jill and the Mother’s Refuge

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

At the edge of our garden, just outside our bedroom window, is a tree. When we first moved into the house, about ten years ago, I had a chat with our new neighbour, who kindly pointed out Things That Needed To Be Done On A Regular Basis, and one of these Things was pollarding the trees. I’d never pollarded a tree before, but this sounded like ten types of fun, so for a few of the following summers we arranged aday, lined up ladders on both sides of the tree and clipped the new branches back, while having manly chats about work, families, and, very possibly, football.

I discovered in this process that a) I didn’t really care for the whole tree surgery lark, and that this was related to b) I absolutely hated going up ladders, particularly if at the top of the ladder you had to use both hands to operate garden tools. Anyway, after the first few years, our conversation over the fence dwindled to ‘we must get round to sorting that tree out’ and the, in the last few years, petered out altogether.

And so it was, that one bright summer morning last month, I pointed out to my friend G that there was absolutely no light coming into our garden. And that it was all the fault of this bloody tree.

‘I shall phone a tree surgeon’, I said, and did.

A couple of fruitless calls later (for some reason, tree surgeons are really busy in the summer, not to mention a tad pricey, but I don’t suppose they get much indoor work in the winter), I contacted G.

‘I would like to borrow your ladders’, I said, I like to think with the air of someone who knows one end of a ladder from another.

‘Ok’ he replied, with the air of someone who has known me long enough to know that I simply do not KOEOALFA, ‘but you’ll probably break your neck’.

I don’t know whether Mrs E quietly intervened at this point, but it’s quite possible, as I know she thinks I have a couple of years of earning potential in me yet. Anyhow, I got a text a couple of days later from G:

‘I’ve got a day free on Friday – I’ll come and sort that tree out – it will keep you out of A&E. I have a chainsaw as well’

Nicely stating, in a single text, his position as alpha male in our relationship. Then restating, with particular reference to power tools.

And so he did. On Friday morning, we had no light. And on Saturday morning, after having carted about two tons of timber and leaves to the end of the garden, there was light. And this is what the tree looked like:

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A tree, earlier this week

There was only one problem, and if you zoom in to the top part of the tree, you’ll be able to see for yourself.

‘There’s a nest with an egg at the top of the tree’, said G, and just as he was speaking, a large pigeon flew in and landed on the nest.

Large, and to all intents and purposes, quite grumpy. I know it’s easy to impose human values on animals, but this one was an absolute cert. I’ve never seen an animal looking so, well, out of sorts and cross with their lot, and in many ways, she had a look about her that reminded us all of Feathers McGraw, from The Wrong Trousers:

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Feathers McGraw, earlier this week

To be fair, up and till now, she’d had a reasonably comfortable life, surrounded by leafy greenery, just popping out now and then for a quick worm before coming back to sit on her egg, then some bloke in a checked shirt had shinned up a long ladder with a chainsaw, and hacked away every half inch of protection.

To make it worse, it started to rain. It rained, on and off for about a week, before Mrs E finally snapped.

Mrs E is a patient and tolerant woman, and like many of the p&t of this world, has a snapping point, which is audible across multiple parishes. Certain activities are guaranteed to create this snapping point, including inappropriate use of the public highway, online payment systems, and leaving the toilet seat up.

And, apparently, water damage to pigeons.

‘It’s just so cruel’, she sobbed, looking up mournfully and dabbing her eyes with an Edwardian handkerchief (for those of you who have met my wife, you’ll realise I’m making some of this up), ‘she’s getting so…wet. All she wants to do is sit on her egg. You’ll have to do something’.

And do something I did, but first, a contextual tangent….

After a few days of the pigeon being exposed to the elements, the two younger kids had named her ‘Speckled Jill’, in homage to Colonel Melchett’s ‘Speckled Jim’, in ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’.

As with many of the naming ceremonies in our household, I wasn’t allowed a look in, and she was Speckled Jill before I had any sort of a chance to submit my request to the naming committee. Had I not missed my slot, I would have definitely put forward a case for her to be called ‘Pride Of The East 2’.

You see, me and pigeons go back through generations, and I like to think I have the same sort of reflected fame in pigeon racing circles as, say, George Stevenson’s great great grandson might have to trainspotters. Because, in 1929, my Great Uncle Bill won the National Flying Club trophy (presented by the King, no less) for the annual race from San Sebastian to England. Or, more to the point, his pigeon, ‘Pride Of The East’ did. To put this in an athletic context, this involved POTE knocking out an average speed of 1024 yards per minute, over 629 miles, until he fluttered gratefully and gracefully over the garden in Wickham Market and was bundled into the timing box. I make this about 35 miles per hour, over about 18 hours – Usain Bolt does about 27 mph, tops, and I really doubt he could keep going for 18 hours.

POTE beat 1915 other birds, and Great Uncle Bill received not only a silver cup, but also a cheque for £120. That might not sound that much, but in 1929 you’d have to go some to earn that in a year.

The National Flying Club is still going, although the halcyon days of international pigeon racing have declined a bit over the decades. But I’ve mentioned POTE to a couple of pigeon fanciers over the last few years and they’ve gone a bit misty eyed on me…’you mean…you’ve got the actual 1929 trophy?’, they say, and I puff my chest out (probably very much like POTE) and reply that I not only have the trophy, but the framed certificate AND a cigarette card from Ogden’s cigarettes showing POTE, no 32 in their series ‘Famous Racing Pigeons’:

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So, me and pigeons, we go back, right?

And when Great Uncle Bill’s legacy and my wife’s desperate calls for a mother to be protected are combined, there is nothing for it, but for the Emu to spring into action.

And S into A I certainly did,with the help of #4, and we soon had a roof made up, painted, and ready for inspection. I was pretty proud of this construction, as far as my DIY skills were concerned, and spend a while in the garage admiring it from various angles, before remembering that a) most bird houses these days are made by people with learning disabilities, so it wasn’t perhaps such an impressive construction and b) that I would still need to find a way of being fixed over the head of Speckled Jill, still resident and grumpy at c25ft above ground.

Using all of the courage I could muster, I made my way up the ladder, balancing roof, support, nails, and hammer, and remembering to point out to my children where I’d filed my life insurance policy. Somehow, despite Speckled Jill’s lively protestations, the roof was duly put into place. I descended with a huge sigh of relief.

‘Splendid’, said my wife, which kind of made the whole exercise worthwhile, although there was a bit of an undertone of ‘thanks goodness I don’t have to take him to hospital this evening’.

I’m working away from home this week, and, having established myself as the pigeon protector capable of working at heights, I look forward to returning to a discussion about further mother-to-be support needs, such as hot and cold running water, and a plentiful supply of clean towels. Until then, Jill will just have to make do with a roof over her head:

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Speckled Jill, later this week

And now we wait. Speckled Jill looks every inch the expectant mother; her angry scowl has turned into a beatific gaze, as she no doubt thinks about the life ahead for her little one. All those hopes and dreams, eh?

And, assuming all goes well, I’m putting in my request right now for the sprog to be called ‘Pride Of The East 2’. I think that’s been suitably earned.

I’ve never seen a baby pigeon before. According to G, they’re pig ugly, and look like little dinosaurs. Also, apparently, they make a stupidly loud racket, all the time, and, remember, both mother and child will be neatly positioned just outside our bedroom window.

But at least we’ll all be dry.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I Give You…The Cramps!

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

(For the gig review of The (wonderful) Cramps at UEA in 1986, come back another time)

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If you should find yourself travelling through Provence any time soon, as you saunter down South, below Avignon, taking in the cherry trees and the lavender, relaxing with a couple of bottles of rosé and dreaming of a sunny retirement, do take a detour to look up at Mont Ventoux. MV sticks out like a sore thumb in the rolling countryside, and, if there was any justice in the world, ought to be removed. In the unlikely event that you’re a creationist and you’re reading this blog, a possible explanation is that He created a beautiful countryside of rolling hills and gorgeous valleys and then had a complete moment of aberration, possibly allowing His wayward office boy to run some calculations while He was off working out marine food chains. Or something.

If you’re not familiar with MV I’ll give you a bit of a duffer’s guide. It stands at 1,912 metres above sea level, and dominates the landscape as the biggest peak in the area. You can pick it out quite easily, as, on the South side in particular, the top third of the mountain is like a Star Wars moonscape, a desolate area of rock and cliff, that seems to light up when it catches the sun. Unfortunately that’s not all that often, as MV also has its own microclimate, which involves a good deal of cloud cover, rain, occasional snow at any time of the year, and winds (hence the name) that can whip up to 180 mph. It is, in the most beautiful part of Europe, an ugly bully of a mountain, often closed down for access due to weather, and regularly the scene of ambulance rescues of innocent walkers and cyclists.

And, naturally enough, a point of pilgrimage for cyclists, who have seen the summit finish on the Tour de France and want to experience it for themselves. It has an iconic status amongst cycling fans, as it regularly features in the Tour, and can be a real turning point, as riders break down part way up, as the stupid gradient, the horrible weather, and some jerk running beside you in a devil’s outfit all take their miserable toll. Famously, the British cyclist Tommy Simpson collapsed and died on the mountain in 1967, and was later found to have had a stomach full of brandy and barbiturates, which I believe were very much the de facto energy gels of the time. There’s a memorial to him about 2km from the summit, where cyclists touchingly still leave water bottles, jerseys, and for all I know, bottles of Purple Hearts as little gestures to the then hero of British cycling.

And over the years, as cycling fans will know, there have been some epic battles getting up to the top of the mountain. Charly Gaul won here in 1959, Eddy Merckx cemented his reputation as the ‘Cannibal’ in 1970, and if you pitch up in late June you can try your hand for the Cannibal competition for multiple ascents (or, for the ladies, the fetchingly titled ‘Cannibalette’). In later years, battles were fought out in the heat and oppressive air between the really big names like Beloki, Virenque, Armstrong and Pantani. In 2000, after an astonishing fight to the top, Armstrong was alleged to have gifted the stage to Pantani, but vehemently denied doing so. So he probably did.

You get to the summit from one of three routes, which go from the villages of Malaucene, Bedoin and Sault. The most common route on the tour is from Bedoin, although it’s not really any easier or harder than the others – each is between 21 and 26km long, and goes between a 8% and a 12% incline. There are no flat bits to speak of, so effectively you have to constantly pedal unless you want to fall off, which towards the top feels like quite an attractive option. On the south side, the ski chalet at Chalet Reynard marks the start of the weird moonscape part, and here the winds throw can throw you about a bit. This wouldn’t be such a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s a sheer wall of rock to one side of you, and a vertical drop, sometimes of a hundred metres, on the other. It’s a narrow road, and if you’re headed up, you need to keep hard to the right for fear of the cars, motorbikes and cycles going flat out on the way down. It takes you the best part of two hours to get to the top (unless you’re a pro – the time trial record is a jaw-dropping 55 minutes), and about 30 minutes to descend, and less than that if you don’t use your brakes. When we came here a couple of years ago, one of us clocked 50mph on the way down, particularly impressive in that he’d previously crashed, was on a rented bike, and had a young family at home.

Naturally enough, the challenge amongst cyclists is to do three ascents (and descents) in a day, thereby granting you membership of, and bragging rights for, the ‘Club de Cinglés’. I had to look up ‘Cinglés’ in the dictionary, and it means slash, sting, or whip, which seems about right. A few of us had come perilously close to achieving membership in 2013, citing a number of reasons for missing the target, including crashes, lack of preparation and severe emotional torpor. I had a reasonable excuse – I had to cycle the equivalent of the walk of shame back through Benoit after the second climb, nursing a bout of cramp that was so severe that I was physically unable to detach myself from the bike for several hours afterwards. So this time, the plan was a) to do the three ascents, and b) not get cramp.

To hit target a), I spent a ridiculous amount of time in the preceding months on static bikes. If you’re not familiar with these, imagine the boredom of running in a gym on a treadmill for an hour, then multiply the boredom factor by around 3. Anyway, the point was to get my body used to pedalling for long periods of time without any interruption. You have to keep your concentration going as well, otherwise your pulse drops and you just spin the pedals. Consequently a single 30 minute podcast can last you well over a week. To simulate multiple ascents, I used Mrs E’s big shopping trip to London one Saturday to do three one hour sessions back to back, emailing her attractive pictures during the course of the day of post-workout t-shirts. To her credit, she only used the word ‘twat’ on two of her replies.

Target b) was slightly more challenging, as I seem to manage to get cramp these days by almost any exercise, or sometimes from just going to bed, but, especially by long endurance stuff, so I put my faith in some serious intensive efforts, a disgusting looking pink electrolyte drink and by necking a load of magnesium tablets in the week before the ride.

Another blog, ‘Why grown men choose to cycle up mountains purely so that they can cycle down them again’ will be published in due course, but only after I find a way to write the conclusion. At the moment I’m afraid I just don’t have the mental capacity to answer the exam question. Anyway, that will describe the blow by blow up/down/up/down/up/down elements to the ride, and will culminate in the description of the final ascent, around the iconic hairpin to the summit, and into cloud cover so bad that I couldn’t even see where the altitude marker was. (It also made for the weirdest descent, whizzing down the hills to Malaucene at 25mph, with about 10m of visibility and the brakes just about keeping the rain off the rims. My teeth were clenched so hard together that my jaw still ached the next day.)

And, due to the intensive training regime, or a good slice of luck, the whole exercise from mile zero to mile 85 was conducted in a cramp free zone. Unfortunately, the entire route was 90 miles, and it was 5 miles from the end of the journey that I decided it was time to stop for a wee. I decided this a bit late on, halfway round a corner, and tried to stop in a hurry on the wet road. As a result, the back wheel locked and I skidded to a halt, just about getting my cleated shoe out of the pedal in the time it took to say ‘f*ck me I’ve got cramp in both calves’.

Just about managed to remove the bike from underneath me without any further damage, and stretched out a bit, then had to get over the road to a nearby tree.

You’ve probably observed, that, no matter how inelegant the average middle aged male cyclist looks when they’re on the bike, they look ten times more ridiculous off it, and I don’t think I’d have won any catwalk points for the mince across the tarmac in cleats (a sort of backward high heel), Lycra shorts, fingerless gloves, headscarf and ridiculous helmet, all done while trying to keep my calves from going into spasm. Having reached the side of the road without further damage, the challenge really began.

When I started cycling, years ago, a pair of shorts, ideally with a bit of padding in them, was all you really needed to keep, well, everything in order. These days, along with carbon frames, precision shifters and fully cleated shoes, comes the ‘bib-short’, previously only ever worn by professional teams. Oh, and John Curry. Nowadays, no middle aged cyclist would ever consider themselves fully dressed without first slipping into a pair of bib shorts, ideally in one size smaller than you’d have for, say, ballet tights. And, once in, they say, you never go back.

Which is all very well, until you need to go for a wee, although there is a technique, which I will now try to describe, sparing the blushes of our more sensitive readers. First, place your feet approximately shoulder length apart. Loosen your upper clothing as far as is possible. Check over both shoulders that there are no onlookers. With your left hand, and with your thumb pressed against your stomach, pull down the front of the bib, while bending forward slightly from the waist. While holding this position, use your right hand to do what your right hand would normally do in this situation.

On no account during this exercise, and particularly mid-flow, should you allow your legs to cramp up. Because, if this happens, it’s quite likely that you’ll catapult forward quite dramatically, and, the only thing you’ll be able to think of is the police evidence scene in ‘Withnail and I’.

And you’d better hope that there’s a tree in your way to break your fall as you catapult forwards with both hands, um, occupied. And you’d also better hope that you’re still wearing a helmet as you hit the tree. And you’d really hope that there’s a washing machine at the place you’re staying at. Because, if those things don’t happen, it would be quite embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Luckily, my luck was in.

I’d texted my friend G at the summit, and he kindly waited for me as I finally got back to the apartment we’d rented, near Malaucene. Managed to get off the bike without any further injury, and he offered to carry it up the steps for me.

“You go first”, I said.

I’d been out for about ten hours and was pretty familiar with the weather by now. Consequently I was anxious to remain downwind.

The Doctor Is In

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

Like any other sane person living in the United Kingdom, I spend a reasonable amount of my time worried about the state of health in the country, and in particular the perilous condition of the National Health Service. I feel fairly well informed in this area by Mrs E, who qualified as a nurse over 25 years ago and has returned from almost every shift since with either a) a shake of the head in a ‘you couldn’t make it up’ style or b) a story about something so inspirational around life and death that makes you think that really, the rest of us are just playing bit parts to the Doctors and Nurses that really make the world go around.

So, it was with a genuine and non-sarky interest that I read of the government’s new initiative to get 5,000 new GPs on the NHS register. In fact, I went straight to the GMC website to check what sort of a difference this would make. If you’re of a similar mindset, head for http://www.gmc-uk.org/doctors/register/search_stats.asp and have a look for yourself. You’ll see that if Dave’s big plan is to announce 5,000 more GPs before the next election, then he doesn’t actually need to do anything more than for the last five years.  If, however, he wants to get 5,000 in the next (say) twelve months, then he’ll have his work cut out, particularly given the number of grads qualifying each year as doctors.

Fortunately, the Emu exists partly to right these political challenges, and using simple principles of supply and demand, proposes an innovative method of getting more doctors into GP practices. It seems to me that there are more than enough individuals wandering around, calling themselves Doctor, that we should just start asking them to step up to the mark and start to save the NHS.  Here is my starter for 10:

1. Dr Dre

Let’s face it, it’s time for the good doctor to leave his past of Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube endorsement and the production of ridiculously expensive headphones, and return to his previous occupation, which, as very few people know, was as a junior GP in a small surgery just outside Sheffield. Rap fans will know that Dr Dre’s son Curtis is now known as ‘Hood Surgeon’, so there’s a great opportunity for the two of them to work together as a family practice, possibly under the banner “Get Well or Die Tryin'”.

2. Dr Who

When I was growing up, our family went to the same doctor for about twenty years. Which was great for continuity and relationships, and Dr Who could offer the same sort of service, what with him being over 900 years old. There would be a problem with him regenerating every couple of years, but that would probably be ok as long as you didn’t get Peter Davison while pregnant. You’d worry about him slipping out of character and into ‘Young Mister ‘Erriot’, and delivering the new born with nothing more than a bar of carbolic soap and a winsome smile.

3. Doctor and the Medics

Looking at the pictures of Doctor and the Medics, it’s quite hard to believe how they’d work out at some of our quieter GP practices, but, on the other hand, how many Doctors will actually come fully equipped with a full set of medics to assist their procedure? In any case, they might be just the tonic for some of the more depressed goths that you find hanging around waiting rooms.

4. Doctor Spock

Not to be confused with Mr Spock (see 5. below), Doctor Spock managed to turn American baby and childcare on its head in the 1960’s by psychiatrist analysis of family behaviours. Something that might not be a bad idea to revisit, given some of the things that you see every day. He also wrote a book called ‘Why Babies Suck’, which might be of interest to the goths currently waiting to be see by Doctor & The Medics (who are, of course, running late again).

5. Doctor McCoy

I don’t know that much about Dr McCoy’s actual medical qualifications, although, on reflection, you never saw the actors in Star Trek with coughs or colds, so I reckon it was a pretty healthy place if you ignored the weekly alien predators. But the overriding reason you’d have Dr McCoy as your doctor would be so that he’d be around to lighten the mood during a family death. You’d ask him (say) if your grandfather was ill. “It’s worse than that, he’s dead, Jim”, he’d say. Even if your name wasn’t Jim, you’d ask him to say it again, and again, and you’d have skipped right to the acceptance part of the grieving process.

6. Doctor Zhivago

Let’s face it, if Omar Sharif was your GP, AND he was a poet, AND a left wing radical who’d been wronged by the system, AND you knew that all he ever wanted was to live a peaceful life thinking wistfully of the woman he loved….well, he could tell you anything really. Terminal illness, high prescription charges, permanent deformities, anything really, as long as there was a bit of soft balalaika going on in the background.

7. Dr Evil

Just along the corridor from Doctor Zhivago, with his soft eyes and gentle touch, is the slightly less popular office (inside a hollowed out volcano) of Doctor Evil. Fans of Austin Powers will remember that the bad Doctor went to Evil Medical School in Belgium, before graduating and embarking upon despicable plans to take over the world. He could at least be relied on to be fairly direct when delivering bad news, and , failing an immediate cure for your ills, could help you to be cryogenically frozen.

8. Dr Indiana Jones

By day, Dr Jones is a renowned lecturer on early history, with a penchant for tweed jackets and an apparent need to employ a butler. In his holidays, he likes to go exploring ancient civilisations and battling with Nazi throwbacks. None of this comes for free, so he’d be an ideal candidate to moonlight at a GP surgery of en evening. Much like Dr Zhivago, he could tell you most things while you melted in his eyes, but with the added bonus that you’d be talking to an expert lasso enthusiast at the same time.

9. Dr Hook

Most people will be surprised to hear that Dr Hook was qualified as a medical doctor, but his was nothing if not a life of contradiction, given that  he didn’t actually have a hook either. Which was just as well, given some of the delicate keyhole surgery he had to perform early in his career with the Medicine Show. Dr Hook was also known for his bedside manner and good nature with relatives, for example with Sylvia’s mother: “Please Mrs Avery, I just want to tell her goodbye…”

10. Doctor Seuss

Doctor Seuss is my outside candidate for greatest American author of all time, so I’m slightly biased, but I really think if every interaction was in the style of ‘The Cat In The Hat’ then even really bad news would be fun:

Would you, could you, step this way

Your blood results are back today

Not, alas the ideal answer

Son, you have pancreatic cancer

On the rare occasions that I visit a doctor, I’ve forgotten the diagnosis about 5 minutes after I leave the surgery. Maybe I need to go to a GP to check my memory loss, but I think it’s more that complex medical terminology and me have never really worked well together. But if Doctor Seuss told me the diagnosis, I’d never forget.

Given the challenges faced by the NHS, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we had some of these Doctors facing off to the Great British Public before too long. As one of the GBP, I’d be delighted.

Postcards from The Edge

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

A recent yard sale in Amsterdam has unearthed a number of artefacts from the formative years of one of Ireland’s proudest exports. And the finding of this fabulous trove has nothing to do with thinking of an excellent blog title first and then making some stuff up to fit….

 

12 Sep 1978

Dear Paul,

I think it’s a great idea to start a band. And I think you’d be a really good singer. I’m currently working on a guitar sound that will be an ideal foil for some really pompous lyrics, if you have any to spare.
I’m just worried about one thing at the moment – You said at rehearsal that you were going to change your name to Bono Vox. Call yourself the latin for ‘good voice’ might be seen as a little, er pretentious in these post-punk years?
Just saying.

Dave.

 

 

 

12 October 1978

Bono,

Thanks for getting back to me on the whole name thing. Actually, I’ve never been terribly keen on the whole ‘my name is Dave’ business either.
I’ve decided that I’m going to call myself something different too. I think it needs to be really edgy and abstract. Any ideas?

Dave

 

 

 

10 June 1981

Bono,

Thanks for the discussion earlier. Of course I don’t mind you insisting on communication in writing. You’ll be wanting to spare your voice for some of your more trademark wailing on the new album, I’m sure. I have to confess though that I’m a bit concerned about the latest on the stage show. I’m not sure that climbing the lighting rig and waving that big white flag really works after the first ten times?

I may be wrong, and I know you’re normally right.

The Edge (Please stop calling me Dave)

 

 

 

 

7 September 1984

Bono,

You know how you decided that you were going to become Bono instead of Bono Vox because it was less, and yet slightly more, pretentious. Well, I’ve been thinking about ‘The Edge’ And I’ve decided that the The in The Edge is the The that the world doesn’t need. Also, that was a sentence that had 7 The’s in – impressed? Anyway, people with The in their name are like The Undertaker or The Destroyer, like in WWF, so that doesn’t seem right to me to be like them. And one word names are cool and important, right? Like Gandhi. And Prince. And Liberace. And Jordan. So I’ve decided to drop the The. From now on you can just introduce me on stage as Edge, right. And don’t you give me any of that nonsense about my own state of self-importance. You started it.

The* Edge

* sorry, force of habit

 

 

 

 

 

15 January 1980

Bono,

I was working on my Airfix airplane kits at the weekend and had a bit of a disaster. Some superglue fell out of the fuselage of a Mitsubishi Zero as I was putting it together and it’s stuck all of the controls on my guitar pedals. I’ve tried freeing them up but no success. Really sorry, but I fear I’m going to be stuck with this guitar sound for at least the next eight albums.

Edge

 

 

 

 

 

 

26 November 1984

Dear Bono,

Hope you had a good time at the Band Aid shindig yesterday. I confess I was a little disappointed not to get an invite, especially as Big Country were there with their big hair and tartan shirts and huge guitar sound what I’m sure I started off. Anyway, about your line in the song. Really like the screaming approach to the line, it sounds like you really mean it. My only worry is, whether, as a practicing Christian, you should really be thanking God it’s them instead of you? I’ve a horrible feeling that this might come back to haunt you, although, as I always say, you know best.

Yours, Edge

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 June 1986

Bono,

I’ve been thinking for a while that I’m needing a bit of an image to go with my world-famous guitar sound. I was thinking about wearing a stupid hat for the rest of my life. Note this has absolutely nothing to do with male pattern baldness.

Thoughts?

Edge

 

 

 

 

 

1 January 1987

Dear Bono,

Happy New Year. I do think the new album will be a cracker, as Frank Carson would say (I know you’re not really a fan). One thing I’m a tiny bit concerned about. If we call it the Joshua Tree, isn’t there a danger that Larry will think that he’s being kicked out again? What if we called it the Joshua Four, do you think it would lose any impact?

Yours, Edge

 

Reach Out (I won’t be there)

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

After a brief sojourn to talk about the joys of dog adolescence and men in tights, the Emu is back to what I think it does best.

That is, to get completely wound up about the minutia of life in a middle-class way that stops just short of calling in to the Today programme. Or writing to The Times. I’m not actually sure what I’m personally just short of, as I’d never entertain the idea of  doing either of those things, but I’m certainly just short of something. Or I might be at the end of a tether, but then getting to the end of your tether is presumably the bit just before you let go and fall off, and that’s not it. This is more like the bit just before you fold your arms, tip your head back and Tsk loudly, before you announce that the world has just gone to hell in a handbasket.

Which, in itself, is the bit that’s scarily close to buying the Daily Mail or reading UKIP pamphlets seriously, and, as we all know, that way madness lies.

Where was I?

Well, I was going to have a bit of a pop about some of the language that is beginning to, as they say, grind my gears. Every now and again, there seems to be a bit of a resurgence of the sort of language, particularly in business, that really doesn’t mean anything, but which everybody seems to embrace. Actually, the word embrace is a good example. When I started work, (which, according to my children was some time around 1863), the idea of ’embracing’ an idea would just sound…stupid. Embracing is something that a gentleman might do with his wife in an upstairs room with the lights off, thankyou very much, or possibly something you did with a tree a few years later if your name was Swampy. But not, no, and never ever conceptually in the workplace. Ridiculous. And yet sometimes I feel that I can’t move at work for people embracing ideas or concepts or challenges.

So, here are three pops I’d like to have about modern business language:

1. Reflecting

For example: ‘I’ve been reflecting on our last conversation’.

Have you? Or is this just a pretentious way of replacing the word ‘thinking’. Unfortunately reflection summons up self-reflection summons up self-help summons up hippie free thinking. Man.

It’s just twaddle. And it should stop.

2. The Journey

For example: ‘I’d like to tell you about my personal journey here today’ or ‘This project will be a fascinating journey for all involved’

Actually no. Your personal journey here today was, very possibly, a bus and a walk. And this project, even if it is completely fascinating, will remain…a project. Again, the problem is that it’s the wrong word because it’s too blimmin’ pretentious for its own good.

3. Reaching Out

For example: ‘I’ll reach out to Fred and see if he can help’, and ‘Fred, I’m keen to reach out to you for some input’.

Fred, and anyone else in their right mind, should put the phone down as soon as they heard the word reach. Or possibly evidence the other meaning of the word.

Reaching out should only ever be used in a business context when, six sheets to the wind on a works night out, you stumble into a Karaoke bar and pretend to be Levi Stubbs:

 

Note, this should never be attempted sober and, ideally, never mentioned by your colleagues subsequently. Unless you’re gainfully employed in an job that encourages matching white suits, close harmonies and natty dancing during meetings. (I simply can’t tell you how happy I would be to work in an office like that.)

Look, if we all work together we can rid ourselves of this nonsense. Next time someone uses one of these words, cough discreetly and ask if they wouldn’t mind, well, winding their neck in. And if we stop the rot now, none of us need ever look wistfully at the Daily Mail again.

Running on, and on

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

I got asked a few weeks ago to write a piece for my work’s inhouse magazine. Not entirely sure why, but I suspect whoever it was who had this bright idea hadn’t read the blog. Anyway, there was a bit of editing before it finally landed, and, partly because of this and partly because reader demand on this blog is currently  outstripping time to write anything especially new (ahem), here’s an edit all for you, gentle reader.

And in the spirit of an workplace magazine, designed to bring out the best in operational efficiencies, controls of a growing business, strategic thinking and investment in people, what better opportunity to write about…running

This, in itself, is a shameless rehearsal for a future career, where I hope to clear up one Christmas with a slim volume entitled ‘Everything I Know About Life, I Learned From Running Stupid Distances At A Decreasing Pace’. Or something slightly snappier. People will buy it in huge quantities, and I’ll be able to use the profits to fund a full time physiotherapist, who will bring me back to race fitness, while I pen my follow-up volume ‘Every Single Thing In My Body Is Completely Knackered Because I Don’t Appear To Be Able To Stop Going Out Running’.

Incidentally, I already have an idea for the front cover, to boost sales. The late, great, Alan Coren was once told by his publisher that the only subjects that ever sold books were Pets, Golf and Nazis, so he called his next volume ‘Golfing For Cats’, with a picture of a swastika on the front cover. Expect something similar in the shops around November.

Anyway, here are some lessons in life from a bloke who runs.

1. You can learn quite a bit from hitting your head on a tree

Well, kind of. I was running with a friend through some woods one day, and I managed to totally brain myself on a tree branch. Using my forehead as a pivot, my whole body swung forward and I landed upon a heap on my back. At which point, my friend turned round, pointed, laughed, and then fell over a tree root. So, watch where you’re going, never look back, and don’t laugh at other people’s misfortunes.

2. It’s hard to look good in lycra

More specifically, it’s hard to look good when you’re at the end of a long hot run, your face is the colour of beetroot, and there’s flies buzzing around your head like you’re PigPen in the Peanuts cartoon. Although, of course, you don’t necessarily realise this – I’ve been rattling along on a run in the past, thinking I’m the living embodiment of Steve Cram in the third lap of the 1980 dream mile, then I go past a shop window, look in the reflection and there’s some arthritic old twit shuffling back from the pub after four pints of Broadside, having forgotten his zimmer frame. Learning to not really care what you look like, a particularly valuable skill when those bloody car drivers point and shout at you, is an essential part of running. And other parts of your life. Two other things, while I’m here. If you’re reading this and you’re one of those gormless car drivers, please, please, please try to think of a better heckle than ‘Run, Forrest, Run’. And if you’re a runner and you’ve decided not to worry about what you look like, just go particularly easy on the bargain shorts that you think you’re going to shrink into. There is a limit to not caring what you look like, and it will be crossed with the wrong size of lycra.

3. Be prepared, be very prepared

Every runner you meet will have stories of little scrapes that they’ve got into by not being well prepared. Personally, I’ve found myself completely lost, in a foreign country with no language skills, a sketchy knowledge of where I last left my family several hours before, and no means of contacting them. I’ve fallen into an ice cold river in the middle of nowhere at 6am on a winter morning, thinking I’d broken my leg, with everyone else in the world safely tucked up in bed. Other runners I know have great stories about being chased by bulls, and getting into fights with pedestrians or car drivers mid-run, being bitten by dogs, or even shot at.  And you hear these stories and ask whether the runner took a mobile phone or told anyone where they were going, and of course, the answer was no. So, be prepared, plan for the worst and hope for the best.

4. Every A has a B

Or, think about the consequences. A friend of mine was training for his first marathon and struggling to justify the long runs to his wife, who didn’t really ‘get’ the whole running thing. So he booked a romantic weekend in a hotel, unfortunately not thinking about the need to fit in his scheduled long  run. So he woke up really early on the Sunday, and snuck down to the hotel gym, to get a two hour treadmill session in before his wife woke up. He was alone in the gym for the first hour and gasping for a drink, so was delighted to see another gym-goer come in, and asked if he could get a cup of water. This was duly passed to him and my friend made the cardinal error of stopping to drink it. The treadmill was set some way forward from the wall of the gym but he still managed to hit it with some force, ending up with an injury that kept him out of the marathon and a fairly testy discussion with his wife over breakfast.

5. Understand your limits

Most runners will tell you that they keep running because it makes them feel good, but you do need to understand the bits that you can’t do as well.  My eldest son ran his first marathon in 2013, and had to go to work the next morning. He had a job at a outdoor sports shop, and was posted on the door that day to greet people as they came in, and tap on the shoulders of the shoplifters as they left.  One lady of about 70 left the shop with a jacket over her arm, set off all the alarms, and he asked her politely if she’d like to go back into the shop and pay.
“No, not really”, she said, and walked off across the car park.
So my boy gave chase. Unfortunately, post marathon, ‘chase’ might have been stretching the point. He tried to walk after her with pigeon steps, each one punctuated by the word ‘ow’.
Seizing the moment, the woman looked behind her, saw this bizarre young man looking like he had nails in his shoes, occasional seizures and a bizarre speech impediment, and slowly walked away to freedom.

So, there you are. Might need a bit of padding out but you get the general picture. I’m still searching for the right title for ‘lessons in life from running’. But it might be along the lines of ‘Keep your head up, and don’t forget to breathe’.

Abbatoir Blues (part one)

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

I’m not absolutely sure why #4 wanted to know the french for slaughterhouse this morning, but he did.

“Maison de slaughter”, suggested #3, his recent GCSE French burning a trou in his poche.

“No”, said his mother, “I think we all know the word for slaughterhouse in French, don’t we? It’s abbatoir”.

And, as a family, in our limited french vocabulary, A will always be for abbatoir, and this blog is going to tell you why.

It is a story of sickness and accidents, of disaster and horror, of a slaughterhouse and a mysterious bar, and of the ghastly realisation of parental responsibilities, the like of which hope never to experience again. In short, it is the story of our summer holiday in the year 2000.

We’d decided that, as the three boys were, at 6, 4 and 2, that much more mature, that we ought to all jump in the car and head 700 miles south of where we lived. Honestly, that’s how our minds worked back then. We booked two fabulous looking places to stay, and come the exciting departure day, lined up three car seats in the back of the car, loaded up with travel sweets and Early Learning Centre cassettes of popular singalong classics, and headed for Dover.

Dover is quite a way from Norwich, and it didn’t take too long to find out that #3 hadn’t quite resolved his problems with car sickness. The first and second projections were skilfully fielded from the front passenger seat, with Mrs E at silly mid on, but, unusually, with her back to the wicket. We weren’t so lucky with the third one though, and the back of the car ended up being lined with a bilious film that stank beyond belief.

Fortunately, this seemed to get #3 into a slightly better place, and he felt able to nod along feebly to a couple of choruses of ‘The Wheels on the Bus’, but by the time we got to the ferry terminal, never the sweetest smelling place in its own right, we were all feeling a little bit sick ourselves.

Onto the ferry, and #3 is still feeling a bit dodgy, so Mrs E takes him to the first aid room, where he spends the rest of the crossing. We agreed the duties for the voyage. Mrs E to take charge of first aid. Me to look after the older two and deliver car maintenance, ie making the next 500 miles a tolerable experience.

Armed with the only tools I had at my disposal (half a packet of wet wipes), I made my way onto the lurching car deck, and did my very best to clean up. I did a reasonable job under the circs, but was very conscious that my work wouldn’t pass much of a sniff test, and the practicalities of driving all day with all the windows fully open wasn’t too attractive. So I made it my business to improvise. Thinking back, I really should have improvised by finding a cleaner on board, who, presumably would have cleaning up other people’s sick as a key part of their job description. However, unfortunately I ended up trying to improvise at the Stena Line gift shop.

Had I been in desperate need for some Stena branded playing cards, a scale model of the ferry that we were travelling on, or even an oversized toblerone, I would have been in luck. But cleaning materials and things to make your car smell like it hadn’t been used as a student’s toilet were in short supply.

“Cleaning materials are in short supply here”, I brightly suggested to the assistant.

“Je ne comprend pas” was the reply, a phrase I was to hear very frequently on this and future visits to France, so much so that it became our stock in trade response to almost all questions asked of us. Sometimes it becomes a competition to see who can get the first “ne comprend pas” into any conversation.

I had another look round the shop, a exercise that really didn’t take very long, and, just as I was about to give up, found the one thing that could have saved our holiday. There, on a back shelf, was a can of deodorant, by the not very well known cosmetics manufacturer Joe Bloggs. At a bargain 15 francs, it would have to do. The label on the can said ‘Jus de Femme’, which suggested that they’d had an intern for the day in the Joe Bloggs marketing department (can you ever see Boots marketing a male deodorant labelled ‘Female Juices’?) but at the time, I just thought that it was something that Mrs E might find amusing.

I retuned to the car and liberally sprayed ‘Jus de Femme’ around the back seats. It seemed to do the job, and I stuffed the can into my jacket pocket.

Little did I know that I’d come to rue the day that I’d bought a can of Jus de Femme…

(To be continued)

Norfolk. And Good.

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

My parents married in 1957, and they honeymooned in the southwest of England. This event, monumental though it was of course at the time, was rather overshadowed by the launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite into space.  And this was causing some consternation amongst the folk that my parents bumped into as they picnicked their way across the countryside.
‘It’ll change the weather’, the locals said, as they laid into another pint of scrumpy.

And, not so very long after, that reaction seems ridiculous. You could argue that the thousands of satellites that we have whizzing about us now do many, many things, but they don’t, as far as we know, change the weather.

And I was reminded of this story as I wandered in yet another sleep deprived daze, into Norwich station at stupid o’clock this morning. On the floor in the main concourse is a plaque, and it commemorates the electrification of the line from London to Norwich in (wait for it….) 1987.

I was lucky enough to be living in Norwich in 1987, and I remember the furore around this event (the electrification, rather than the putting of a rather pointless stone in the middle of the floor of the station. Although it does remind of a fabulous story about Prince Philip, when he visited the recently restored HMS Victory. His guide pointed out a plaque on the floor, and solemnly said that it marked the spot where Nelson fell. ‘Not surprised’ said our favourite royal, ‘nearly tripped over the bloody thing myself’).  The reaction was not that far away from that experienced by my parents all those years ago: Why would we ever want to get to London any quicker…or at all ? And what would people from London want to come here for, anyway? By the way, some peoples view on answers would be a) we still don’t know and b) to buy up pretty much every single property in North Norfolk so they can wear hunter boots at the weekend.

Then I spy a copy of the Eastern Daily Press, which has a headline of ‘Premier League’. People in Norfolk are drawn to headlines like this, as a reminder that we do still (currently) have a football team in the top flight. These things are very important, but, as I say, we need to remind ourselves to keep in touch with our own reality. Anyway, this article is not about football, it’s about the investment committed by HM government into the East Anglian road infrastructure. Catching up on this online, I was also delighted to read the second lead story as well (Dereham Deputy Mayor’s Recycling Shock), which gives a pretty good insight as to the range of topics that the press hounds of the EDP have to cover.  So, apparently, our PM is visiting Norfolk today (at last, a valid reason for me to be in London!) and keen to tell people about the biggest infrastructural investment in the country. Well, outside London and the southeast, it transpires, but at least that means that Norfolk can be nicely patronised while still sticking two fingers up to anyone living north of Watford.

Here’s the quote: Mr Cameron said: “Why does this all matter so much? Well put simply, the jobs of the future depend on infrastructure fit for the future. It is the foundation stone on which businesses can grow, compete and create jobs – jobs that provide financial security for families here in Norfolk and across the country.”

But I’m not sure I totally agree. I’m a long way from being a Luddite, but putting money into something that allows people to waste slightly less time travelling between two places feels a bit last year to me. Remember all that great stuff a few years back about the global village, where everybody was going to be able to telecommute, and think global and act local? Well, looks to me like we’ve lost sight of that a bit, amidst an enthusiasm for squeezing out as many fossil fuels as possible out of the planet to maintain our obsession with being in lots of different places, often for fairly negligible reasons. Surely the infrastructure we ought to be investing in is the one that allows us to have less relatively pointless journeys? By the way, as far as this blog is concerned, the great irony is that putting yet more cars on the road will of course, really change the weather…

The beauty of living in Norfolk is precisely because its hard to get to, and as a result, it hasn’t necessarily moved in the same direction or at the same pace, as much of the rest of the country. It might be lacking in a bit of drama as far as the landscape goes (although I remember mentioning this a few years ago and getting the response ‘Hills? What do we want with them? They’ll only get in the way of the view’), but its still largely of its own making. And most people respect it for that, and  for not being just another commoditised settlement.

Of course, theres a down side to living here as well, being a hard place to get to means that its also a hard place to get out of, a bit like Royston Vasey (Welcome to Royston Vasey – You’ll Never Leave) for those of you who remember the League of Gentlemen. So it can be a bit insular, and someone once told me that it was the ‘graveyard of ambition’, but (trust me on this,) I’ve met far less ambitious people in my wanderings around the country than those I knock up against in this fine city.

If you like the sound of all this and you don’t live in Norfolk, then do look us up some time. Let us know when you’re on your way, wear comfortable clothes and make sure you get some food in for the journey. It takes bloody ages, which is, of course, just the way we like it.