A gathering

Christ, bloggardes, I've neglected you all too much in the recent past! I'm much ashamed, and indeed, it is not for want of things to write about, to vent about, to moan and whinge and recount, and all the other crap you expect from me.

So, if you are prepared for a bit of a long haul, I aim to type for about the next half hour (which is when I need to do something delicious to the pot of soup I'm making). Enjoy. Comment. Smile, I hope.

Let us return to the 30th of June, the day of my good friend Sarah's birthday. Very nicely she invited me to her party, and I had to accept, since I'd not seen her for over a year, and it's always good to see people you like :-) My original plan had been to ride down during the afternoon, except that the 30th (if you remember) was diabolical in terms of weather, so I had to get the train. It's a bit of an odd route I have to take, since I'm on a branch line, with three changes including one at Ash Vale with the very cosmopolitan group of teenagers moaning. Arrived and went to see friend Matt, someone else I always have time for and should call more often than I do, and spent a very pleasant couple of hours yacking about nothing in particular. Very nice, mucho cuppa. Till of course I realised that I had to get to Sarah's and had about 20 mins to do so, so had to leave in a rush!

Buses did not seem to be running, so I decided to walk. This was a mistake, as it decided to start bucketing it down very, very hard. I turned into a drowned rat. In fact, a dead, floating drowned rat. Most unpleasant, with the trip across the Flowers estate (read: rough) where I managed to get lost - my memory is going - and had to walk up the street past the chav children, water dripping from my nose and really not happy. Still, it was good to get to Sarah's and get my wet coat and shoes off, at least for a little while, and delight in baked Camembert for a while. Shame that my supposedly waterproof rucksack for purposes of motorbike isnt perfectly so, so my clothes all got wet. Natch.

Evening out was fun, bit of a restaurant tizz that I wont dwell on, but good to talk to old friends from the Kilburn empire and be shocked by how much times have changed! I reckon I would not recognise my old lab in the same way, but such is life when you leave somewhere. Times change and we with them, [insert latin phrase here]. Nice to know I did have a little bit of an impact tho.

Drank for the first time in a long while, and for me quite a considerable amount so was quite surprised the next day when I woke up without hangover and not overly tired. Nice. Spent the morning yacking with Sarah+co before heading for the train, purchasing a nice microphone-headset to complete my techno dancer look. Sadly, I had to miss out on going to collect my shoes from Martin (mildly perverted friend - that'll make some of you giggle), so scooched home on what turned out to be a very beautiful afternoon. All in all, a very good time was had by me. Cheers, y'all!

Closely following though, I was off to visit Claire+James on the Monday. I should really have though about it a bit more, I'm getting on a bit that I need an extra day of recovery, but I was very glad to go. Day of work proceeded smoothly, and I rode up to Ascot station without problems. Parked with a little prayer - I still dont like leaving my baby alone places - and hopped up to central London. Claire had earlier in the day left a very cryptic and yet totally obvious e-mail for me, to the effect that I had better damn well keep a certain day free in my calendar.....and sure enough, they are now engaged, and I'm made up for them. Good luck, y'both! Please have a fancy-dress wedding, it'd be tonnes of fun.

However, now I have the rather nasty event of the day to relate. Claire did forward me a useful map to find James' house, which I duly and conscientiously printed out and left on my desk in a prominent place. I'm so clever. So I arrived at Clapham North tube with a half-arsed idea of where to go, and after a lot of dithering and looking at roads, headed off with confidence down what later turned out to be completely the wrong road. Never mind. Tootling along, minding my own business and looking at shops (and the plenty of bikes going past me), I was a witness to a particularly nasty smash between a VFR and an Audi.

Now, I'm not going to start talking details here because it's a legal thing and since I'm likely to be a primary witness, I dont want to prejudice any case, but it did give me a good shake up. Poor biker was laid out in the street, clearly still breathing and no blood, but likely to have several nasty broken bones and a lot of bruises. I'm more amazed by how quickly swarm after swarm of medical students seemed to descend within seconds of each other, all eager to help!

More importantly, it was a good reminder of how careful one has to be, riding. You're so exposed and privy to even the slightest mistake of another driver. Good to have this reminded every once in a while, but so graphically is not fun.

I was quite surprised with myself, really. Some of you may remember a certain ether fire that occured last November? It was kinda the same feeling, with the slowing down of time and the mind suddenly diving into the 'this needs to be done' mode. I was right out with my mob and calling 999, desperate to get through! Sure it only rang once before I was connected, but it seemed like an age. Giving details seemed to be very dodgy; 'Clapham High St.? That's SW4, is it?' (or whatever SW it is)....how the bloody hell do I know! And then the operator was very calm and collected all my details and an inital statement, all the while with me thinking 'what the f*ck are you asking me all these questions for'.

So. I'm resolving here to be a much more careful rider. Anyone wants to buy me an advanced riding course, I will greatfully accept.

Now this is going to become a lot more disjointed, since the order of events has kinda been suppressed. I've spent the last 2 weekends with P (:-) and they've been great. One weekend in the glorious sunshine, rode down on Friday evening (after staying much much longer at work than I intended, oops) and then a nice run home on Sunday evening. There are some beautiful roads to ride in Sussex and Surrey, none of the sweeping Dales views, but good nonetheless, though I wish there were fewer cars about. That first weekend was the weekend of the sunburnt skull, most painful, but at least I had a long sleeve top on, P burned both his noggin and his arms, poor boy. Which led to a very embarrassing incident the following Thursday. I decided that morning not to shave, since my scalp would then be a bit too raw as not sufficiently healed from the sunburn. Very wrong was I, since during the day I put my hand to my head, only to dislodge a large number of skanky peeling head flakes. Ick. Had to go to the loo and scrub my head really hard (which was quite nice :-$ ) to get them all off, most shameful. But they are all gone now.

Friday that week I came home and decided to do some laundry. Opened the washing machine, only to have volumes of water cascade from the machine all over the kitchen floor and subsequently my carpet. Fuck knows what happened, but the machine was empty of washing, not mid-cycle, but full with water! Having hastily closed the door, used all my towels to soak up the spillage, and drained the machine with the special setting, I washed the towels and spent the rest of the evening squelching about with the windows wide open. Noice.

The machine was about 1/4 full again on Saturday morning, so I drained it again and contacted the landlord, who told me to clean out the filter - sensible idea, should have thought of it myself, but see above comments re: my cleverness - but I had to leave it since I was catching the train to go see P again. Saturday morning had been the morning of summer cleaning, a thorough going-over of everything, to make myself feel better (even with the unintended carpet wash). by the time I came home Sunday, the machine was 1/3 full again, so I drained it, have cleaned the filter today though there was nothing at all on it and will see how things look tomorrow. I reckon there's a blockage in the outflow further down the drain, since the sink only drains slowly also....maybe I need some big sexy plumber with a strong forearm and a big plunger......well, I can hope!

Sunday was a bit of a mank day, started feeling a bit funny mid-afternoon, headache-y and stiff neck, so I'm glad I didnt ride down (though it turned into the mos beautiful weather, unlike the forecast). Training it home I felt like absolute shite, to the extent of shivering like crazy at Clapham and having to put a coat on in the humid heat! Think it was just a bit of dehydration, since I necked 2 paracetemol when I came home, ate (always a good sign if I'm still hungry) and crashed out, but felt much better this morning. Minimal (well, only 3 then) coffee was drunk today and I starting to feel a little odd again, but I think the worst has past.

And now the rant. You all know those little café-bars that nestle in stations. Clapham Junction has a fair number, but every mainline station has one and not a few of the smaller stations also. Well, they are a godsend for people like me who need constant caffeine top-ups, but also for people bored waiting for trains. My beef is not with the service itself. It is with the shit advertising people who have to do with them.

Now, advertising people are quite frankly quite low in my esteem, since it's all about the brash and loud and the hard sell-even-if-it's-a-soft-sell and the selling addictive additives to children in processed foodstuffs and the generally being a cack merchant. But they are clearly also totally lacking in any sense or brainpower at all. I'm sorry, but I have to let rip with this one - the nice thing about being a half-arsed buddhist is that there's no penance involved - but it reeeeeally got on my tits.

The first poster was fair enough. 'Pain au chocolat' it said, 'chocolate pastry' it followed. 'It just sounds better in French'. Fair enough. Most succinct. Even though they are flogging you mass produced, machine kneaded, low-grade chocolate sweetness, it's quite polite with it. No problems so far.

Now, pay close attention, bloggardes, and see if you can spot the irksomeness. Poster number two was on the opposite wall. 'Café latte - milky coffee - it just sounds better in French'.

Where to start? Well, the obvious one is that no frenchman would ever call his café au lait anything other than such, unless he happened to be visiting Italy, where he might indeed ask for a caffe latte. Latte is not a french word, people. French coffee, in fact, is rather vile. Kinda like British coffee but served with slightly more surl. Not for nothing are the grit machines also known as 'French press'.

But what a shocking lack of knowledge regarding even italian coffee preparation. Milky coffee, such as is meant in the british sense, bears so little resemblance to latte it is untrue. Latte is half-measure espresso, half-measure frothed milk and milk foam, such that it is incredibly milky, incredibly heavy on the stomach and really not what you'd want to drink after a meal. The cappucino is much closer to your 'milky coffee' in that there is a lesser component of milk, albeit still very hot and frothed. 'Milky coffee' as you might be referring to would be even more closely described as caffe macchiato, 'marked coffee' with just a shot of milk, not more than a teaspoon - though again hot - to turn the colour of the black espresso a more distinct shade of brown. Caffe macchiato as sold by Starbuttocks and the rest is not what it says it is. It is a sham, a fraud. Even still we are not close to milky coffee, which is best described as a 'Verlaengeter' in the Austrian tradition. Do not try and create a link to something that does not exist, and please do your research, cack-monkey advertising people. The noble drink of coffee has had soooooo much rubbish done to it, that I'm really distraught.

Phew! That felt good. Sometimes it is better to let out your middle-class apoplectic internal grammar nazi/pedant. Sometimes I'm scared that this is all that you'll find once you strip away my outer layers of poof.

And now I have to go and do soupy things. Enjoy this long post, bloggardes, savour it, and I will try much harder to post more regularly (:-)