For Fuck's Sake

Suddenly everybody loves bikes. One Tour de France win plus considerable Olympic success and everywhere you look are people on bikes, with their pink lycra and bulbous cycling helmets making them look curiously like mobile erections.

I haven't bought into this bikeophilia, but being open minded I readily agreed when the wife suggested that we should take the boys out on the bikes to the local ice cream parlour, my protestations about hills receding as I remembered that only her bike was set up to have the boys' trailer attached to it.

Helmet.

And, in fairness, the ride was a success, at least on the way there. The wife coped admirably, dragging the boys the majority of the seven miles to Archer's Ice Cream Parlour, kindly letting me have a turn when we got to the foot of the hill leading up to Archers. Once we arrived, ice cream was the order of the day and, having removed the saddle of the bike from its preferred resting place of halfway up my arse, assorted flavours of ice cream were purchased and consumed.

It was only during the way home that things went downhill. And not in a good way. Punctures are a part of cycling but a simultaneous double puncture is surely proof that God does exist and that he's an evil bastard. So, as the wife disappeared into the distance, dragging the boys behind her, my bike ride quickly turned into a bike push. A six mile bike push. 

As I trudged wearily along the road, only the sight of the motorway lifted my spirits. Not becasue it offered a quicker route home but because by that point I was about ready to chuck myself under a lorry. 

The lesson; sometimes it's better to tell life to fuck off and to put the telly on instead.  

For Funk's Sake

If choosing to choose life is about anything, it is about saying 'Yes' to the opportunities that present themselves, the opportunities to live rather than just exist. So when I heard that Craig Charle was bringing his wheels of steel to Darlo, I wasn't just choosing life, I was choosing funk.



Craig Charles - good crack.

There were other considerations to, erm, consider. How would the 11pm - 4am opening hours suit the wife and I compared to our usual ten pm horlicks and bed routine? Would our middle aged-ness make us stand out when surrounded by the kidz with their ridiculous hair cuts and overly tight trousers?

When it came down to it I couldn't give a funk. This was Craig Charles, the man who put the fun into funk, the soul into insolent and the widespread drug and alcohol abouse into Coronation Street.

So, without further ado tickets were purchased, sequins were hastily attached to chunky knit cardigans, and before we knew it we were waking up from our pre-clubbing nap ready to feel the funk. 

And what a night - curry at Reema, champagne cocktails at Darlo's new Champagne bar followed by slices of funk so thick they would choke a donkey. My funk muscles were aching as we wearliy made our way home just shy of the 4am close, the funk running in our veins, and the prospect of a quick horlicks before bed looming large as we got closer to home. 

Choosing life was the right choice.  

Limping Through Life - A Personal Legacy

Just like the vast majority of the UK population, the recent London Olympics moved me. Primarily, it moved me out of my chair to find the remote control so I could put something else on the telly, something less likely to put me in touch with my lack of self fulfillment, my lack of get up and go, my lack of get up and change the channel without having to use the remote control.

However, something of the spirit of the games must have got into me as I have started to feel the need to set myself some personal challenges, to make that shift from existing in the day to Living in the Day, and to undo the bad habits that I seem to be passing on to my kids.    



If only Under Three's All Day Breakfast Eating was an Olypmic sport


This blog will chart my progress from moribund slacker to dynamic go getter, to gather suggestions for new challenges and if I can inspire anybody else to start challenging themselves, well, even better.