Quote of the day

Will Self, upon being asked if he'd be going to see the film adaptation of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons:

"I'd sooner have my buttocks fret-sawed off, varnished and sold in a provincial gift shop."

Whatever can go wrong...

I had ordered the bike in June, but by the time I was summoned to collect it, November was thrashing Hovisville with all its angry might and darkness was upon the town by three in the afternoon. The rain was torrential and unrelenting, but having waited this long, I was loathe miss my chance.

The new bike is a strange fish. For one thing, it’s pink. Aside from that, it’s not the sit-up-and-beg Dutch or Japanese style that I’m used to. It has 14 gears and forces me to lean forward to reach the handlebars, making it impossible to carry an umbrella.

So with my head exposed, I set off through the hailstones towards home. Such was the fury of the weather, that by the time I’d got to the end of the street, my jeans were waterlogged and my bra was wet. I could barely see where I was going for the rain in my eyes.

In such conditions, I felt it unwise to stay on the road, so veered towards the pavement only to realise, too late, that the smooth slope I’d seen ahead of me was actually a large brown puddle with a kerb submerged beneath it. To stop in time, I had to brake and bring my feet to rest in ankle-deep water. Cursing, I lifted the bike and myself free, trailing great streams of water as I went.

With around 300 meters to go, I noticed that the road ahead was flooded. Passing cars were, with a pleasing hiss, casting a graceful, five-foot arc of filthy water across the narrow strip of pavement I was about to cross.

In retrospect, I don’t know why I bothered to brake, since I was already soaked to the skin. But once the wheels were set in motion, they were doomed to continue, skidding across the piles of sopping leaves, and delivering me, chest-and-mobile-phone first into the freezing deluge I’d been so keen to avoid.

I like to think the arc I created matched that of the finest Ford Mondeo.

Epistemological heuristic didacticism

When I taught English, I would be asked questions like “What does the mean?” When I taught writing skills, I would be asked “What does refute mean?” But it’s all ballooning out of control now. The little bastards are asking questions like “What’s the difference between dialectic, dialogic and didactic?” I’ve had to look stuff up! This is not on!

West coast main line

When I moved to England, I missed the earthquakes that had been such a regular feature of life in Japan. Some would make Timorous Beast cry out in the night. Some would rattle the room for ten seconds before disappearing as suddenly as they’d arrived, leaving a sickening sway in their wake. Others would gently shake the furniture and remind us of the busy earth beneath.

Now I live next to the railway line. At night, the trains snort into my dreams, shaking the building. Sometimes I feel I’m in Tokyo and reach out to touch Timorous Beast’s hand.

Erratum

Che has been moaning that my link to Tim was not representative, and she has demanded that I link to this one.

A weekend with Che

We kicked off the weekend watching the incomparable Tim Minchin, and feasting on Bradford’s finest curries and chapattis, and then repaired to Hovisville, where we spent Saturday discussing lambs, sampling cheeses and eating lemon and fennel sausages. Sunday took us to the windy seaside for an afternoon of browsing in a wonderful second-hand bookshop. The latter included the added bonus of a love-in with the lovely bookshop owner’s little brown dog, who would take off down the length of the shop, leaping over piles of books in pursuit of his tuggy thing, and return triumphant to snarl and savage the thing with all comers.

The chav express

At one end of the carriage, chocolate-smeared toddlers kicked chairs and clambered over headrests. At the other, men with tattooed necks broadcast techno music for the captive passengers. In the middle, a band of brassy-haired thirty-somethings in fake tan and gold jewellery had cackled and screeched their way through three bottles of Blossom Hill rose and a sex quiz from Heat magazine, and were now making headway on the cans of ready-mixed rum and coke. It was 11.15 in the morning, it was Bradford, and the train was going to Blackpool.