Move over Cacophonix

That, as they say in the classics (Ronde van Vlaanderen), was a solid week. It started on Monday, as many weeks do. I went along to the Ba'ath Storytelling Circle, which happened to be in the Raven. How convenient.

There were about 30 of us there, a few of whom told stories. There were amusing real life tales, like the guy who tried to climb Mount Olympus one December, but found his way stopped by an inkblot of snow. Then there were more fictional yarns, and some were even accompanied by music. In fact, there were at least three former or current "Bards of Bath" there. Good to see the tradition is still alive, and it was all a lot of fun.

Wednesday saw us (four or five from work) continuing our tea and cake tour of Bath, landing at a French place in the Guildhall. Good crepes, except we should have had those on Tuesday. And a nice frothy cappuccino. The evening was a mini-drinks night at the Future pub (the Lounge), celebrating the 39th birthday of Pete, one of the publishers. Unfortunately, I went there straight after work, consumed many Leffes and a Kasteel Cru on an empty stomach. Needless to say I was cod ordinary on Thursday morning. I would have liked to have slept it off but I was too hungry. And I needed a ride in the rain to get rid of the hangover.

That sort of worked in that it stopped the pounding in my head, but it wasn't until I got into work and ordered a milkshake-sized coffee from our cafe that things started to improve slightly. Faded again before lunch, but a triple Americano from the Italian ice cream place (which I declare to be the second place to get good coffee in Bath) plus an Anadin tablet finally got me on track. The afternoon was surprisingly good as a result. And it carried on into the evening for the second week of my writing course. We learned about believable character creation and it gave me a lot of things to think about.

For some reason, I declined the invitation to have a drink after class, and another invitation to go out with Robin from WhatMTB, who was having a night out in Bath. Maybe next week.

Felt good on Friday. We are making some progress at work and it was fun to see where everything was at by the end of the week. My sense of déjà vu was working well and I went to the Lounge again for drinks with one of the Future Istari. It's good when board members are there, because you don't have to mortgage your wallet to buy a Leffe. This time, I had the sense to have dinner before (3 Ryvitas) and after (a Schwarz burger) and it made the difference on Saturday.

Which brings us up to the present time real life situation. Went out with Chippenham for the club run and it was a good sized group of about a dozen. We had to ford a few streams (it's been raining here, amazingly) and we fell apart a few times, but got to the end intact. With about 2 km to go, I was last wheel and a few attacked for the finish. I was a bit stuck, but waited until we had a clear road on a slight downhill, and tried to jump across. Hit 60km/h and thought that would take me up to them pretty quick, but there were two guys out in front who I couldn't catch before the end. Oh well, good training.

Tomorrow's a 170 km ride doing a recce of one of the stages of the Tour of Wessex. That should be good, as I think we will have a tailwind.

Next week, John and I are planning a trip to Belgian to watch Het Volk. Unfortunately, I'll be bike-less.