The Club Do

"Count Bobulescu will take wine with the ambassador of Transylvania."

"The ambassador of Transylvania will take wine with Count Bobulescu."

[repeat until both are sloshed, as neither wishes to break protocol]

This is a rough excerpt of a sketch called something like The Toastmaster, which often gets quoted in our family. I was reminded of it several times at our Club Dinner in Chippenham, as there was a competition for who could make the best toast. The winner got a dragon's tongue trophy, which was pretty cool.

There must have been two dozen toasts, many from the Bath CC/Bristol South contingent, who had obviously had experience of this sort of thing. But the winner was Mark Wareham, whose story of what happened on our club ride two weeks ago was rather amusing.

That was the day where I'd turned off with Chris Tweedie and a couple of others to navigate the floods around Wiltshire. The others also encountered flooded bits, but had the good fortune to be offered a lift by a bus driver! Which they took, of course.

Except for one rider, who didn't realise that the bus had picked the rest of them up and soldiered on by himself through various torrents, only to be rejoined at the end by drier members.

We were also entertained by Geoff Thomas, ex-England footballer wot got leukaemia, survived and decided to ride the Tour de France with a few of his mates. Twice.

He did the first one on six months' training, right after finishing his treatment. Impressive effort, that! And he raised quite a lot for cancer charities.

In the trophy stakes, Chippenham has approximately a million different competitions throughout the year, based on doing certain events on the calendar. I was sitting with Chris Tweedie and Ben Anstie, and they were the trophy kings (Ben, mostly).

I managed to accumulate approximately zero trophies, save for a large pile of pint glasses that may have once had beverages in them. Now Chris is a big fan of volume over intensity when it comes to drinking (the opposite of his training program) and I had no choice but to go along with that, albeit with stronger beers. Well I did have a choice but it wasn't a sane one.

Six pints of Peroni/Grolsch/Guinness later, I thought it might be a good idea to get the last train home. Somehow - and I really don't know how this happened because my judgment was completely sound - I left my new BC racing licence behind. Luckily someone whose judgment was even better than mine spotted it and picked it up (thanks Andy and Jacqui).

I've been downgraded to second category on account of the fact that I didn't race last year (time trials are run by a different mob than British Cycling). You need a certain number of points each year to keep your category, and more to move up. It doesn't bother me this year because cat. 2 is essentially the same as cat. 1 - typically they run races as E/1/2, but hardly ever E/1 or just 1. And you actually have more race options as a cat. 2.

Anyway, maybe I'll pull my finger out and do a road race this year. But I have some time trial ambitions...

Seeing as the Club Do was on a Saturday, it left the whole of Sunday to do a 120km Mendips ride with RCoomber. It's finally stopped raining although it was a tad breezy as we navigated four decent climbs and lots of little ones, plus a few cool lanes that are new to me. 2000m of climbing and sore legs at the end.

The training is going in the right direction: more or less forward and slightly to the left and I'm now back to March 2007 form, as opposed to being behind January 2007 form. My Cheddar Gorge times have come down: 10'50 -> 10'06 -> 9'44, and Burrington has gone from 12'15 -> 10'40, although we didn't do it today. Probably would have been 10'20ish but I conned convinced poor Robin into doing the one up from Blagdon Lake instead (8.5% for 2.5km), followed by Wookey Hole (2.7km @ 7.2%, which at least has a couple of flat spots).

The aim is to get April form by March and May form by April, then I'll probably get sick. So I'm ahead on that front.

Song du jour: Energy 52 (Café del Mar).

Humidity

I seem to recall January 2007 was somewhat moist, vis-à-vis the climate. Due to the cyclical nature of things, it is so again this year. It has rained almost every day since I got back and there appears to be no end in sight.

Flooding has ensued, which means Tewksbury in Gloucestershire is buggered again. The Avon is rather higher than it should be, as you can see from the MBUK blog. The bike path where I usually ride is OK, but it has a 100m long puddle on it now.

Last weekend, a few of us tried to cross the Avon between Trowbridge and Bradford. Negatory. About 250m of road was submerged by the river, and there was a car abandoned halfway across. We ended up going across at Lacock, and even that required riding through 1.5 feet of water. Of course, we could have gone on the pedestrian footbridge but that would have been wimping out.

My bottom bracket is making odd noises.

I've been trying new waterproofing tricks to keep myself on the dryish side. For my feet, which always get cold, I've been using a thin pair of Castelli waterproof booties with my old neoprene Pro booties over the top. I tried it on a four hour ride last weekend, and it worked brilliantly. With my hands, I've been using disposable latex gloves underneath my winter gloves. This is not as good, because your hands end up like clammy prunes, but at least they don't get cold.

As I noted previously, training in January is miserable. Last Sunday, I did a 115km loop through the Mendips and clocked myself up my two favourite climbs there: slowest times ever. I wasn't going flat out for sure, but I only managed 10'50 for Cheddar (did 7'38 in the national HC) and 12'15 for Burrington (8'07 in the HC there). It was a horribly windy day, which didn't help, but at the pace I was going I would be a couple of minutes quicker when fit. I was at this time last year because I'd been riding since the start of November instead of since Christmas.

I think I'll catch up OK, because I've already noticed a big increase in speed this week. Roughly five minutes faster over my various 45km loops, so no need to panic. I skipped today because of the non-stop rain and a day off won't hurt. Stupid bloody weather.

Social calendar: strangely busy. I even had an English ale this week that didn't taste like dishwater. It's called Gem and is meant to be one of the best Bath ales. To my complete shock I was able to drink three pints of it.

As you were.

The here and now

It's that time of year. January, in fact. When the cold gets to one's brain unless one is in the sunny Antipodes. Which one is not. Curse.

Since returning to the Empire, I have been reacquainting myself with the measurement system used here. It's mostly metric, but miles, feet, yards, inches, pounds, stone, fluid ounces, pints (lots of them) are all commonly used. Temperature seems to be Celsius, but to avoid confusion I'm going to adopt the Réaumur scale. I like it. It's simple, it relates to real life measurements (fingers, toes, number of bacteria) and was named after a French scientist.

For example, today it was 3.2°Ré, which in real world terms converts to 'fairly bloody cold'. Now in Celsius that would have been 4°C, which is far less intuitive, non? I could always use Rankine, but that's a bit old fashioned.

Riding at the moment means that one not only gets cold, one gets wet as well. Into the bargain, so to speak. It's a supercool me two for the price of one real raw deal meal. Fortunately it's heating up, as you can see from the BBC's forecast over the next half a day or so:

Weather forecast for Bath. Balmy, innit? Better not overdress.

After missing a couple of weeks training in Oz due to a certain lurgy, I'm struggling with the twin burdens of regaining what little fitness I had at the time as well as coping with the cold, which slows one down anyway. This morning, for example, I was 15 minutes slower than my best time over one of my usual 45km training loops, for roughly the same pace. I know it will all come back over the next few months, but it's still soul destroying.

I wasn't the only one who got sick over Xmas. Pretty much everyone in the office did, and even now I'm working in the middle of four sick boys. I hope my immune system has worked out how to stop another dose of the dreaded lurgy. The spon cure, perhaps.

I've been fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of more Bath types, without visiting the Pump Room. They're part of a Bath Publishing Front and seem to enjoy pints and the occasional strudel. This, I strongly approve of. Three of us visited the only strudel house in Bath, a ye olde Swisse-German underground place not far from the Royal Crescent. Talk about when worlds collide. But we didn't talk about it. Strudel: v. good. Vanilla dusted cappuccino: not sure about that one...

Starbucks have opened another shoppe in Bath. That's three, including our canteen. They must be stopped. We will frequent Oxalis on a regular basis this year, I foresee.

Speaking of Starbucks (well, I was), I've been following the US election with an almost keen interest. I wonder if it will be anything like the '72 election that Hunter S. Thompson wrote so fondly about? Anyway, at least I now have an inkling of an understanding of how the whole circus works.

Research

A university controlled study has shown that repeatedly watching this clip (youtube.com/watch?v=jZsHNkAJBDU) followed by the rather dark Sin City, which was on late on BBC2 on Sunday, results in particularly gruesome dreams. I could have watched the first of the new series of Foyle's War, which is excellent (ma and pa, rejoice!), but I didn't.

Down Under randomness

It's annoying when you go on holidays for three weeks and the first two weeks is spent sick and/or at the mercy of a certain international airline.

I've managed to do fun things like see my accountant and go to the dentist. The latter informed me of how things once were at the NHS, relating the experiences of a colleague of hers. Apparently with kids dentistry they got paid a flat rate of £35 a go, so instead of filling teeth they were told by the boss to pull them out because it was quicker. This dentist could pull a tooth in 30 seconds whereas it would take 4 minutes to fill it. So they could see more patients and get paid more if they just pulled out teeth. I don't think this would be an ideal solution.

I don't know how long ago this was, but apparently things have improved within the NHS. It ain't a patch on the Aussie system though.

I also learned that eating often may be good for your energy levels but it can be detrimental for your teeth and your wallet. Thus, mine need quite a bit of patching up. Especially my wallet, which no longer has $1500 burning a hole in it. I'll have to have a rethink about my dietary plan throughout the day. The trick is to drink water with every snack in order to lower the pH in your mouth, and brush a couple of times a day.

Random thought: I reckon Anton Ego in Ratatouille is modelled on English writer/critic Will Self, not just the French blone mentioned in Wikipedia.

During my convalescence I've managed to do more indoor stuff than normal. On the piano front, I've almost got a grip on Clair de Lune plus the usual Chopin/Rachmaninov/Bach/Satie toons. Always noice to tinkle the ivories.

Also a spot of reading. Over the past three weeks, I've completed the following:

The Light Fantastic, Pyramids, Moving Pictures, Night Watch, all by Terry Pratchett - good comfort reading by a very funny and satirical writer.

Amongst the Dead by Robert Gott - a dark spoof about an Australian private investigator and the wilds of the north, not bad but the ending didn't quite work.

The Peculiar Memories of Thomas Penman by Bruce Robinson - well written, although it was hard to relate to the characters, who were mostly loathsome.

The Captain and the Enemy by Graham Greene - An excellent novel by a brilliant writer. The first three parts are written by the protagonist, who is a journalist but doesn't consider himself much of a writer. The last part tells the rest of the story after the novel is thrown in the bin. All of the characters are interesting and at least slightly mysterious, and none of them can be considered good guys.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen - set mostly in Bath at the start of the 19th century. It's interesting to see the similarities between then and now. The done thing then was to hang around the Pump Room and attend balls in the hope of making acquaintances and finding a partner. It's not quite like that nowadays.

The heroine is Catherine Morland, who early on falls for Henry Tinley, but spends the first half of the book avoiding the advances of the oafish John Thorpe, the brother of her new acquaintance Isabella. The second half is set in Northanger Abbey itself, and is a bit of a spoof of the Gothic novels that were partly the rage back then. Ann Radcliffe is referred to a lot, so it would help to have read some of her novels to give this more context.

The two main themes (Bath life and Gothic novels) are a little odd when put together, but who's going to argue with a classic?

There are some funny quotes:

"Not keep a journal! How are your absent cousins to understand the tenour of your life in Bath without one?" - Henry Tinley to Catherine Morland

Outside the Pump Room: "Crowds of people were every moment passing in and out, up the steps and down; people whom nobody cared about, and nobody wanted to see; and he [Mr Tinley] only was absent. 'What a delightful place Bath is,' said Mrs. Allen, as they sat down near the great clock, after parading the room till they were tired; 'and how pleasant it would be if we had any acquaintance here.'

I then saw The Jane Austen Book Club on the (mostly) incident-free flight back to Londres. It was scary stuff.

Blind Faith by Ben Elton - A modern and somewhat more comical version of 1984. Privacy is heresy in a climate changed world. If you're not talking about yourself on your blog, sharing all your information on Face Space and cyberstalking others, you risk falling foul of God and the Love. More scary stuff.

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - three books, the first of which has been made into a movie called The Golden Compass. The writing isn't brilliant but the story does hook you in eventually and it contains some challenging ideas. Unfortunately, for reasons only known to Hollywood, the film deliberately ignores the pivotal theme of the books: the bad guys are the Church and God. That's a great pity, I think. I read an interview with Pullman where he's clearly not happy with this, but doesn't want to say too much because he's afraid he'll jeopardise the other two films. That's basically selling out.

There has been a strong religious backlash against the books in the USA. Fair enough - freedom of religion and all that. People (probably Catholics) are afraid that their kids will be corrupted to the dark side if they read the books. I think that's utter bollocks, 'cos I remember when, as a child, I read the Narnia septology, which was very pro-Christian. I was aware of this message when I read the books (many times) and simply ignored it. They were good yarns. Ditto when I read the Dreadstar comics in my teens. The bad guys there were the Church and Lord Papal, which I thought was cool. Neither of these stories had a significant effect on my decision to be an atheist and face the void.

Speaking of facing the void, I read that Fred Nile of the Christian Democratic Front is opposing the building of an Islamic school out at Camden because Islam opposed Christianity. I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that Australia had freedom of religion as well. Sigh. As someone said, "I don't think he realises the Crusades were over long ago."

Whatever creed you follow, I hope youse had a happy Christmas + good new year's bash.

The family Christmas album

Christmas at the Joneses in Kiribilli House
© Jeff Jones
Piers cuts a chunk of ham as cousin Harry looks on
© Jeff Jones
Serious business
© Jeff Jones
Nina was content with bread crusts
© Jeff Jones
Strewth! This was followed by stollen and immobility
© Jeff Jones
All four of the Jones cousins
© Jeff Jones
Jim, Joan, Margaret and Ma at the Nelson Bay residence
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Jus and Nic's 'new' place. Note handy urban vehicle in backyard
© Jeff Jones
Cousin Zoe is happy at being three
© Jeff Jones
Cousins Jus and Zoe sort out candles and whatnot
© Jeff Jones
Ma and pa at our last supper
© Jeff Jones