Last swim

I've just finished my last Lake swim of the year and I'm so chilled that typing is difficult. It was 13c in there, on a bright sunny day with a cold wind from the North. Two laps with a T-shirt, then a bit of splashing and a dive or two in just trunks. While I was in the water I felt fine, then warm while dressing in the sunny changing room but now I feel shivery and weak. It was worth it, though.

:o)

Bicycles:

“The bicycle is just as good company as most husbands and, when it gets old and shabby, a woman can dispose of it and get a new one without shocking the entire community.”

Ann Strong, Minneapolis Tribune, 1895

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"To prepare for a race there is nothing better than a good pheasant, some champagne and a woman."

Jacques Anquetil, 5 times winner of the Tour de France.

I must prepare a bit more..........

:o)

A tale of Two Curries

I've eaten curry twice in the last week; two very different meals in very different surroundings.

Thursday last week was Andrew's funeral. As he had been serving with the Gurkhas when he was hit and as he enjoyed curry himself, the funeral supper was a rich Nepali curry served in the formal surroundings of the officers' mess. There were paintings & ceremonial plate on the walls and all the men were either in medalled uniform or formal suits. Even those in suits often showed some military background by wearing regimental ties or flashing cuff-links with military insignia. Many drank to remember and drank to forget: it was befittingly sombre.
The food was excellent, freshly made with fresh spices, very meaty and rich.

Last night, another curry, another Andrew, very much alive. Scully gave me a call yesterday afternoon to say that he'd be overnighting in Bristol, and did we want to go out? The Thali Cafe is in Montpelier about twenty minutes' walk from home and I'd been intending to go there ever since it opened about ten years ago. The food was also excellent but light and vegetarian, and the surroundings were such a contrast to last week, slightly shabby hippy-chic, almost a hangover from the 70's. It was also pretty cheap, definitely good value. (Although it didn't help that I'd forgotten to take all my cash so that Scully paid more than his fair share). The diners were different, too. They wore beads & bangles instead of medals, were scruffy not smart, and the conversations seemed genuine not forced. Worlds of difference.

On our way home we popped into the Cadbury House for a swift drink. It's also the site of a celebrated meeting or worlds: it's where Samantha Cameron claims that Tricky taught her to play pool. He denies it, I hear.

:o/

Racing

Just north & above Bristol Zoo and across the road, on the Downs, there is a path winding its way down towards Bridge Valley Road. It's a track that I regularly cycle. Yesterday as I pootled along it a buzzard swooped down from a tree to my left and raced me through the clearing. It won, of course, its silent buff wings only about three metres from me and at the same height as my head. Then it cheated by flying over the next bushes that I had to cycle around, and it was gone.

Magical.

:0)

Long

Last night marked the end of summer.

Moonface and I went for a light meal with Neil, then on to a musical evening / Dave's 4oth birthday party at the Folkhouse. I wore jeans for the first time since the end of May, when the weather warmed up. Since then I haven't worn long trousers except when I've been in a suit or away on business. I've no idea why I prefer shorts or cut-offs: they just seem more practical and more comfortable to me. It must by my hardy upbringing, since my parents have film of me as a boy wearing regulation school shorts in the snow.

It were grim up North.

The evening bash itself was fun but rather restrained. Although Ro & Cedar played bouncing music that I'd have liked to dance to, the arrangement of chairs and tables meant that the atmosphere just wasn't right. It seemed more like a polite concert rather than a gig so Moonface & I walked home before the last band played. The birthday cakes were excellent, though. Thank you, Sophie's mum.

:o)

Arithmetic on the Frontier

Rudyard Kipling, 1886.

Not one of his better poems by any means, but it's apposite this week.

RIP Andrew.

A great and glorious thing it is

To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe--
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: "All flesh is grass."

Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in "villainous saltpetre!"
And after--ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our 'ologies.

A scrimmage in a Border Station--
A canter down some dark defile--
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail--
The Crammer's boast, the Squadron's pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!

No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar's downward blow
Strike hard who cares--shoot straight who can--
The odds are on the cheaper man.

One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troop-ships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.

The "captives of our bow and spear"
Are cheap--alas! as we are dear.

:-(

Clothes Shopping

Well, it had to be done.
All of my shorts are past wearing, one way or another.
There's the pair I binned last week,
The pair that need binning now.
The pair with the ripped flies and
the pair with the oil stains.

I guess I should have chucked most of them earlier, but I didn't. So it was time to buy another pair or two. Charity shops (my first port of call and preference); nothing.
Outdoor shops, three of them; nowt.
TK Maxx, my usual standby, zilch.
Gurt trendy cool shops in Slavers' Quarter; bugger-all. Any of 'em.

So I ended up in M&S which had plenty to choose from, several in my size, one or two in acceptable styles & colours. So I became M&S middle-class man again and bought some. Heigh ho. Next time I'll have to cut out the hours or roaming around and go straight there. It may be bad for my self-credibility, but it'll save time.

:o)

More rips

This time it's a rip current.
I went down with the cycling lads to Treyarnon for the weekend, arriving at the hostel just in time to take a swim at sunset. The water was bracingly cold although no worse than the Lake, but close to the shore was a scary rip. I was swimming steadily north along the shore and the current was dragging me slowly south and out. Not nice. I changed direction to escape and was fine, but it was a salutary lesson in tides and something that I'd not experienced before.

Two days later a bunch of us went for a mid-morning swim from the same beach, just below the hostel, and although Andy and I went straight across the current two of our party who were just behind us were swept along and out, so had to be rescued by the coastguard. Frighteningly, neither Andy nor I noticed the action as we were looking in the opposite direction. If the coastguard hadn't been there, it might have been nasty.

Strangely, half an hour later the tidal conditions had changed so much that the water was benign, good for body-boarding, and quite safe. We should have waited.

:o/

Rips

While dressing this morning I found a tear in the seat of my favourite shorts. That's two pairs I've worn out this summer so I guess I'll have to buy some more.

It's good to actually wear clothes until they start falling apart rather than just becoming bored by them, but it does mean that there is effort involved in the forced replacement. And I hate clothes shopping.

:o(