How to Burn Fifty Pound Notes

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Please remember to put contact details in everyone :-).

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I was a naughty boy yesterday shoving tons of food and alcohol down my throat whilst sat on my arse in an incredibly dusty house watching the TV through a fine talc like screen wash of concrete dust.  Yes, I was very very naughty.  After rounding off a rather large chicken curry with multiple nan breads I demolished a whole pack of breakfast marmalade flavoured chocolate digestive biscuits (very nice) before moving on to two blocks of cheese.  With beer.  I'm later sat watching TV with tingly feet and woe betide anyone who follows me to the toilet tomorrow morning.  Nonetheless, I scold myself for having my grubby hands in the biscuit barrel and send myself to bed early for being such a greedy boy.  That was at 20:30.  Wayne there's something wrong with your social life if you're in bed at that time on a Friday night!  

As a result I was awake again at 4am, before the birds, on what was to be a beautiful day.  I caught the first light of the earliest sunrise of the year - that is at 04:31 in this neck of the woods.  Feeling very guilty due the previous evenings misadventures with pies and other interesting scooby snacks, and cos I've not been out on the bike for way too long, and because the early morning TV is crap and because I cannot get on with any building work for fear of waking the neighbours I decided to go for a gentle rumble along the pastry to test out my now probably dead legs.  

Yep, they're dead.  Completely useless feckers.  For sure my knees, Ma Boy and Our Lass have left home and like most teenagers when leaving home, have robbed me of my bits.  I'm like an old battery in a clapped out Mini on which the farm shed doors were permanently shut in the 1960s.  They're covered with cobwebs and dangle either side of the seat waiting for someone to lift my feet onto the pedals.  It's a strange feeling really.  They're not sore and full of lactic acid when I cycle.  They do move.  With a whirr, w-h-i-r-r,  wh... like an old clapped out starter motor.  Imperceptively they start to rotate to shove my bulk along through the now invisible treacle clad pastry.  With a bit of custard and cream it'd be rather nice!  But woe is me, my legs have been chained to the earth's flywheel and it feels like I'm trying to kick start the day.  How dead can a set of legs be?  I may as well lop them off now and be done with them for all the worth they are today.  Bloody useless.

Nonetheless I persevere.  I'm out early before 05:30 and there's not a soul in sight.  I had forgotten but this is a great time to ponder.  Alone in the countryside, cycling around at probably 5mph, struck again by the cacophony of birdsong at this time of the day.  The plant life which was getting on with getting out of bed last time I was this way is now thick and fat and verdant as though it has had several days on the marmalade flavoured biscuits too.  Covered with morning dew it all sparkles in the dawn sunlight.  

I ponder about the amount of cash I have spent over the last year.  Approx £100k so far with the new build work consuming most of it.   I've had loads done.  Demolish and build a bigger garage?  Kerching!  Have an extension built?  Kerching!  A new roof perhaps?  Kerching!  Integrated solar in the roof?  Kerching! New patio and new driveway?  Kerching!  Fencing?  Kerching!!  Kerching! Kerching! Yep the bloody lot.  It's been like a fight in a Batman movie.  Kapow!  It would have been easier to demolish the lot and start again I recon.  And it is still not completed.  

Why are trades so crap.  I leave the plumber to hang two radiators whilst I do the voluntary delivering for Richardson's butchers and come home to find one of the the radiators mounted in the wrong position (not central on the wall) with two paint chips on the new rad.  Gaaah!  Its all got to come off with repairs to be done to freshly painted walls, etc.  Groan.  Every single trade on this project - the builders, the roofers, the PV fitters, the electricians, the fencers, the.. well there's been problems with the lot of em!  Too much stress and as a comfort eater it's one reason why I eat so much..

The other money pit, the Range Rover, developed another fault with hydraulic suspension oil leaking from the front of the engine.  OK so time to get all problems fixed.  I take it to a Range Rover repairer and leave it with him to assess the faults and give me a list of repair work and costs.  I'm now sat down.  Better to do that before I fall down as I read the email which gives an estimated bill of £2400+vat so at least £2800 to get it fettled.  Two Thousand Eight Hundred I hear myself muttering.  I call in to the garage later that day and plead with them to try to repair not replace what they can.  It's too much I shout.  Help me I'm drowning!  Throw me a fecking line will ya! 

It kinda reminds me of the day I went to a Turkish dentist in Amsterdam one bank holiday weekend probably just before the turn of the century.  Turkish - cos he was the only 'emergency' dentist open that weekend.  The pain in my tooth was horrendous.  I'm seated, scared to death as I don't like even the best dentists anyway.  The nurse leans over and pins my arms to the chair Marathon Man style as the exiled Turkish Nazi sympathiser drills the tooth to start the root canal work.  YEAAAGGGHHH!!!  Ooooh the pain!  I could have thrown the nurse across the room but capitulate and melt into a pool of blood spattered tears as the dentist, who is now muttering '..soon be over...soon be over..' whilst up to his elbows in my mouth, presses on in his search for fools gold with a rusty pneumatic hammer.  

I'm afraid I'm gonna have to contort my face and take a long dry gulp and bury my now broken gnashers into another rather large turd burger later this month.  I jokingly say to the receptionist at the 4x4 rip off merchants I've come to donate one of my legs in lieu of the bill.  Ha Ha!  Well they're fecking useless anyway so you might as well have one instead of some cash.  

Back out on the treacly pastry I spy down the green hyperspace tunnel - which is much greener and longer than I ever remember - a shape in the distance.  I think of the film, Lawrence of Arabia and the scene which introduces Omar Sharif through a distant shimmering haze.  The image starts to resolve and I conclude that yes, it's another person out on the trail.  No it's not Omar cos for sure this bloke is not riding a camel and I know what a camel looks like.  Also cos Omar died in 2015...  

He's a runner, well a big overly square bloke with arms and legs pinned to his corners running as though he's either just shat himself or is sporting a set of testicles as large as Marlon Brando's.  He's the first of many folk to be out now that it is past 7am.  The Sun has warmth in its face which has been just enough to get the fecking spindly black mambas off their sunloungers and back out on razor thin bikes.  Of course they pass me as I trudge along.  In fact everything is passing me today.  Rabbits, Squirrels, Tortoises, Snails but who cares.  It's a beautiful day.  I'm riding a new routing.  The sun is on my back.  The wind is light and easy.  I pass Wayne number 2's memorial at the side of the pastry and say hello to him again as I waft gently by with jelly legs in the direction of home.   

I arrive home and have breakfast number 2.   Well I'm not that guilt ridden from the night before to pass on a rather tasty bacon sarnie after a good ride out and some 4 hours after breakfast number 1.  I deserve it.  I've done just short of 30 miles today.  My riding appetite has been re-whetted.  Most of the trades are done for now so I have time again to say soothing things to my bank account which is having its own battle with a Turkish dentist and spend some time away from home before the next phase of burning 50 quid notes commences.  

Anyway I'd rather be out on my bike than hiding under the duvet in a darkened room waiting for the bank manager to call.  

Is it time for Lunch number 1?  You betcha!