When the wind blows...

I'm out again on the bike trying to build the miles in preparation for the John O Groats to Lands End cycle ride in June.  It was bright and sunny with a fresh wind from the north-west.  My ride out took me north west into the wind up to and across Aldwark bridge before turning west with the wind still mostly in my face to get to the other side of the very bike unfriendly A59; then turning south near Tockwith with the wind to my back.  About 30 miles or so.  The first 20 miles were generally into a headwind and it was hard work.  Why did you go that way you fool?  Why are you unnecessarily dragging your lar jarse across the windy Yorkshire veldt?

Well the magnetic trainer has for sure given my legs additional strength but sadly cannot prepare them for long rides especially into the wind.   A ride out is bad enough with my 20 stone or so wide bodied carcass atop a 5 bar gate with tractor tyres especially when riding up short gnarly hills.  But then add in a fresh headwind and it doesn't matter how best the feeble sun tries to make life feel a little better, the ride out all of a sudden makes you wish you'd stayed at home and flayed yourself with the remnants of last years thorn encrusted bike tyres [ooh, a warm feeling shot down my back just as I wrote that last line.  And no I'm not having sex with my shower].  

I love the wind.  I surely do.  As I cycle along the headwind appears to be streaming out of a pair of puffed cheeks and pursed lips on the face of the born again pale golden sun which at this time of the day is low on the western horizon.  I am blinded by the low sunlight which casts the road ahead into blackness and for sure makes me invisible to any vehicle approaching from behind.  I see nothing.  I prey that there are no parked tractors nor grizzly pot holes in the road cos for sure if there was I would be a goner.  

As much as I hate the additional global warming induced air pressure pushing on my fat carcass, which on top of all else just makes riding my bike feel like I'm wading through treacle, well all I do is bury myself in my deepest thoughts to distract myself from the pain of it all.  To use that physically harsh moment in time and space to reflect.  This time to think about family, friends and colleagues who are no longer with us.  Folk who have passed over the years.  Folk who for sure would absolutely love to swap places with me.  Folk who would relish the feel of a cool wind on cold cheeks, the pain in the thighs and knees and the emergent warmth and brightness of the sun being strobed between the blackened silhouette of tree trunks into their eyes.  And with eyes closed and the wind in their hair, to then raise their smiling faces towards the sun.  It's great to be alive!

Whilst thinking about the hard wind today my mind also wandered back to the mad news stories of the last week.  Talking about being Tonto, well I’ve not quite gone as 'Full Tonto' as Vladimir Putin, you know, the Russian fuckwit who's utilising Cold War tactics to subjugate the new nation state of Ukraine and its peoples.  With strong cold war frozen brain military intelligence and massive military power which is now thrust hard up against the edge of Europe.  

Military Intelligence?  Hmmm.  At the best of times that's an oxymoron innit.  Nonetheless, Vlad the Moron has for sure launched a blitzkrieg against the dictionaries definition of it this time around.  He has also completely underestimated the resistance from the Ukrainian people.  For sure he has been completely caught by the short and curlies by his intelligence officers who I suspect are utterly afraid to tell him the truth.  Who's only options are to pander to his whim.  To his covid lockdown induced alternate visions of reality which have taken him and his country further into economic disaster and pariah state status on the back of his mad thoughts to resurrect the USSR.  

I suspect that Jing Ting Ping Pong, whatever his name, who, for the life of me I do not understand why, cannot find the words to denounce Vlad the Mad's actions, is now gonna watch how this one plays out in terms of a result in the Ukraine and of the decimation of Russian society before he invades Tiawan and so destroy's the world's #1 supplier of rubber dog shit.   British educated for sure he knows that what he sees happen to Russia is a foretaste of what could happen to China.   

So now is not the time to listen to his Generals perhaps because of the potentially massive impact on his economy.  Not to mention his 'belt and braces' alternate way to force countries into debt (as the EU has also done) and to then use the international courts to take over control of their countries (as I expect the EU will do with Greece etc..).  It would crumble before his very eyes as the world is forced into a military socialistic and international commerce and trade new order.  His way is such a gentler way to take over the world perhaps thus avoiding all that mess and expense of blowing things up and stitching bodies back together.  To follow Putin's methods would for sure be a lose-lose scenario for everyone.    

Nonetheless, just before my ride out I heard on both the BBC and Sky news a report that Vlad the Cad had put his nuclear deterrence onto 'special alert'.  Aw feck.  At the best of times I'm easily spooked.  Special alert if you read between the lines is not normal parlay for getting them ready to be lauched but OH FECK!  What risks to the world to have a deranged psychopath at the head of the world's second biggest military with approx 6000 nuclear warheads under his right index finger has proper spooked me.

Then the pictures are shown of the huge Russian military convoy on its way to Kyiv.  Oh how I worry of the American generals drooling with the prospect of producing the Kuwait Highway of Death par Deux film, rerunning the original’s plot all over again but on steroids.  What a perfect target for their smart bombs and other such nasties to take out possibly a huge chunk of the Russian Army.  You know, a pack of 5 star General good 'ol boys sat in their mountainous leather chairs buried somewhere in the Rockies looking at the satellite imagery jawing about the the good 'ol days back in E-rak and Kew-wait (which is over 30 years ago now) and regaling themselves how they took Saddam's massive military apart with their precision cluster and smart bomb strikes.  And how easy it would be to do now with all of their robotic drone technology and so on..  No I am not a war monger'er.  Everything should be done to prevent fighting.  Thank God that Trump is not sat in the chair at this critical moment in world history. 

I now fear that as Vlad the Impaler progresses that for sure he will ultimately take over the Ukraine but will then suffer an insurgent war like he's never seen before.  But whilst that simmers in the background he will turn his attention to the sanctions from the west.  And for sure he will declare that unless they are lifted he will state that this is a de-facto declaration of war by the west.  I just know this is how he plans to get his own way.  He has the nuclear arsenal at the back of him and as one commentator has said he may decide to detonate one high over the north sea as a shot across the bows of the western world to show that he means business.  

For sure we all need to take it very seriously.  There is a fecking deranged lunatic in the Kremlin with his finger on the red button.  

I was born in early November 1962.  I was a premature baby some 4 weeks early just one week after the infamous Cuban Missile Crisis Black Saturday where global thermo nuclear war almost happened.  I wonder if the stress of it all might have contributed to my early arrival onto this planet.  I do not know because we never talked about it when mum was with us.  But I also recall the tests of the air raid sirens blaring across York as a child and the subsequent years living through the Cold War.  The dreams I used to have of massive armada's of aircraft flying to war in formation over the house whilst being stood at the back door as the planets fell to earth and of the air being sucked out of my lungs before waking scared with a snap.  I fear now that as a child I had a vision of the end of days to come.  

I also recall the TV programming that existed back then.  The TV broadcasts prepared in case of nuclear war to instruct folk like us what to do.  The voice of Patrick Allen and his voiceovers to the Protect and Survive public information films from the 1970s and later as part of the Two Tribes song by Frankie Goes To Hollywood.  Like this one which I clearly remember watching as a young un…

And the other productions that the fear spawned.  Specifically this one - When the Wind Blows - covering the effect of nuclear war on the lives and fears of ordinary folk.  So appropriate to remember this film on such a windy day whilst out on my bike.

Putin's rhetoric on TV is proper scary simply because he is the man to do it.  So yes I understand why NATO will not send troops in.  He must not be provoked.  Rhetoric is everywhere.  Surrounded by propaganda.  The only time I've ever suffered from propaganda before was being slapped in the face after staring at a beautiful woman's arse after she had walked by.  In a similar way I dare not now look at the TV in case I get my face slapped again for intently watching and making inappropriate comments on-line on the back of unfolding events which becomes the trigger for a nuclear exchange..  

Nonetheless all of this is very sad and emotional for me.  I occasionally sit on the sofa nursing my knees with a tear in my eye, caused this time by the news.  How bad must it be for the Ukrainians.  Memories of distant historic never to be repeated world wars tell us how bad it could become.

Anyway I saw this clip [hopefully not fake] on the BBC News Channel and absolutely love this brave woman.  She deserves a BIG medal!  Tomorrow I'm going out to by some sunflower seeds and plant them in my garden in memory of every Ukrainian out there.  They will not give in.  They will not turn the other cheek.

Click on the link here:  Ukrainian Woman Berates Russian Soldier

What more so brought the closeness of this war home to me, and so unlike places in the middle east, was to see a round red bordered 30 kph speed limit above and behind a Ukrainian defence force soldier who was hiding in the ditch at the side of the road.  This time it's at the edge of our world.  This is not some far off land.  

And finally, Putin has not gone Tonto.  He’s significantly more deranged than that.  I am perhaps Tonto but there is no way that I could be compared to him.  For sure I do not have my fingers on a nuclear button.  And I hate cats!  I'll be Vlad to see the back of him and so on. 

Many times I have written just how much I hate social media.  Today I prey and hope that the benefits of a social media driven society finally comes good.  Influencers influencing in the right direction. The voice of the world heard without interference.  Russian peoples hearing and seeing the truth and deciding to do something about it.

Anyway, to end on a slightly lighter note, turning the other cheek is exactly what I could not do the other day.  My XXXXL cycling underwear arrived from Germany but sadly I could not get them on, well, comfortably that is.  Strangulated thighs for sure.  Tight in the belly.  Ma boys and balloon dog were squished up against their bedroom windows, tongues out unable to breathe as though there had been a sudden explosive inflation of a rather large airbag in my shorts.  Well they are German so is it a surprise to find that they have crash protection built in?  Sadly they have to go back to Germany - with the appropriate papers in triplicate enclosed of course.  

I pray for Peace in the world, for gentle breezes on warm sunny days - and - for the availability of extra extra extra extra large cycling shorts in the UK.  

Perhaps one day.

Amen.