Byways
I am composing this while standing up. Not, as you may reasonably assume, as a homage to Hemmingway (one must always be ready to pay homage to Hemmingway, but one must also be suspicious of anyone who is not a blood-relative and asks you to call you ‘Papa’. This is surely a step away from calling a family friend ’uncle’ and those inverted commas mean only one thing - ‘special cuddles’, years in therapy and never being able to properly enjoy Christmas again!), nor because it is the feast day of some Saint martyred by standing, nor even through misdirected patriotism (this manifests itself in beatings of ethnic minorities after dark).
No, I am composing this standing up because my arse feels like that of a buggered bum-boy after a Barrymore pool-party.
The reason? I was out on my bicycle this weekend. The weather was glorious and it seemed quite the thing to do to bike over to the park, point the trusty steed off the path and onto one of the trails through the trees and meadows and see where a sense of adventure, a lot of peddling in low gear and a great deal of sweat could take you.
It’s not that big a park, but by the simple method of criss-crossing it, it turned into quite a long ride - enough to justify a stop for refreshments at the tea shop and at least two occasions when I thought my front forks would end up pointing towards the heavens over my prostrate corpse. I think that the illusion of size is brought about in part by the screening off of the traffic noise and by the planting. At the moment everything is in leaf and so nature screens meadow from meadow. As for the meadows themselves - the grass is long (not as long as the grass used to conceal the ‘raptors in ‘Jurassic park III’, or I would have gone home for a cup of tea and a biccie until the trembling of fear passed), but long enough to contain fumbling couples, sullen teens sitting alone (that’s not just by themselves, which anyone can do, but ‘alone’, the exclusive preserve or the teen), as well as not-so-sullen teens, sitting with a book in the middle of a meadow and apparently enjoying the sunshine and solitude.
Tracks marked and unmarked, paved and unpaved, cross the park. Some of them are mere dirt tracks, other are lost byways - obviously roads at some point, paved in concrete but now - forgotten, overgrown, the branches of the bordering trees interlacing above them to form a tunnel of damp green gloom - an ideal spot to stop your bike and wait for your heart rate to return to normal.
And the arse? Well, despite the best efforts of a gel-filled saddle, I think I may have been somewhat too enthusiastic when riding. It’s great fun rushing down a trail at high speed, hammering over rough ground and tree-roots but, that evening, when I re-mounted to go and visit friends - it felt as if somebody had brought a cricket-bat to bear on my tender portions!
Obviously, if I am to enjoy the rough stuff this summer, I will need to toughen up, or learn to peddle side-saddle.
No, I am composing this standing up because my arse feels like that of a buggered bum-boy after a Barrymore pool-party.
The reason? I was out on my bicycle this weekend. The weather was glorious and it seemed quite the thing to do to bike over to the park, point the trusty steed off the path and onto one of the trails through the trees and meadows and see where a sense of adventure, a lot of peddling in low gear and a great deal of sweat could take you.
It’s not that big a park, but by the simple method of criss-crossing it, it turned into quite a long ride - enough to justify a stop for refreshments at the tea shop and at least two occasions when I thought my front forks would end up pointing towards the heavens over my prostrate corpse. I think that the illusion of size is brought about in part by the screening off of the traffic noise and by the planting. At the moment everything is in leaf and so nature screens meadow from meadow. As for the meadows themselves - the grass is long (not as long as the grass used to conceal the ‘raptors in ‘Jurassic park III’, or I would have gone home for a cup of tea and a biccie until the trembling of fear passed), but long enough to contain fumbling couples, sullen teens sitting alone (that’s not just by themselves, which anyone can do, but ‘alone’, the exclusive preserve or the teen), as well as not-so-sullen teens, sitting with a book in the middle of a meadow and apparently enjoying the sunshine and solitude.
Tracks marked and unmarked, paved and unpaved, cross the park. Some of them are mere dirt tracks, other are lost byways - obviously roads at some point, paved in concrete but now - forgotten, overgrown, the branches of the bordering trees interlacing above them to form a tunnel of damp green gloom - an ideal spot to stop your bike and wait for your heart rate to return to normal.
And the arse? Well, despite the best efforts of a gel-filled saddle, I think I may have been somewhat too enthusiastic when riding. It’s great fun rushing down a trail at high speed, hammering over rough ground and tree-roots but, that evening, when I re-mounted to go and visit friends - it felt as if somebody had brought a cricket-bat to bear on my tender portions!
Obviously, if I am to enjoy the rough stuff this summer, I will need to toughen up, or learn to peddle side-saddle.
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