Cymru

On our way I Wales for a much-needed holiday, just crossed the M5 toll and the Severn Bridge, which poses a simple question - how do you get tollbooth workers into the booths? Are they forced to play chicken at the start of each shift or something? Does this problem require a complex, helicopter-based solution which, in turn, keeps the toll price up?

 Saturday 29th Sept - 12pm - Llandovery

 Almost at our cottage for the week - stopped in Llandovery, a lovely wee village at the bottom of a picturesque valley, and interrupted a Sheep Festival, somewhat inevitably. Two drovers' pasties and an armful of organic veg duly purchased from local greengrocer who seemed simultaneously impressed and slightly put out to learn that we'd come from London :)

The sun, apparently an infrequent visitor to these parts, currently warms our backs, and we're being 'treated' to a performance by the Towy Youth Theatre group in the town square. All very nice. There are mumblings of a barbecue tonight and we've already seem the traditional Holiday Weim. All is well - onward to Edwinsford!

Sunday 30th Sept – 2pm, Edwinsford

This house is so nice. Great first night here – so much space! It’s an 18^th century diary cottage with two doubles and a single bedroom, double-height ceilings downstairs, a massive utility, a ‘snug’ with TV, videos and Sky, and the crowning glory – a huge, 40-foot square living space, where  I’m sat writing this over a local map. There’s a dining table, sofas and so many books... happy as Larry, whoever he was.

Before the sun set yesterday, we had a little BBW on the gravelly riverbank - idyllic's the word. Started a game of chess last night, which is, as they say, 'delicately poised' this morning. It's rained like something out of the latter stages of the Bible all night, and as we prepare to head over to Abergolech this afternoon, it could do well to think about holding off a bit. going to have a little look at the loca area - most of which I wouldn't be surprised to find shut, given it's a Sunday. It would be good to get some exercise in before the inevitable Downton/red wine-powered dinner :)

4.53pm A mixed afternoon. Lots of tooling around loking for a bit of lunch in Llandeillo, which was, as predicted, something of a ghost town on a Sunday afternoon. Lovely looking, just not benefitting from the arrival of some resolutely Welshweather - which is still with us some five hours after it arrived. got back with supplies and Tam took the opportunity to 'suit up' and take a dip in our little river.

Tuesday 1st October: The Wettest Day Ever
 so, we decided to have a go at this mountain-biking lark, as we'd made quite a noise about doing so before leaving London. Things started promisingly - the way they always do in disaster movies, in my experience. We picked up two Specialized mountain bikes for £40 for a half-day from a very nice man in Hikes & Bikes in Brecon, where a light drizzle merely aided our prgress to the nearby canal towpath. The rain gradually woresened in the first half-hour of the ride, and the path's clay surface was rutted with a constant supply of foot-deep puddles, so that an hour into our journey we were both soaked to the skin. Pluckily, I thought, we soldiered on, and soon entered the depths of Brechfa forest.

Talk about atmospheric - brilliant viwes, amazing photography opportunities and clear paths soon put the rain, which slackened slightly at this point, to the back of our minds. As the pictures show, it was like something out of Lord of the Rings, but we soon realised that the planned 12-mile round-trip would be too much for us when we passed Talleybont Reservoir, and realised we still had about eight miles to go! So, we found a short-cut which, the map warned us, would be 'severely challenging' - and how right it was. a gradient of about 1:6, rocky riverbed where the path once lay, and a fast-flowing stream around our feet. 'Fuck this', I thought, but on we staggered regardless.

Clambering to the top of the hill in the hammering rain, we began the decent back in to Brecon, and what a trip it was - a good 20 minutes of no-nonsense downhill racing, through a couple of tiny villages, at around 30mph or so. and back to the rutted railway track we'd left two hours previously. And there, well.. I basically ran out of gas. The legs don't work, as Richard Ashcroft memorably crooned. Jesus, I was tired by then. On and on the recently rechristened Fucking Towpath of Death went. I wouldn't do it again.

Eventually, looking like two survivors of an idiots-only shipwreck, we got into Brecon, wherein I thought it appropriate to by brandy and fish and chips, in that order. 'Nice weather out - you two look a bit wet', said the comedian masquerading as an off-license owner. Too right, matey.

Once home and dry, though, it was all Under Milk Wood starring Richard Burton and Liz Taylor (weird, don't bother), brandy and log fires. All in all, a top, top day.


Wednesday 2nd October: Beaches and Rainbows A long drive out to Tenby in the morning was rewarded with a quaint little seaside town that T had visited when she was a nipper. I really liked the place - reminded me of Milford, for some obscure reason.. Great weather too - and a welcome respite after yesterday's meterological unpleasantness. Brightly-coloured Georgian terraces line the promenade there; less brilliantly, a new development of spacious executive lifestyle hutches sits glowering contemptuously at the sea, to the obvious disgust of the (mostly ancient) locals.Apparently, I could, if my papers were stacked that way, pick up a three-bed semi-detatched for under £200k, too. Not that I would.

More photography using Panorama Mode on the near-deserted beach led to some truly decent shots - really great stuff I'd like on the wall at home one day. We even started thinknig about how we might change things around and end up living by the coast one day - a sure sign that all's well in the state of Denmark. As we were doing so, a huge rainbow stretched across the entire width of the bay in front of us and stayed there for about ten minutes.

Came home via aless awe-inspiring stop at Carmarthern's noble branch of Lidl, where three bottles of Spitfire are £3.99. Don't all get killed in the rush. Dinner, Goodfellas, the eventual arrival of Chlo and Ian, bed.

Signs of life

It strikes me that I should keep a diary of what's going on, so here it is. As we're all no doubt aware, I have a brain tumour that may or may not do me in in a couple of years. Boo hoo.

You can find out about much more interesting things, such as my life with my new son - due in just six tiny weeks now, crikey - over at projectpeppercorn.blogspot.com. I initially started that blog and wanted it to be a chronicle of our thoughts and feelings around his birth and life, so that when he's older, we could share the sheer scope of our naivety with him and he could laugh at our silly haircuts and clothes etc.
Then The Other Thing happened, and increasingly it took over my writing, most of my waking thoughts and as a consequence, his blog. Hence this one needed to be created.
This one's going to be pretty honest, and I might even keep it a secret until the end. I will post more frequently than in previous lives, I hope.
The following is a long piece I wrote just after being diagnosed. You would think that, having been given some fairly bleak news and allegedly being a writer, the outpouring of words would be more consistent; more voluminous at least. But no.

Things I Write About When I Write About Thinking About Running

OK, so the amount of mithering you'll find on this blog might make it seem as if that bloke from Sleaford Mods finished his A-levels, but really I'm not that fucking bad. I find it easier to be negative, that's all. I apologise to those bored enough to still be reading this.

Anyway, things are about to get a lot more interesting, but before I reason out exactly why that is, there's just enough time for A Minor Reminiscence:

Since time immemorial, I have hated running. A sliding scale, where x is speed and y is negative feeling, clearly exists in my brain - somewhat thus:

As a child, I was made to run, but I am uniformly bad at it. I was overtaken by my younger sister from the age of nine onwards. I have no pace, stamina or particular technique. Like Teddy Sheringham or a late-career Beckham, I prefer (or more accurately, hope) that my mind will be quick enough to put my slow-turning, non-accelerating body in the right places in life. So far, it has done just fine.

I'm sure we've all done cross-country runs in the past, right? Horrid, obviously, but a part of growing up, like acne or terrible haircuts, which simply must take place. I don't mind having had to do cross-country runs as a kid - I don't think they did me any good, but I don't mind them being there, smelling faintly of Deep Heat and BO, in the rusty locker in my head where I keep all those old secondary school memories.

During my mid- to late teens, I benefitted, as some young whippersnappers are wont to do, from having the apparent metabolic rate of an impala. I ate whatever I liked. I did no exercise, other than that demanded of me by polyester-rocking PE uberleiutenants or, for one diverting year, the bloke who ran the paper rounds down at the New Forest Post's fusty headquarters. Fred, his name was. Wonder what happened to him? Dead, probably, by now.

Anyway, I was an arrogant, bonk-eyed whippet of a thing, all piss and vinegar, and everything fitted and nothing hurt. Ever. 'Fuck you, exercise as a concept', I must have shouted as I sauntered through university, still whip-thin, powered by Lambert & Butler, Skol and burgers. 'Hahaha!', I will have bellowed to myself as other 'squares' started to go to gyms voluntarily, and in order to look and feel good, both internally and to others. Dickheads, obviously. Waste of time, all this. Just you wait and see.

The honeymoon from any kind of meaningful exercise lasted until I worked in videogames journalism. Already an underpaid, sexless, dietician's nightmare of a career, my colleagues and I added extraordinary levels of alcohol and nioctine intake to our already meagre diets. Seasons changed. Burgers were eaten. Beer was consumed. Hills were avoided. And slowly enough that you wouldn't really notice, in a manner later perfected by both global warming and the Republican Party, things started to change. My body, once a rusty trampoline of a thing, blithely repelling the four sausage sandwich breakfasts and twenty lattes I threw at it on a weekly basis, started to run out of bullets. Down in the engine room, Scotty had his oxygen mask on, and first-year ratings were being thrown off gantries to their undeserved deaths by exploding panels of lights and dials. The outer hull remained, to the untrained eye at least, unchanged, but within, trouble was afoot.

Slowly, I began to run to fat. I'm not fat, though. Just sort of 'unkempt', physically.

So I started running the other day. And I almost like it. It makes you feel physically in touch with the world, and tired. So damned tired. You sleep well, you feel present and capable and awake in a way that sitting at a desk for nigh-on two decades so far hasn't been able to replicate. Getting over what others think of the sight of you running is easier than I thought it would be, too - turns out, you just start fucking doing it and if you need to, see it as a fuck-you to everyone else who isn't looking after themselves. 'Haha', you shout silently to yourself, 'I have one over on you lot - I'm self-improving.' Or something.

Anyway, long story short, I did a 5k, with several walk phases, up several hills, in 32.33. Some people I know who are 10 years younger than me can't do that on the flat. Keep going, I say. I want a flat, treadmill 5k time around 24 minutes, and the one involving steep hills outside my house in under 30. Then I will be happy. I'm happy now, though, because I know if I just put my shoes on and go, I'll have gone, and will therefore get where I want to be. QED, innit.

Sorry in advance

I can't see people passing their driving tests and humblebragging about it on Facebook anymore. It's poisonous to me. I hate their success. Hate it. And by extension, I hate them. I hate them because they have categorically succeeded where I could not, and never will. Their lives are apparently limitless. Mine is restricted to a lovely house in the middle of fucking nowhere. I cannot escape. I cannot change. I cannot move. I cannot grow. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.

I am moving in two years' time to a place from which I can get about unaided. This is ridiculous. I feel disabled, and useless, and sub-them. Fuck them. Fuck them. Fuck them.

My life has all the makings of a big heap of nothing. He is literally some sort of fucking rocket scientist. I am a writer who has written nothing. I have sat in the back-bedroom of my house and failed to complete a simple form, and then failed to do a basic job. No one has cared, or called, all day. Fuck this.

Of course I didn't do that great idea I had. Because I'm a cunt. A useless fucking cunt, sitting on his own, shouting silently inside his own head, unable to change a single fucking thing.

As you were.

I've just had a brilliant idea...

I would like to write more, but don't know what to write about.

My life, as it happens minute-to-minute, doesn't seem like the kind of thing that other people would like to read about. But then again - I live in Devon, I have a dog, I work in London, or wherever, and I travel a hell of a lot, pretty much at will.

I could stretch this and form some sort of creative pursuit/blog/vlog out of it, no?

I'll start a little blog and push 1,000 words a day through it for seven days to see if it has legs.

More on this soon (maybe).

Nineteen and Forever

I was five and she was three
I was 12 and she was ten
Were we all that different then
Look how free we'd be
I was 13 so she's eleven
The storm came through in '87
All those summers run together
What it means to me ain't what it means to you
She's nineteen so I'm 21
I become the fortunate son
By the time the winter comes
Where we're two now only one
I'm 27 plays nineteen
Thirty, thirty three, three seven
The lights are on but she's not seen
the intervening years between
Nineteen and forever
Nineteen and forever
Borrowed time on the never never
Nineteen and forever

Just create. Create.

I have just been reading a bit of this while listening to Bowie giving an interview to Alan Yentob in 1978:  and I've realised that I have to create something. Work will fit around it. It has to be made. It must. I must start tonight, and not stop until something is written. Force it. Make it into a thing out of nothing. It's this or a penniless, angry ex-marketing writer with nothing in the locker. I can't have that.

Watched a lot of Tony Robbins stuff in the last couple of days too - proof if anything that there is nothing wrong with me, a lot of people with bigger/more problems do more with their time, and it is in me to do this. Write something, I mean. Just create. Just create. Create.