No woman

You know, I never saw myself getting married.  I didn't have those little girl dreams of white dresses, or any of the other paraphernalia I see going on around weddings.  All those flowers, those thingies you give the guests, the seating plans, the gift list, the choices of desserts, the fastidious designing of cakes.  I can honestly say I didn't give it a thought.  And now, watching a wedding on TV, I'm utterly bemused by the pageantry.  There are speeches and some, frankly, dreadful singing.  There are parents, there are, just so many things.  I'm not a proper girl, I just don't get it.

At work, they're more likely to ask one of the blokes his opinions on cocktails and me my opinion on beer.

I think it's acceptable in late 40s to become that weird androgynous mix, to be neither male nor female, but just a person who, you know, breathes.  Maybe I've grown into me.  I think at 18 I and the same male characteristics I have now, the seeing in straight lines thing, and not really understanding fripperies around the sides.  Nearing 50, maybe I'm finally socially acceptable?

Get to know you

Howard Jones, remember him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6-KW3Tp4W8

Sometimes that's just where I'm stuck.  1984, with all the haircuts, the clothes and the way we lived before the internet.  If the city centres look somewhat dreary, I suspect it's because they were.  Even looking back with the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, it feels all a bit, well, sepia.  Colours weren't as bright back then.  Beige was where it was at.

Somehow, 1984 has become 20 years ago (let's not nit pick about the maths, eh).  Things are worse and better now.  Being, let's say 16 in 1984, as opposed to being 16 now, well, it's hard to say - there were a lot more restrictions and rules I think, back then.  There was less freedom to communicate, there was more pressure to be conventional.  There were definitely women's roles and men's roles, back in suburban middle class.  It didn't feel just middle class, it was middle everything.  But at 16 you were also allowed to make mistakes, allowed to be a child, learning, you weren't expected to be a small grown up with under sized grown up choices and decisions to manage.  Protected, perhaps.

I look at myself now, not just as middle aged, but somehow something else crept up on me.  Nearly 50.  How extraordinary is that?  It creeps up on me at odd times.  Those times when I wonder as I scamper along on the bike (these days do occasionally happen).  The technical descent I did on the rigid cross bike following two youngsters (these days that means under 40) down, holding my own.  Got to the bottom and thought, not bad for a woman pushing 50, eh?  I like to think I offer hope for the future.

I accept slowing down.  Not in the way of giving up or giving in or stopping trying.  Recovery is slow, from illness and from injury and there's a world where you suddenly need to adjust to making allowances for yourself and doing things differently in recuperation because otherwise, you simply don't recuperate.  Pushing through the pain, battling on, fighting it.  All that stuff is mostly on a collision course to a week in bed these days.  It's no longer logical.  So we accept, and embrace the slow times while we get ready for the time we can see in the distance, that time when we'll be pedalling madly again.

The last ride

What if your last ride was just that,  your last ride ever?  Would it make a difference if you knew it was the last ever, and if you knew that, where would you go, what would you do?

I have been off the bike with a cold for over a week.  It's a bit of a slow burning cold, this one, and even an hour of housework has me knocked out, faint and back on the sofa.  I imagine riding even a three mile trail to the local cafe would have me wondering just how I was going to get home.

And I remember the last ride.

The last ride was just over a week ago.  The Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend.  The plan was that it was the first of three days riding.  I took the road bike out; after a summer of neglect while I'd waited for plans and weather to work out.  Checked brakes, gears, noted that it needed a proper clean and new handlebar tape, oiled the somewhat sticky pedals and off I went.  I'd found a route used by the Audax people which seemed worth trying, a 100km ride which started about 5 miles down the road.  Mixing imperial and metric with gay abandon.  Just five miles from home it took me off my beaten track, found me a hill climb I didn't know, and led me onto roads I wasn't familiar with ... but loved.  A route stitched together by someone who clearly has spent a lot, some may say too many, hours in the saddle, exploring, learning, identifying which roads were quiet to traffic and which weren't. It was a most cunningly devised thing, and totally and utterly joyous.  It took me further south than I've been, it pulled together familiar stretches with undiscovered short cuts.  There were hills, and there was gravel and there were smiles.

Six hours, I was out there, pedals turning in the last of the summer sunshine, just cool enough that I didn't take the gilet off all day, but just warm enough that I drank my way through nearly both bottles.

The next day I woke up with a sore throat and that, as they say, was that.

The nostalgia of the last ride is staying with me, just until I'm back in the saddle again, until this illness has left me able to breathe without coughing and move without dizziness.

I know that this too shall pass, but just imagine, what if it didn't. Would the last ride have been the same?

Four letter word

Used as an insult, cunt is a horrible word.  I can well understand why it's written down as c***, although that could equally be cock, I guess.  So from here on, I'll write it as c***, because we now know which word we're talking about.

It's horrible written, and it's worse shouted, face to face at an individual.  I've heard folk in football crowds shout it at the ref, an unknown faceless entity at a safe distance.  I've heard it used as a generic, collective insult.

What I'd not heard before was it shouted.  At me.  One person, an individual.  All I did wrong, and I'm being honest here about my behaviour and my appearance, was to get on a bicycle.

I wasn't wearing lycra, I wasn't veering frantically around the road, I was neither sprinting nor dawdling.  I was going considerably faster than some, and a bit slower than others.  I had a helmet on, and a rucksack with my work macbook in.  I was wearing casual 3/4 length trousers and non showy black running booties.  I was wearing a T-shirt.  My bike wasn't top end, it doesn't look anything other than it is, a heavy steel commuter with tough looking tyres.  It even has enormous flat green pedals on it.  And lights.  And a bell.

And that was me, riding up a very gentle incline south of Stockport.  There are two lanes of traffic in each direction, and going south (as I was) were very few cars at all for once.  Nobody was waiting behind me to pass, hell, nobody was either in my lane or the outside lane.

Yet, coming towards me on the opposite side of the road was a small grey hatch back.  The driver felt it worth his while to open his window, lean out, arm on the side, turning his close shaven head fully towards me, and yell, not timidly, "pedal you c***".

I felt many things.  I was startled, shocked, upset.  Nobody has ever called me a c*** before, not even people who might have been personally upset or angry with me.  It was an act of aggression, and it was really really offensive.  At least I was on the opposite side of the road.  If I'd been going the same way, would he have been angry enough at my existence to swerve his car at me, I wonder.

And there's absolutely nothing I can do. Nothing.  Even had I become a helmet cam wearing rider, what could I have done, what would the police ever do.  Is there even a law against shouting insults at total strangers?  Had I taken the registration number, what would I have done with it?  Had I turned round and chased him down to the next set of lights, what would that have achieved?

And yet I'm still angry with him.  I'm angry that I'm so helpless to make this change.  I'm angry that he felt that was acceptable behaviour.  I'm angry that there is no opportunity to talk to him and find out what was going on in his head to make that happen.  I'm angry that I'm now fearful of riding that bit of road again, part of my regular commute.  That my choices are influenced by these acts of passive aggressive violence.  There's still part of Manchester City Centre I haven't ridden in over a decade since someone tried to run me off the road, swerving violently and deliberately (I did get run off the road but not knocked off or run over).  I won't go there again, because why would I, in my vulnerability put myself in that position?  Why would I put myself back on the A6 in that place again?  It's possible that for him it's a regular journey as much as it is my regular journey.  Will he be satisfied with simply shouting at me that I'm  c*** or will his actions escalate?  It's not worth my taking the chance.

All I did was ride my bike.

Slippery slope

We've been here before I said.
Or maybe kept the words in my head.
I was communing with my bike you see,
we're a partnership; my pal and me.
Evening sunlight on a supine canal
Sleepy ducks line the weed edged trail
Dogs too warm to wag a tail,
Walkers in a sun drugged daze
are all we see along our way.
Familiar bridge, with a sneaky right
winding, downhill, lipped and tight
Whoosh we lazily, indolently cruise
and now you should see the size of my bruise.

He rides

The man in front is large, clearly large
The kind of size of a rugby front row,
a player in his youth, but sadly
he's not there now. Not many of us are.
He covers his bulk with baggy shorts
He covers his head with a helmet
He covers his chin with a ginger beard
He covers the gaps in the traffic with himself
I sit in his slipstream hiding from the wind
and chat to him at traffic lights.  He seems nice.

In front

The girl in front wears pink,
She rides an upright bike with mudguards
Her ponytail flicks from side to side
Shoulders sway when she rides uphill
Backwards glances, wondering who's behind
A deferential step aside at ASLs
But she's still faster than me,
And I like watching her ponytail bobbing, bobbing, bobbing.