CP No More

“Well that is a bag of shit” I thought to myself. It hadn’t been a bag of shit up to that point, in fact it had been the opposite, whatever that might be. I had been pottering about in my shed making a new saw to bench interface. For once my clumsy attempts at producing something worthwhile were being confounded and a decent looking piece was emerging. The sun was shining through, the birds were singing and I was pretty sure my choice in music was annoying the neighbours who had chosen this day to also be working at the bottom of their garden. All was great.

I saw the shadow of my loved one approaching before I heard her and was a bit excited at showing her my manly creation knowing she would humour me and pour praise upon me.

“ I’ve got some bad news” she opened.

That is never a good start to a conversation. Knowing she had just returned from the Doctor’s and also knowing her father was seriously ill in hospital, there was at least two possibilities that were going to shaft my day. I looked at her urging for her to carry on.

“There is a new CPN at the Surgery”

“But where is Alice” (not her real name to protect the innocent and her voice is being played by an actor)

There began the end to my day, which has seen my sleep fitfully and get up early to exorcise this story from my head.

I suppose I had better recap as this incidental newsflash doesn’t seem too sinister as I write my tale.

I have been a headcase for over 30 years. It started with people trying to kill me or trying to get me to kill them with a train. On a regular basis, acts of vandalism or self hate not in my job description as a train driver were exacted upon me. Passing through numerous incidents, numerous relationship breakdowns, losses of accommodation, insolvency, accidents, work related stress and health issues which were all built upon fairly shaky initial mental foundations to the point we now find myself. Current status: getting there.

Anyone who has suffered mental health problems will know the torturous path you need to follow to get help. Anyone who has suffered mental health problems will know that obstacles in the form of professionally trained experts litter the road. Experts who have the answers to things that aren’t the problems you have. It can be frustrating but you go through with it.

You go to the Doctor, usually as a result of a prompt from a loved one or by actually admitting the signs yourself (less common). The Doctor offers drugs and Psychiatric help, as that is one area they will not don the latex gloves and go probing into. You book the CPN: you wait. Eventually you see the CPN, who are without exception lovely people. They suggest one of two paths; CBT and Mindfulness. There are others, desensitisation, EMDR, hypnosis, snake oil. I have received all of the above with differing results. CBT is great, I am now a very orderly person* (* compared to previous versions of me), EMDR is great, I no longer have nightmares of previous calamities. There is only so much CBT you can have before you are repeating yourself and you go around clutching your worksheets like an anonymous alcoholic clutches their Big Book taking steps in multiples of twelve.

And then there is Mindfulness, usually part of a double act with Meditation. I have a problem with these two jokers. I am sure they work. I am sure someone gets paid a shitload for teaching people how to spread the word. I am sure that the clear up rates at practises up and down the land are phenomenal for mental health issues but how many are cured and how many just don’t go back? No problem; the box is ticked either way.

To start you have to practice clearing your mind. Can’t clear it? You need to practice more. Coda. Repeat to Fade.

Imagine you are in a warm, safe place. I thought I was supposed to be clearing my mind, because right now I’m on a Spanish sunbed, the sea is making that lovely slapping noise, the gulls are calling, there is a fake Peruvian pipe band playing that tune from that movie. There is the bloke selling watches and CD’s, there is the smell of burnt oil and garlic.

OK, forget the warm, safe place. Imagine the sun rising, imagine it entering your body, feel it in your toes, it is moving up to your ankles. I didn’t realise that my ankle was hurting, I wonder how I did that? My toenails need cutting as I forgot to do them when the phone rang. I’d better get back to that message when I’ve finished here. …

It’s now in your calves … Oh yes I’m supposed to be concentrating on the sun in my legs; sorry. It’s made it’s way to your thighs. Are they going to mention my bum or my knob? I doubt it, they are professionals. You really shouldn’t have thoughts like that, it is childish, you are here to get better, not make knob jokes. This is serious… OK I’d better get back to that warm feeling. Oh they didn’t say knob or bum, they went straight to tummy. Stop it concentrate on thinking about nothing. Is it calves, carves of calfs? I’ll google that when I get home. You are filled with that warmth. Listen to your breathing Listen to my breathing? How do I do that? I’d best breathe louder, yep I can here it now. Am I breathing too fast ? Is this how I normally breathe? Your breathing slows down as the warmth pulses in an out like the waves. Shit I’m back on the beach, that bloke with the watches is near me, You are relaxed Am I fuck, I’ve got to pretend I’m asleep so he goes away and I’m laid on this bed with an aching ankle and a desire to take a piss.

I’ve never really succeeded with meditation. I also tried to teach myself ventriloquism when I was younger, I never really succeeded at that either, in fact my whole life is a failure, I should see the Doctor.

You see, you have to be clear of mind to be mindful and my mind never stops working, it never rests, I’m thinking of a dozen things at a time, it won’t go away and I want it to stop. The drugs slow it down but the modern world is my alcohol. Pinterest is my Vodka, Facebook my Meth. My mind is full of thoughts and Zuckerberg is feeding my addiction with more thoughts. I just googled to see if he owned Pinterest. I just can’t help myself. Anyway I digress.

So when a CPN comes along and speaks sense, doesn’t offer voodoo or mindfulness, does understand me and actually makes a difference then they are something you need to keep hold of. I have made so many changes to my life, altered so many of my ways, I can even sleep most nights, not this one obviously. I opened up to Anne Alice, false names are hard to work with. I opened up to her. I picked off the scabs of my scarred mind as I have done many times before, in surety that it would be the last time. I went back to worse places than I had been before because that is how it works. I no longer had to explain I just needed to get better. I didn’t have to pretend I was on a beach, embarrassed that I hadn’t actually found inner peace (got a nice watch though) or start making lists of my lists. This was it. I admitted my job was too much for me and hang the consequences, I decided that I was hanging onto the past rather than letting it stay there. I admitted I was living beyond my means and addressed the matter. All change for the better, because of a unique understanding with my CPN.

And now they have been rotated to another practise and I can no longer see them. I have a new CPN. I cannot go through all that again. What if, in fact there is no if, they have a different take on my situation? I no longer have my job, I have changed my lifestyle I am being rebuilt. I cannot risk what I have gained on a different opinion. I also understand they like Mindfulness.

Somebody, somewhere thinks this rotation is a good idea. They think severing my connections is a necessary action They probably have a degree and brainstorm. My head is a fucking brainstorm. I don’t deserve this but hey ho, now I have cancelled my next appointment, a box somewhere has been successfully ticked.

Thanks a lot .

Walking in my Great Grandfather’s Footsteps

Recently Linda was contacted regarding one of her ancestors who had fought and died in the First World War.  James Frost . This led to us driving to France and Belgium which she has just blogged about here Linda’s Blog.

However whilst we were in the area we also visited Ypres (Ieper) where my Great Grandfather had been stationed for a time before his posting to the Somme where on November 4th 1916 he lost his life.

Herbert Goulding was my paternal Grandmother’s Father. He had been born in the Barracks of the Lancashire Fusiliers at Bury and joined up as a boy soldier. He had seen action in the Boer War and spent 21 years in the Army gaining the rank of Regimental Sergeant Major.

After leaving the army his family settled in Barrow in Furness but within 14 months of civilian life he had reenlisted at the start of the Great War. He was shipped out to France initially stationed around the Belgian town of Ypres.

Ypres endured particularly heavy fighting. At the end of the war nothing remained standing. The Ypres  of today is rebuilt as it once had been and looks like it was from the Middle ages, except every building is not yet 100 years old.

The war diaries show that Herbert Goulding was on the western front at Sanctuary Hill of Christmas day 1915 and that he was relieved on the evening. The unique thing about Sanctuary Hill is that it was time capsuled by the landowners at the end of the war, preserved as a museum. The trenches are as they were, as are the craters from artillery fire. The archaeological finds are stacked up somewhat unceremoniously and the splintered and dead trees are strapped in position as they were when the Armistice was called.

My Great Grandfather wasn’t a young lad who signed up with the notion of a good time abroad, sold the spin of the recruitment officers, believing they would be home for Christmas, he was a career soldier who had seen it all before. I wonder what he must have thought at the constant stream of cannon fodder and the ever pervading stench of death, mud and destruction.

I can’t put into words my emotions as I walked the trenches, knowing he had walked them, imagining how he must have felt to be on the Front Line  on Christmas Day, with his young family miles away in another land, another world almost, whilst trying to look after soldiers who were little more than children themselves. RIP RSM Herbert Goulding, thank you for your life.

 

 

 

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  looking across the Front Line at Sanctuary Wood

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  looking across the Front Line at Sanctuary Wood

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  Photo credit http://www.ww1cemeteries.com/sanctuary-wood-cemetery.html

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  Photo Credit https://web.viu.ca/davies/h482.wwi/soldiers.reality.photos.htm

Remembering the Chase

I must have been there hundreds of times. In years gone by I would go there two or three times a day. For those of you thinking ” Aye Aye, he doesn’t even own a dog” , I had far too many opportunities to mountain bike before my broken back and lack of talent accident.  I left a little of myself on King Billy’s, mostly my courage and a little blood, maybe a bit of wee.

Since that time I haven’t really visited the Chase. I have cycled through it on the tarmac but mostly avoided the wooded bits. Over the last few months Linda has been reintroducing me to the Chase and aside from some great trails and some amazing views there is some amazing history and most of it has passed me by.

Today we visited a living history experience at the Centre on Marquis Drive, which not only exhibited relics of the day and brought to life the fading black and white photographs of people and times gone by. In one of the original huts is a scale model of the camps and some high definition photographs of a high altitude laser surveys which show the locations of ground disturbance through the trees pinpointing the exact location of the structures. It brings reality to the history and even shows bell pits and other far older manmade alterations to the landscape. The pictures are simply mind-blowing.

Having covered just about every square mile of the place, how was I not aware that 500,000 troops training for the trenches of World War One called the Chase home for a few weeks? That two camps holding 20,000 troops each occupied the area and that a lot of the trails are a legacy of the occupation and that the railway climbed up from Milford to supply them?

Having visited the Somme leaving humbled by the bravery and brutality of men and war, to see the other side; the days before the horror was revealed in its enormity brought back all those memories. To read letters written home by innocents, and discover the relics recovered, left me once again humbled and saddened. Did they realise what fate really awaited? Did they realise this was a production line for a machine that was constantly in need of more lives to fuel the fire of destruction? How did the Chase look to them as they sat on ammunition boxes, smoking their Woodbines in a moment of quiet where there was no enemy sniper waiting for a pot shot?

As usual I have arrived at a point in history later than everyone else and I have found another subject I want to learn more of. What amazes me is that I blissfully rode past unusual features and never gave them a second thought. I wonder what else I haven’t yet learned I have missed.

The event is on again tomorrow and if you are at a loss, please go and visit, it is so worth the effort.

It`s Christmas

The Plastic Hippo

So here it is

How indescribably lucky we are as a nation to be under the stewardship of such a kind, caring and thoroughly generous government. The largess and caring munificence of Mrs May and her selfless cabinet colleagues knows no bounds and her avowed mission to care for the vulnerable, support the poor and make this great nation a beacon of equality continues unabated.

The latest gift to a grateful populous is to allow local authorities to increase council tax by six per cent over two years to inject much needed cash into the social care system. This unbelievably charitable act will, no doubt, be a source of great comfort to elderly and disabled people currently abandoned and at risk of starving to death. Mother Theresa has taken bold and compassionate action and has shifting the problem manufactured by a previous government in which she served onto local councils…

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The representation of the people

The Plastic Hippo

Via M Bird of 82 Walsall Road, Aldridge

Although it is tempting to tar them all with one, broad, sordid brush, it would be quite wrong to consider all politicians as nasty, self-serving, mendacious, opportunistic parasites. Given natural selection, the possibility of some form of innate human decency and the hope that bad people are eventually found out, there must surely be in existence some politicians who are not complete and utter bastards. With political hypocrisy currently off the scale that measures a taking of breathe and outlandish drivel being spouted as if it is in some way remotely connected to anything other than absolute garbage, a peek into the quite backwaters of local government reveals an illuminating insight into the good, the bad and the very, very ugly.

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Defying gravity

The Plastic Hippo

Via glamgrid.com

In an increasingly predictable and occasionally boring existence, there are very few things that can still provoke jaw-dropping astonishment. If the discovery, observation and actual measurement of gravitational waves left you agog with wonder, consider the utterly remarkable and almost frightening piece of reality that two weeks into February and with 12 matches to play, Leicester City are 2 points clear at the top of the Premier League.

Although narrowly beaten by Arsenal, Leicester are still favourites to win the title and on current form clever football pundits suggest that Arsenal were lucky to score the winner in the fifth minute of added time against ten men. Astonishingly, the Gunners were considered as underdogs and their last gasp victory is regarded as something of a shock. Once considered as lower league cannon fodder at the mercy of better resourced global brands, Leicester have spent the equivalent of the…

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Schengen

The Plastic Hippo

Via scoopnest.com

We now know that his name is David and that he is 48 years old and that he comes from Oxfordshire. David likes to talk a lot about “British” values such as democracy, tolerance, freedom, respect and equality as if these are uniquely “British” possessions. Sadly, David and his government are systematically dismantling the very values he wishes the rest of us to adhere to. Faced with the direst humanitarian crisis that Europe has endured in 70 years, David shrugs his shoulders, turns his back, shuts his eyes, sticks his fingers in his ears and shouts “la la la la, can`t hear you.”

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Cycling from Aldridge to Westminster (not actually cycling there, that would be daft)

At the start of the Election Campaign, spurred on by the CTC ( the oldest road using lobby group in the UK) I sent an email to all the prospective parliamentary candidates for their views on five fundamental questions on cycling. Ok it was a pro forma document supplied by the CTC but nonetheless the questions were valid, reasonable and fair. They merely asked how the candidate, if successful would support cycling during their tenure on the green seats of the second highest house.

The questionnaire is available here http://www.ctc.org.uk/news/20150330-vote-bike

For those who haven’t access to the link here are the questions:

• Ambition. Will you support measures to increase levels of cycling to 10% of trips by 2025 and 25% by 2050?
• Funding. Will you support an average government spend of at least £10 per person per year on cycling?
• Design standards. Will you support action to create consistently high design standards for cycling in all highway and traffic schemes, new developments and planned road maintenance work?
• Safety. Will you support measures to improve cycle safety by strengthening road traffic law and its enforcement and revising the Highway Code?
• Positive promotion.  Will you support the positive promotion of cycling, including cycle skills training, for people of all ages, backgrounds and abilities?

Without being funny, these aren’t as hard hitting as a Paxo salvo, they aren’t even as hard hitting as a Dimbleby Bullingdon backslap and yet to date only one candidate has bothered to return an answer, for the record this was the Liberal Democrat Ian Garrett.

Perhaps my email was written off as an opportunity for me to score political points in line with my own political agenda but this would be wrong. I am exactly the type of person any of the candidates should be appealing to. I am a disenfranchised socialist. I earn an above average wage. I am over 50 and I care about my locale, the environment and cuddly animals. Quite simply I could, for any number of reasons, vote any way I choose. So, in order to narrow things down, I asked the questions on cycling as I care about it a lot.

As a cyclist, I have been a thrill seeker, a victim, a commuter, an advocate and an enthusiast. Cycling transcends all boundaries, it takes you to places nothing else can. You can get out of a wheeled box at your destination but only on a bike can you live the journey. As Jack Kerouac waxed lyrical about the last hairpin turn, or the road being the journey not the destination, he could have been on a bike, had he not been stoned out of his mind and unable to pedal. But each cyclist carries a little bit of Jack with them.

With so little to differentiate between all the Parties, it only takes something like the view on cycling to make the difference but none were bothered. Perhaps they all feel Wendy Morton is odds on for the seat and can’t be bothered. Wendy isn’t bothered about cycling, I understand she likes parachuting and so doesn’t need to reply, it would eat up photo opportunity time and there is a fridge being opened in Pelsall demanding her attention.

Cycling won’t go away, not even now Pendleton, Hoy and Wiggo have retired (technically Wiggo hasn’t retired but I will put a pound on him not being at the next Olympics). Cycling will become a more viable means of personal transport and yet the Media is allowed to vilify and marginalise cyclists. Increased road usage and congestion victimise the most vulnerable and yet the combustion engine is suffocating the life out of the city and do nothing for the health and well-being of their pilots. Those that try to buck the trend are seen as martyrs or extremists and their attempts litter the roadside in the form of ghost bikes marking their passing.

Something has to change, something has to be done to separate and protect. Investment is required to provide a safe and vibrant infrastructure for human powered transportation and legislation is required to ensure people are put before the profit. By not returning my questionnaire, these candidates are perpetuating an injustice that has gone on too long.

If they want me to put my endorsement behind their expenses, their second homes, the employment for all their relatives, not mentioning the lucrative advisory circuit then at least bother to respond to me.

Getting laid back on my bike

At Christmas I entered a sportive whilst worse for wear but duly set about a training regime to put me on course for a 65 mile bike ride. The training regime started a bout of bursitis which then mutated into a flare up of all my spinal complaints and now apparently my neck has degenerated to such a state that I need to take extra special care to extend its’ useful life.  I have now spent more than ten weeks getting needles stuck in me at my expense in pursuit of pain free existence.
I have always enjoyed the stranger sides of transportation. I had a rat bike (take a bike, take everything pretty off it, take the remainder and paint it matt black) I built a car, I drove kit cars and I supported the stranger sides of cycling. So my decision to invest in a recumbent bicycle wasn’t exactly a last ditch attempt to keep on the road but that desire was very high on the list.
I kept fairly quiet on the subject at the time, this was a decision I needed to make for me and I actually didn’t want any external input to dissuade me. I test rode a number of bikes and trikes under expert tuition from Kevin, the owner of DTek in Ely and from that moment I was sold on the idea. The positives were clear, no pain in my back, no pain in my elbow and no pain in my neck. The negatives were also clear. They cost a lot for what they are, they look strange and they handle differently. I wasn’t phased by this and I felt that  the purchase was justified.
I bought a second hand Challenge Furai from Kevin at DTek for a sum not far short of the Greek  national debt. The bike had everything I thought important, a bit of suspension to prevent all the bumps going through my spine, 24″ wheels to provide me with less distance to fall, subtle matt black and decent specced  drivetrain and brakes to make the experience all the more pleasant.
You know how it is when you are sold on buying something and the salesman make a glib, throwaway statement?  A statement that if you were less sold on something would trigger an alarm bell. You know how it is when all you want to do is press the buy it now button on the card machine and something starts a little beeper in the back of your mind, that you instantly override?  Well both occurred on that fateful day and I knew better.
The first issue was the statement that anything, even slightly dodgy, would be replaced as a matter of course, then during a phone call being told that the tasty Hope brakes were buggered and needed replacing. Replacing brakes doesn’t come cheap. Therefore anything aside from the brakes would have to be passed on or Kevin would be out of pocket. I understand business and I live in the real world, this is life.
And so I arrived back in Ely to test ride the Challenge Furai with a view to spending an indecent amount of money on securing it for my future entertainment. Only to be met with a throwaway comment about the tyres, being close on the limit of requiring replacement; good tread, cracking sidewalls but not bad enough to warrant changing. The test ride was brilliant, though shortened by the gale force winds. We were soon figuring out the best way of strapping it to my car.
On the journey back in those winds we stopped to check the bike. The rear tyre was flat, this was a surprise but I ignored it. I fixed the  flat and set about monstering the bike around the campsite, learning the subtleties of being a bent rider. The next day, the tyre was flat again. I bought another tube and continued the learning curve.
I managed maybe 35 miles on the Challenge doing the local safe routes before setting out on my first major ride last Thursday. I had got about seven miles into the ride and realised I had yet another puncture. I changed the tube but for what ever reason, the tube wouldn’t inflate. I only had one CO2 cartridge left (and stupidly no patches with me) and this wouldn’t last to mess about finding a leak and inflating the tyre and so began the long walk home. On this walk I then gained a front wheel puncture just by pushing the bike.
On my safe return home I decided to buy new tyres and new tubes ahead of my weekend away in Wolverley. Due to the last minute nature of this purchase only next day delivery would do and the only retailer I trusted didn’t have any suitable tyres so I bought what I thought would do. Imagine my joy at the timely arrival of the package and my unbridled dismay when the new tyres were completely the wrong size for my wheels.
Fortunately I have other bikes at my disposal and so the weekend hasn’t been ruined but I was so intent on spending the weekend riding my recumbent. 
And so the search for tyres began again. It appears that 24″ tyres aren’t that popular and 1.5″ width even less so. I can’t help thinking this fact was known to the retailer and glossed over. I haven’t raised this with him personally and I doubt I have the bottle or the reason to do so but for a while I was genuinely feeling I had been sold a dud   I have now bought some slightly wider tyres in the hope they will fit. If that fails, I will try and convert the bike to larger wheels but still wish I had had the tip prior to purchase, it may have changed my decision.
On the aforementioned fateful day, most of the time was spent trying to get the gears to work properly. The bike was very prone to ghost shifting and a generally lack lustre experience. Me being an expert on crap gear shifting soon had me making an attachment to my workstand  and checking the alignment of the rear deraillieur with my specially made alignment tool. After 5 degrees of alteration, the gears finally started doing what they should do.
Whilst all these niggles appear easily solved, should I have had to deal with these at all?

Thunderbug Trike (yet another project)

With a fair bit of trepidation, following my abject failure to finish the Midge project, I have decided to announce my latest and probably most absurd project to date (probably not as absurd as the Mad Max Volvo Pickup I was building which ended when I broke my back running out of talent whilst mountain biking on Cannock Chase)

So without further ado, here is the future of urban personal transportation, The Thunderbug Trike

All right I will be the first to admit it looks like a box with three wheels magically suspect in a vertical position but it is a start.

I have been tinkering with the idea of building a trike for a number of years but was always put off by the fact that using steel would make the trike weigh around 40lb and that aluminium was just too difficult to work with without specialist equipment. I have also been tinkering with the idea of using bamboo as a frame material as I have the tools to work with wood (or grass) and just about enough skill to get me through. Some may remember the plywood recumbent me and Connor built two years ago whilst I was convalescing from my road accident. Indeed the seat and rear wheel have been salvaged from the back of the shed as temporary props for the Trike.

Whilst the bike made very interesting riding, it did prove that wood would work and that I would be able to ride a bike again as up to having my second operation riding an upright bike was out of the question.

So fast forward to the present and the urge to have a go at a trike had reached the top of the pile of things I wanted to try and build. In the intervening years it appears that composite materials are now readily available in the home user environment. There is a wealth of information out there and a number of suppliers happy to provide no minimum quantities to enthusiastic amateurs. There is also a growing number of people building bamboo bikes and whilst the knowledge required is generally more guarded by those in the know, probably because there is an abundant number of hipsters willing to part with loads of money for their ‘boo bikes.

After researching what is out there and buying a number of books (including the excellent “The Cycling Zoo” by Steve Nurse and “Bicycle design” by Mike Burrows I decided on doing away with the typical bike frame in favour of a monocoque chassis, after all in my mind a trike has more in common with a car (or a three wheeler) than a bike and with the use of composites it made sense to build a monocoque utilising the inherent strength of the materials, the weight saving benefits and the simplification of the build by bolting the components to the tub. The more I thought about it the more it made sense and would allow me to dabble with new skill sets.

The design has come along and will be an amalgamation of natural and man made fibres, bamboo for the front wishbones, pedal boom, rear arms and seat, carbon fibre for the tub and supports, aluminium for the brackets and links. I have incorporated four link shock absorption on the rear ( I wouldn’t dare call it suspension but hopefully it will take the pain of the bumps away) and I have ovalised the bamboo to utilise more substantial poles without adding to the bulkiness on the lines. I haven’t seen this done before and there is probably a good reason for it but naivety is the mother of invention, probably.

So far I have manufactured the tub from plywood, the plan is to manufacture the rest of the parts onto the plywood model making any alterations required until it all looks right, then to use it as a plug for a mold to form a fibreglass chassis. This chassis will be used on the road to see what breaks and what doesn’t work before finally committing the design to carbon fibre. The bamboo parts will be well tested and if they prove satisfactory will make it onto the final product, if they don’t they will be replaced by readily available carbon fibre tube but that is all months down the line.

This afternoon was the first opportunity to mount things in situ on the jig (offcut chipboard) and already I like how it looks although I have let to puzzle out how to mount the front boom and wishbones in the narrow space available, it looked wider in Sketchup than it is in reality.

The build costs so far …. edit… I was going to put the build costs down but I just scared myself totting it up. I will keep a record and decide if I dare report it as the project develops..