Agent H – Annual Report December 2013
It’s all or nothing for Agent H. Here is a little piece on 2013 to round off the season. Likes optional, obvs.
Prologue
I know nothing of space or maths or cooking or geography or economics or map-reading or music or love or truth or God or Great Art, of all this I know nothing.
The one thing I do know, and as it turns out it’s almost the only thing, I love my bike and cycling has changed my life and my relationship with my bike is true and frustrating and a bit mechanical at times, when I chose it to be.
I was thinking about the first bike I ever had when I was small. It was steel grey and very possibly had mudguards and a basket on the front to put a marmite sandwich in. My elder sister was probably told to take me to Manor Park, to learn to ride it, or face loss of privileges. I can’t imagine she did it voluntarily. Her best friend Shelia might have been there too. She positioned me at the top of a steep rise, gave me a hard shove in the lower back. What followed was terrifying. It was her first and not last attempt to kill me.
Nor was she the first or last person to attempt to do it I might add.
Cycling and near death experiences go hand in hand as you know I have suffered both this year.
I was wearing Alistair Mullins' cast off shorts and blue t shirt at the time.
I am pretty certain I spent years on my bike as a kid. We went all over the place. We had adventures. We found a 'haunted house', a den with pornography in it, a burnt out car, gypsies and dead things, skeletons, mice, a dead bird. I remember being with other kids on my bike in the country lanes in Devon and Cornwall. We were ‘sent out’.
As a bullied teenager, it was safer to take the bus and hope my other sister (a brave and reckless soul) would be waiting for me on the bridge to take me home after a day of being duffed up by Anne Boyce and Jennifer Brundrette.
Then I married him and I got my bike. You all know the story of that. The Red Bike (5 miles and a celebratory cigarette in The Black Cat with a pint), The Yellow Bike (a week in Suffolk, 20 miles a day!! He drank cider) The Ruby (Southend 1, a year of night rides), The Rube 2 (up Portnalls, down Lonesome Lane, 4000 miles, across Spain, over France, all the way to John O’ Groats Land).
Heck it’s been a year and a half a year this 2013.
It feels like a 100 years since December 2012.
This my goodbye to it.
The Goodbye
The Rides
I missed some people this year, User10571, Rimas I didn’t see a lot of you. Paris was fantastic! It was very hot, it was very noisy, we got very drunk by the river and I sat on his lap. Lymington was almost perfect, Brussels you know all about. The others were like familiar old friends, easy going, hanging out, tootling along or in the case of the last Whitstable ride chasing Ian Ianrauk like fark all the way to eggs beans and chips and a row at the railway station.
The Recce
The best part of this bloody year. With big thanks to Mice, Mmmartin, Gordon and himself. What a crack! How many hills did we go up twice? We broke the bed, smashed into the Norman lifestyle, and got pissed up on red wine, fell out, fell back in again and I got up that bastard hill in Men’s Gears. Whoop! Wonderful.
The Weather
Please. Someone has been sacrificing baby lambs. Jupiter looked down on us and gave us a break from sodding rain and bone cold.
The Mechanicals
Nothing has changed. Three things will happen if I have a mechanical.
1. I will get a tec to fix it for me
2. Or, I will get a cab.
3. Or, I will lay down in a ditch and cry and wait for Bill Clinton to fly in on Air Force 1 and offer me an internship and a fat cigar.
Don't expect this to ever change.
The Countryside
It’s full of dead animals! Things run out in the road! The woods whistle, the dark is darker and it smells, mostly of shoot, cow shoot, horse shoot, bird shoot, bat shoot (probably).
Sheep can do pretty unspeakable things waiting for a rutting ram.
There are no croissants, no red buses, no black people, no socialists, no Alcoholics Anonymous or Societies for The Preservation of Our Heritage. The hairdressers still use that little crochet hook to painfully pull your hair through a rubber cap when giving you high-lites.
It's very good for looking at Space Stations, Mars, Venus and stars. Moonlight on sea water, huge ships docking, and the sound of frogs. Nightingales. The Countryside has surprise romance, it’s cold, it’s damp, it’s quiet, it’s spooky and occasionally you see a line of men pissing in a hedge.
The Friends
Bless all of you who helped me up The Beacon, Down the Beacon, across the dark, over Cattle grids, through bogs, on ferries, off ferries, to listen to the birds, to explain sat nav and rockets, those who explained to me the science of eating, not eating, gear changing, tyre pressures, techniques to go faster, techniques to save your knees, how to breathe and how to live and die and who saved my life.
Thank you to the speed skating muscle bound wayfinders, the tecs, and the 'All uppers'. Himself, Teef, Jenny, Sonia, Frank and Tim H. You all helped me up the hills with your big hands, you made me feel fabulous, you told me good jokes, you were grumpy, gorgeous, handsome, charming, funny, drunk, sober, bloody annoying and some of you were a bit tight.
I think too of all those other ne'er do wells, The Undertakers in Yellow Jerseys, The Surprisers! Creeping up on you on dark lanes, The Annoyers, The Brigands and The Bastards who sat on my tail to the top of the hill and then buggered off.
And Gordon – picked me up on LonJog after I threw up over a drain and has never let go of me since.
The Club
The Club is very important and totally unimportant at the same time which makes it very annoying. It’s not one thing or another. Plus it changes. It has different tones. This year the club had us down some familiar roads, we have met new people we have missed some of the obvious ones. But somehow this year at last I feel I might belong and I am no longer an outsider but a part of it. I can wear my club jersey. I am a Friday. Plus I am farking brilliant All Upper, if you think any different keep it to yourselves.
The Epilogue
This is it for the year, maybe, perhaps next year I will;
1.Cycle all the way down Reigate Hill without using my brakes (who is going to stop me but myself)
2.Sit on his tail until I can’t breathe
3.Defeat Line Phobia
4.Get on a tandem
5.See another hare
6.Take him to Europe, Africa, America, anywhere we can just do mile after mile after mile and drink beer in little town squares or watch the sunset on the sea
7.Read a bit of Proust
8.Pierce something
Happy Holidays Friday people. May all your Gods bless you and shower you with fabulousness. Think of Little Baby Jesus Away In His Manger and thank your lucky stars that you ain’t living in the Gaza Strip.
Til we tour again
I love you all
Agent H
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