Welcome to North Devon. Is that snow on your boots?

The holiday season in North Devon is well and truly under way. Already the roads are more congested and the beaches are busier. This despite the frankly disappointing weather. I was at Westward Ho! walking the dog late this afternoon. The tide was well up so we walked along one side of the Pebbleridge and back over the golf course. Just as we got near the Northam Burrows visitors' centre we encountered a small group of what I think could have been Russians or maybe Poles. It was the area where my fellow dog owners disgrace themselves by failing to clear up after their pets. The truth is these people can drive close to this building, let their dog out, which then craps everywhere, before driving off again with dog shoved in the back of the car.

And so it was I met a little group of Eastern European tourists who were obviously having a nice time. One rather corpulent gent in a tight white T-shirt sat on a hummock while one of his female companions used her camera to capture the scene for posterity. It would be some while before I chose that spot as the most picturesque place in North Devon for holiday snaps. Yet despite this, the group were all happy, they were having a nice time. What did it matter what I, as a local, thought of their choice of location? Maybe whatever locality they were used to was an absolute dump, fully of rusty cars, dog excrement and buildings with concrete cancer.

That's the thing with tourism. It is frequently touted as the most important element in the North Devon economy, which is something I have trouble agreeing with. It ought to be cream on our cake, not the cake itself. Well, that's what I think. However, the fact remains that many people gain considerable enjoyment from coming to our beautiful coast and countryside, and who are we to deny them? In Victoria Park in Bideford is a bench with a memorial plaque dedicated to a couple from Reading and more recently of Bideford, who spent "many happy hours" in the park.

I always find it quite moving. Here was a couple for whom the simple pleasure of sitting in the park - who knows maybe with a Hockings ice cream - was enough. And so I welcome our Russian/Polish/Latvian/Lithuanian/who knows visitors. For, whether they know it or not, life is short and we should all take our pleasures where we can. The simple pleasures of the park may be all we have time for, so do not delay. Putting off today for what we might get tomorrow could simply be a recipe for achieving nothing at all. And that would be very sad.

A neutral birthday to you

Today would have been my dad's 83rd birthday had he not died in March. Can you wish a happy birthday to the deceased? Probably not, but what you can do is have happy memories, which I do. They are the ones I focus on. So on my dad's birthday I think of happy gatherings in my parents' garden on hot July days with family and friends. Had he lived it is unlikely we would have had what you would conventionally describe as a happy gathering. My dad's illness would have progressed and he might well have struggled to participate in any meaningful way. While that thought makes me sad, I have already acknowledged that he has passed out of what had become for him a 'vale of tears'. It certainly had become that for his family as we watched him suffer.

The last words he said to me - a few days before he died - were from his hospital bed. He said: "I don't want to see you in this place again". I have clung on to those words and tried to extract every last bit of comfort from them that I can. My take on those words is that they were said with the last scraps he could muster of his deprecating Yorkshire sense of humour. He knew his death was near, he knew the faltering remains of his life were bound to be unhappy and that those near him suffered to see him so poorly and he hated - oh, he really hated - being in hospital. And so he said: "I don't want to see you in this place again". And that was the last I saw of him and although I think it was for the best, there is still a tiny piece of me that wonders if I should have been with him at the end. So if I should have been, Dad, I'm sorry I wasn't, but I think of you a lot, and I miss and love you. In the end, all we have is love.

And all the above is why this posting is called A neutral birthday to you. It can't make it to being really happy and it shouldn't be sad, so it comes out level. Swings and roundabouts, yin and yang, up and down, in and out, on and off. Just somewhere in the middle.

Ah! The joyful sound of Ye Olde Samba Drums

I was in Barnstaple at the weekend for a lightning raid on three shops. It was a case of buy, buy, buy and then bye, bye, bye. While there I saw, from a distance, the start of the parade for the Pilton Festival. All Green Man, real ale and, well, samba drums. Why? It's not that I am utterly opposed to samba drums, but these days in North Devon few public events seem complete without them blowing whistles, banging their sodding drums and gurning at each other. I realise this makes me sound curmudgeonly, but I would be willing to wager that similar events in, say, Brazil rarely attract the presence of some geezer in stripy trousers, a lurid waistcoat and unmentionable hat who is hacking away at a fiddle while occasionally going on about escaping the hangman's noose, or his sweet love drowning in a pool.

Would an event such as Chulmleigh Fair suffer for the lack of samba drums? I don't honestly know if Chulmleigh is a hotbed of samba drumming, but I suspect that the man with the fiddle singing songs of rural rogering fits in better - all Thomas Hardy, super strength lager and unwanted pregnancies. How much more traditional could you be?

Me, Lance and Hitler

As a child I was ready to read all the books there were and expected to read every book in print. Soon it became apparent that such a feat was beyond me, and, indeed, beyond anyone. However, that doesn't stop me worrying sometimes about the books I want to read, will I have time, are they the best ones to read, should I just not bother?

Consequently, on a recent visit to my local library I borrowed Lance Armstrong's two volumes of autobiography and then fretted about whether I would read them in time before going on holiday. The answer to that is that once started there was little doubt I'd finish the two books. I am fascinated by the Tour de France and, besides owning a bicycle, I have something else in common with Lance - we have both recovered from testicular cancer. Undoubtedly, my journey back from an illness that can very readily claim your life, was a lot easier than Lance's. Cancer had a much stronger grip on him than it did me before treatment began. Nevertheless, cancer is a word one never wants associated with one's life.

Many years ago I read Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Cancer Ward in which he states that "once the crab has you in its claws it never lets you go" or something like that. Well, the crab had me - and Lance - in its claws and let both of us go. For me it was a relatively straightforward operation that put me on the road to recovery, for Lance it was a combination of surgery and chemotherapy, which took its toll. Despite this he has gone on to be a multiple winner of the Tour de France - something which seems to annoy the French no end.

Anyway, next month I celebrate my silver wedding anniversary which means that next spring I celebrate the silver anniversary of being diagnosed with cancer. It's been a quarter of a century that has flashed by, but I'm still here. So that's me, Lance, and - allegedly - Hitler who are, according to comedian Robin Williams, "uniballers". Two out of three ain't bad.

Spiralling out of control in the rain

It's raining. It's gushing out of the sky to the point where you can't really be sure it's summer. But in North Devon at least we can say this is something we are not totally unfamiliar with. Ever since I have lived here, I have been forced to acknowledge the routine presence of rain in my life. Not long after I came to North Devon I muttered some comment about 'Sunny Devon' to a long-term resident as the rain poured down. 'Ha ha', he said. 'Now you know why North Devon is such a good dairy farming area'. Well that's all right then.

I like the sogginess and the greenness and the sponginess of living in a place where it rains so much. But having said that I also like the hot dryness of places in the summer, which is why I am heading to Greece soon. Only for a few weeks, but I hope it will give me some respite from the drenching that the elements are subjecting us to at the moment.

And while I wait to go on holiday - to a place that is many, many miles from North Devon - I am going slightly bonkers. At work I keep uttering the mantra 'I can't go on'. The truth is that I can go on, but only just. I haven't had a break from work - apart from at the time of my dad's death - since last autumn. I want to kick back, read poems, maybe even write poems, and stare at a point on the horizon. I want to hear the cicadas and worship the blue sky and the blue sea. Smell the pines and hear happiness in a foreign tongue.

I'm losing it here in North Devon and I need release. But how much will I miss here while I am there?

Having trouble getting things moving in North Devon

OK, I am a man married to a woman. I have helped in the conception and birth of some more females, now all young women. I sprang - many years ago - from the loins of a woman and I have one sibling, a sister. Also I know lots of women and work with women, in fact, the part of the office I work in is just me and six women. So what I am trying to say is that I have heard them talking. My wife, my daughters, my mum, my sister, my colleagues and female friends all like to talk to each other and I like to listen (no honestly, I do, I love listening to women talking, it's so much more revealing and embracing than men's uni-directional conversation).

So, very slowly, what I am getting round to saying is that not once, never, ever, have I heard the women I know talk about constipation. And the reason I mention this, is that ridiculous TV advert in which a group of women in a cafe/bar engage in conversation about how one of them is constipated. To use her words - more or less - 'It's all hard and foul' - I think that's what she said. Now I know this is only an advert and is the result of someone coming up with an idea to advertise a product - in this case, something called 'stool softener' - but dear God this is rooted in some hideous fantasy world in which poor little women grapple with utterly ridiculous problems.

Adverts in the same vein offer shower gel suitable for 'intimate use', unguents for making women less hairy and medication capable of dealing instantly with diarrhoea. This latter product is aimed specifically at women and shows a woman bounding out of the house, only to rush back in because the proverbial flock of starlings is about to emerge from her backside. However, she pops a couple of pills and within minutes is in the cinema with her girly friend chucking popcorn down her throat like there's no tomorrow and no gastro-intestinal problems either.

I'm not going to go off on some sort of feminist rant, although I suspect if I were a woman I would find men more than a little risible. However, it is a bit of a call for women (and, I suppose, men) to stand up and say: 'We're not going to put up with this crud any more'. It would be hard to conceive of more ridiculous scenarios than most adverts. Little boys wanting to take a dump in their friend's toilets because they smell better is but one example. From the sitting room, where the TV is on, I can hear an advert where a talking meerkat is advertising a comparison website. . . . I mean, where will it all end?

So get a grip people, watch the adverts by all means, but then, very politely, just say NO.

On the border

I've said before that I rarely leave North Devon, but this weekend I not only left North Devon, I also left the country - well, I went to Cornwall. Significant other and I went to visit friends who live in a village on the Tamar. Now, the Tamar is, as most of us know, the border between Devon and Cornwall and - in view of Cornwall styling itself as a separate nation - is therefore a national boundary. Crossing the Tamar some way south of Holsworthy does feel to me as if I am entering another country. The sign proclaiming you have entered Cornwall also has a few words in Cornish, which, I hope, say something along the lines of welcome.

Sadly it wasn't long before we were crossing back into Devon because a road accident not far from Launceston sent us heading towards Tavistock. Having reached there, in increasingly rainy conditions, we had to ping back towards Callington, which entailed a further crossing of the Tamar, this time into Cornwall, which thankfully proved to be the last time that day we would make that crossing.

Finally we made it to our friends' house where a friendship dating back to the early 1990s was gently revived. We don't see each other very often and work and family commitments on both sides make it difficult to meet up, but when we do meet I am glad we all made the effort. Never undervalue friendship. The highlight of the weekend for me was getting to know our friends' two young sons, aged four and almost two. Lively sparky little boys, who treated us with initial caution but soon assumed that if we were OK with their mum and dad then we'd do for them.

The aim had been to get out into the lovely countryside near their village to walk and talk, but the rain poured and eventually we had to concede that we would not be crossing the threshold. Even the two young boys, who were getting a bit edgy at the lack of outdoor entertainment, decided that having once stepped outside, they were quite happy to stay indoors just this once. A tentative suggestion of going to the pub was discarded as not being worth the effort.

This morning was much brighter and we had a short walk round their village and along a path beside the Tamar. Following that we headed to Morwellham for a pub lunch and more strolling about, this time enjoying the sunshine. It's years since we've been to Morwellham - our own children were little - and it has changed from being a straightforward tourist attraction to a "world heritage site" due to its links with the mining industry and Britain's industrial past. To be honest, I'm not sure how that will work out. We ended up watching a man making small animals from offcuts from trees. For one of our friends' sons he made a hedgehog. I don't think that was to do with mining, but was intended to highlight the wildlife trails around the site. Anyway, it was pleasant in the hot sunshine.

I think one test of friendship is being able to do unremarkable things and find them enjoyable because of the people you are with. I think this weekend passed that test. One of the friends we visited and I have in common the fact that we both lost our fathers this year. His father, although not a young man, died unexpectedly and it is taking him time to come to terms with it. For me, my father's death had been on the cards for months following a diagnosis of cancer several years ago. I miss him still, but know that his passing was part of the natural order of things. But, in a way, what is slightly odd about this realisation is that we don't take it to heart more completely. The fact is that as mortals we are all bound to die. In some ways that should liberate us rather than frighten us. Even so, I don't want to go yet. I've got things to do.

What's in a name? Well, sometimes it's everything.

I have mentioned the man who I think lives in a Renault estate on the "Atlantic Highway" between Bideford and Barnstaple. Well, I said it was a Laguna, but now I am fairly confident in saying it is, in fact, a Megane. I know, I know, it's only a small point, but I like to get these things right, I suspect it ties in with the work I do.

Have some fun on the A361

It interests me that I travel most days on what is officially known as the Atlantic Highway - the A39. What amuses me about this is that no matter how many times I drive along this particular stretch of road, it is always just the bit of road between Bideford and Barnstaple. Why, in the UK, don't we do the romance of roads? One of my favourite songs is Route 66. I don't care who sings it - Christ, even me singing it can sound good (to my ears) - but where are such songs in a British context?

Get your kicks on route 66, have some fun on the A361, know you're alive on the old M5, head for heaven on the A377 - all right you get the idea. The roads are there, but we don't celebrate them in song. But your Americans, well, you can't stop them. They're singing about roads, Ventura Boulevard, Broadway etc, or they're singing about places, Chicago, New York, San Francisco. Why don't we have such songs in our country?

I think that even in North Devon there is scope for a bit of song-writing to do with geography. Don't go telling me that some of the places in North Devon might not actually be up to much. I've never been to Galveston, but Glen Campbell bangs out a song about said place and we all swallow it hook, line and sinker. For all I know, the place could be a complete toilet. I think there is great scope in North Devon for a bit of creativity with songs. So what if Ilfracombe rhymes with doom, Appledore with bore, Combe Martin with fartin'. The scope is endless, if only we apply the right approach.

I might have to come back to this, in much the same way that I will one day do my posting on women and constipation. It's a great big world of blogging opportunities out there. If you want to find out more, sign up and follow my blog. You might enjoy it.

Travel broadens the behind

I cycled to work this morning and then, this evening, I cycled back. I've been talking about doing this for two years - almost to the day. It's a distance of ten or eleven miles one way, but I always found a reason for not doing it. Now I have, and, despite the pain in my nether regions (Lord, don't I go on about my nether regions) I am feeling pretty proud of myself. People at work were surprisingly impressed. All I did was cycle along the Tarka Trail one way in the morning and then reverse the process in the evening.

Along the way I passed a field with mares and their foals. They were beautiful. I also heard oystercatchers. They were beautiful. In fact, the whole experience was beautiful. Apart from the pain in the nether regions. If only I had known I would enjoy the experience of cycling to work so much, I would have done it a lot sooner. In a way that harks back to what I was saying a few days ago about wanting memories not regrets. In good conditions, which will undoubtedly not apply all the time, the ride along the Tarka Trail is a brilliant way to start/finish your working day. Now I know that I will repeat it, but what put me off discovering it in the first place was a general feeling of fear (almost) that the whole thing would be so arduous and unpleasant that I would hate it.

Anyway, by all accounts, of the various ways to achieve enlightenment, experience is the toughest. So my enlightened state to do with riding to work has been achieved at the expense of realising that I have missed out on something I would have enjoyed, if only I had got on with it sooner.

I had intended to write about women and constipation, but yet again I have gone on about something else. Maybe the women and constipation posting will be soon. Also just a small point, but I understand that Molly Sugden actually spelt her name Mollie. However, her pussy was pussy and not pussie. Also the bloke who played Private Sponge in Dad's Army has died.

Do they treat it with oinkment?

Cases of swine flu have been reported in North Devon and in some quarters there seems to be an air of panic. People are demanding to know where the confirmed cases are so they can avoid those areas. I am willing to accept that I can be complacent, but I'm not sure what good it would do to lock yourself away in isolation. I suppose if you had absolutely no contact with anyone else - ever - then it might just stop you getting infectious diseases etc but you'd probably die of boredom. As it is, the chances are you could have contact with a person with swine flu and never realise. It seems that many people who contract swine flu are ill and then recover. Those who die often have a pre-existing condition. The thing is it will either kill you, or it won't kill you. Or you might not get it at all. And that is pretty well the story of your entire existence.

We assess risk according to our preferences. Deaths from car crashes are, as we know, not uncommon in this country. But how often do you get in a car and, before the vehicle has even moved off, start worrying that you are going to die? I hope the answer is never, because if you did start worrying like that your life would not really be worth living. And yet in North Devon I can take you to numerous places where people have died in their cars. Very often they are easy to spot because mourners continue to place flowers at the scene. Despite these sombre warnings, we continue to drive our cars because we want to/need to, and some people do it in a worse way than others.

What are all those people who race to overtake on the North Devon Link Road trying to achieve. Are they so important, and their task so vital, that they must drive to the limits of other people's willingness to make way for them. Often you catch up with them at the next roundabout where they are forced to wait before continuing on their headlong transit along the link road.

So, anyway, swine flu is a risk, but one to be kept in perspective. Hundreds of people across the UK die each year from the flu which comes round annually and, by and large, that death toll passes us by unremarked upon. Having said all that, I still really hate it when people sitting behind me on the bus or in the supermarket queue cough over me.

And if you think the title of this post is flippant then bear in mind I was going to try to weave in the gag about flu which goes something like: Doctor to patient: 'Have you flu?'. Patient to doctor: 'No, I came by bike'. Yes, hysterical, I know.

You only sing when you're flying

When I started writing this blog it was with the vague idea of commenting on whatever was going on in North Devon that made the pages of my local paper, the North Devon Journal, eg the Facebook campaign to abolish Ilfracombe's Victorian Week or whether Bideford Town Council should say prayers before each meeting. Maybe I was thinking I would become North Devon's Montaigne, but anyway as Robert Burns said "the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley" - apologies for any mistakes in the quote. So today while I was on the beach with my dog my attention was taken by a skylark, which has nothing to do with bickerings in local government.

I heard the skylark before I saw it. In fact, seeing a skylark can be a tricky business because while it is belting out its song it will be so high up in the sky it will be just a tiny dot. Once I spotted my skylark I stayed watching it. This is something I like to do almost as a form of tribute to the skylark. They exert massive effort in staying in one spot in the sky and singing their hearts out and I feel the least I can do is watch the entire performance until the bird flutters back to earth. I suspect my dog thinks this is a slightly weird thing to do. One minute I am striding along Westward Ho! beach throwing a ball for her, the next I am standing with my head tipped back at an awkward angle, keeping an eye on something she has so far shown no interest in. I am sure skylarks have a reason for doing what they do, it's probably all about sex, but I'd like to think they also do it for the pure joy of it.

Talking of doing things because you enjoy them, while I was out cycling yesterday I saw numerous joggers, none of whom looked particularly joyful. In fact, one, a senior council official, looked utterly knackered. I know I have complained about pains in the rear end while I have been cycling, but jogging is torture, pure and simple. Tried it once, couldn't walk properly for a fortnight. Didn't take much to persuade me I should avoid it, thank goodness skylarks aren't so easily dissuaded from making an effort.

I've joined the Dead End Kids

The no-nonsense state primary school I went to many years ago in Kent was staffed by teachers for whom delivering occasional corporal punishment was part of the way things were. For we pupils it was just part of life at school and, generally speaking, we knew the rules. Rule one: don't misbehave; rule two: if you do misbehave, don't get caught; rule three: if you do get caught put up with the punishment. I don't know that it did us any harm, although I'm not sure it did us any good, either, it was just the way of the world. Anyway, one of the teachers would warn that if we continued to transgress we would end up as a "Dead End Kid". This was not a reflection on our career prospects, but an accurate prophesy of the walloping he'd give your backside with a big gym slipper (plimsolls or what in North Devon I have learned to call daps). In fact, in North Devon it might be more accurate to say he'd give you a dap with a dap.

Anyway, I haven't been walloped, but my backside is sore because I've been out cycling the Tarka Trail again. Bideford to Fremington Quay and back again all in one go. Now I know many people are not remotely bothered by such distances, but for me, towards the end I was struggling to remember when I had substituted my supposedly comfy saddle for a piece of rough-hewn timber. I find walking and cycling to be activities that allow me to mull things over, but as I neared the end of my ride the only thing I could focus on was my tender nether regions. However, all this was worth it when, not far from Westleigh Cross, a stoat emerged from the tall grass at the side of the Tarka Trail. I think my relatively silent approach took it by surprise. It popped out, skittered around in a tight circle and disappeared back into the grass. Brilliant, in fact so brilliant, I might even be tempted back out on the bike again this weekend. Will I never learn?

I met my old lover, the other day

Actually, it wasn't my old lover - it was a building I had once worked in. In fact, I worked in this building for two decades and then we moved to somewhere new. The old building lay empty for a while, before becoming a restaurant, which is how I ended up in it again. I think there is a line in Don Henley's song Boys of Summer which goes something like "don't look back, you can never look back". But sometimes you can't help a backward glance, and, a bit like meeting someone you were once close to, you think "Wow you weren't like that when we were together". So it was that I, and the group of colleagues I was with, spent a large proportion of our time in this building discussing changes that had been made. We shouldn't have been too surprised, it is now a restaurant, after all.

But buildings are powerful repositories of memory and none of us could help but look at what had happened to the place where we spent so many of our waking hours. We laughed and reminisced and it was difficult not to recall the people we had worked with who were no longer with us, either because they had moved on, or because they had been "called to glory", as the Salvation Army has it. Our reason for being there at all was because two valued colleagues had been made redundant and no doubt they will form part of the roll call of people we remember with affection.

The truth is that as things stand anyone, at any time, could find themselves out of work and maybe the best they can hope for is to be remembered with affection. I've been to a few leaving do's recently for people who have chosen to leave and for people who have been made redundant and the gap they leave behind takes some time to fill. I suspect that, for me, the impact of their departure has been made greater because of the loss of my dad earlier this year. No doubt, I will get over it.

As for old lovers, is it possible to make a comparison with a restaurant in the middle of Barnstaple? Probably not, although one of my old lovers (and we are talking about a very long time ago) became a lesbian and is that so different to the transition from office to restaurant? Anyway, the title for this posting came from a Paul Simon song called Still crazy after all these years, which somehow seems appropriate. I still feel slightly at odds with the rest of the world, but at least I'm more at peace with it.

Mrs Slocombe's pussy is stuffed

Blimey, first Michael Jackson, then Molly Sugden. Who will be next? I was just on my way back from the beach when they announced Molly Sugden's death on the radio. The brief obituary referred to roles in The Liver Birds and, as Mrs Slocombe, in Are You Being Served? It was in that character that she exploited the British love of double entendre with endless references to her 'pussy'. The extract on the radio had Mrs Slocombe saying that something had been so frightening her 'pussy's hairs stood on end'. Ha ha! I'm not sure I even found that particularly funny when I was a teenager watching that sort of stuff on telly. Even so, pussy is a great word, as is beaver, and for a comedy fruit moment you can't beat plums.

I wonder if Molly Sugden ever came to North Devon. I could see her having done a show at the old Victoria Pavilion in Ilfracombe. I suspect not, she would be more of a Torquay sort of person. So, Molly Sugden, may you and your pussy rest in pieces.

By the way, the man in the red Renault Laguna estate is continuing his non-mobile lifestyle in one of the lay-bys on the A39. He had his windows down when I went past this afternoon, but he still must have been baking.