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.