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A few things either aren’t going to plan or are taking too long, at the moment. I got that sax the had been “recently serviced” from Wales,and I’ve had to immediately put it in for a £350 complete overhaul. Not only the expense, but because of the Covid backlog he said it would be 3 to 4 weeks. It’s been a fortnight and I’m sick of waiting. I was reminded of Professor Henry Higgins’ observation on the Welsh (from Pygmalion/ My Fair Lady) Another poor decision was booking a week off work. I thought as Wendy was off I might as well take some of the holidays I’ve accrued and we could have some time together. Then, at the last minute I thought we could book a mini break. Ha! I’d booked the Bank Holiday Monday off and then the kids were off on holidays. The UK is on the international Lepers List so everyone has to holiday over here. Everywhere wanted stupid money and the motorways are clogged. Idiot. Ah well, we did a lot of local day trips, Arley Hall and that deer place and such. I got some gardening inspiration from Arley. I’ve never like rhododendrons, big, ugly, waxy leaved bushes with blousey purple flowers. We went about a week or so after the prime display, I’m guessing, but every bush was festooned with flowers. And they were all in the shade of the trees. Ah, the penny drops! Then we saw some azaleas. Smaller leaves, smaller bush, masses of flower sized flowers, still in the shade, and massively scented. Perfect for the shady spot at the top of the garden. They didn’t sell them at the garden shop at Arley so I had to track them down and order off the internet. They like ericaceous soil so I’ve prepared a hole, now waiting impatiently, again. Also waiting on my hostas. I bought a batch of 10 roots, supposed to be of named varieties. they grow fairly large so I’m going to have to rearrange the ones I want to keep when I know which is which. But so far the foliage looks pretty much the same. Either solid green, or a contrasting edge. No sign of the two for which I bought the collection. Hurry up! I want to get everything dug into it’s final position. Something else is Boris. I was looking down the garden a few days ago when I saw something moving about. It was a dirty great rat! I wasn’t bothered, just a big mouse with bad PR as far as I was concerned. Then Wendy saw me watching it and freaked out. She was convinced it was going to scale the wall, leap in through the open window and scurry across her face while she slept, just for spite. I tried to talk her down, but she was adamant they are evil vermin. I looked them up and apparently they carry diseases, some of which are lethal to humans. Oh, fair […]

It’s been a good day so I might as well record it. The last time I was on Trainer Road, (2 days ago) I was hanging on by my fingernails. At the end of each section I was out of air, my legs were slowing, I was standing in places just to keep the pedals turning. It was horrendous. I thought I’d lost all my fitness. Today I did a 1 hour 15 minute session, containing four 9 minute blocks under/over maximum. You start at 95% of FTP (maximum sustainable power) then ramp up for a minute to 110%, take a minute to ramp down, and repeat. The evil genius of under/overs is as soon as you go ‘over’ you are loading your legs up with lactic acid, then you slowly ramp down to under. Then you have a minute (still at 95% of max) to clear the burn before doing it again. It’s tough going. Today I just did it. I knew I was going to. There was no question of quitting. It was painful and hard, but manageable. Then I went out for a run straight after. (Two disciplines together is called a brick session.) The thing with bricks is your legs are already shot and it’s misery to get them started again. Not so today. I felt fresh as a daisy for the first 3 miles. I decided to do 10 miles. Also today I was testing fitting a battery pack thing to my running watch to recharge on the hoof, for my upcoming 24 hour race. So I got to 5 miles, after letting the battery run down recording the bike and the run, then stopped and tested it out. It took me a minute or so to figure out the best way of doing it, but it worked a treat. Charged it up and didn’t interfere with the data recording. That was a good win. Then I started running back. Because I hadn’t paused it the watch was saying I was on for a 14 minute mile. I’d been doing easy, just under 9 m/m’s. Not having that! I legged it for the mile and got it back to a sub 10 m/m. My maths isn’t good enough to work out what speed I’d been doing, even if I could have measured the stop time precisely, so I carried on into the next mile at the same pace to see what I’d been doing. 7.25! On a brick run! It started slipping into 7.30 so I upped the pace, 7.20. Hang on, could I go sub 7? I nearly killed myself, but yes, 6.57! I will well take that, on a brick! I paid for it a bit on the last two miles, but still kept it under 9m/m’s. That was the best bit of training I’ve done in ages. I was dead chuffed with pulling a sub 7 out of the middle of a brick session. Other good news; last night I was looking […]

I’ve been bashing away at my clarinet and quite enjoying it. I made it Covid friendly, in case I need in real life lessons. It has a nice sound and you need to hold good embouchure and remember proper fingering. So all good practice. But obviously what I really want is a sax. I’ve been trying to force myself to learn time. How hard can it be? 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, or 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4? So, so hard. My brain refuses to multitask. I can either read the notes, count the time, or do the tonguing. As soon as do one I lose the other two. But I am persevering with a bloody minded determination. When it finally clicks I’ll have this cracked. I’ve been keeping an eye on the second hand sites for Bauhaus Walstein sax’s. They are a Chinese copy of a much better brand and they punch well above their weight and price tag. The thing with the Bauhaus has always been quality control. You just don’t know if you’re going to get one like I had, which was superb, or a Friday afternoon job from a different factory, but still with the Bauhaus name. There have been several (ranging from £375 to £575) listed but none were quite right for me. For about £800 I could get a nearly new, bottom of the range, student Yamaha sax, but then you are looking at upgrading at some point. And to be honest, the reviews haven’t been that great. Which is something of a shock, as Yamaha is a benchmark. Then I came across an odd one on Gumtree. A Grassi alto sax. I’m not sure why I paid it any attention at first because I’d never heard of them. I did some research. They were an Italian brand, some say this particular model was the best they did, and on a sax forum someone was asking whether to get a decent model, second hand Yamaha or the Grassi, and it was a landslide for the Grassi. I looked some more and apparently it’s “based” (cloned shamelessly) on a top of the range Selmer saxophone. Those go for about £6,000. This particular one was listed for £450! I looked on eBay and there are three of them listed, the cheapest is £1,200. I MUST HAVE IT! It’s nearly my birthday so I treated myself. Don’t I deserve love? And saxophones? Obviously it was for sale in the back end of beyond. At the bottom of the Brecon Beacons, South Wales. I’d just fitted a new back tyre (which you are supposed to run in for 100 miles before you start throwing the bike about as the oil has to scrub off the tyre) so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone and ride down there. 3½ hours down there, got my sax, 3½ hours back. 380 miles round trip. And off course, as soon as I hit Wales it […]

We’ve had a frantic few days. Well, mainly Wendy has. Obviously the first priority was getting the car MOT-ed before the insurance changed their mind, or we got pulled by the plod. Wendy has decided to own the problem of the car. Up until now she has driven it, I’ve had it serviced, MOT-ed, etc. Not, as it turns out, very successfully. Rather than be in the dark as to the status of her car, she’s decided to do it herself now. Which means she’s had to do everything for the first time, on her own (as I’ve been working) and stressed out of her head. She took the car for it’s MOT. Because of Covid she wasn’t allowed to wait, as I usually do, so she had to go for a walk for an hour. When she got back, despite me having gone over every tyre for tread depth, every light,the wipers, horn, screen wash, fluffy dice (OK, no fluffy dice) it still failed. They said there was a dangerous bulge on a tyre. I hope that was on the inside, because I didn’t see it. She went home stressed and told me. I said if she took it to the nearest tyre fitting place (Kwikfit) she could get back to the garage for the MOT certificate the same day. They kept her there for an hour and 15 minutes. Still madly stressed. Which meant the garage was shut so she had to get her MOT the next day, still with some minors. A chip in the windscreen, and slightly damaged valves on the on of the back tyres. Rather than mess about we ordered a new set of back tyres to be fitted at home, and we’ve got someone coming around the fix the chip. The tyres were done this afternoon, the windscreen gets fixed on Saturday. That’s it then, the car is MOT perfect. Wendy has noticed the aircon is only blowing cool instead of freezing so she’s booked it in for a re-gas on Thursday. Then it’s a perfect car for a couple of years more. Wendy has bravely adopted the motto “Be scared, do it anyway.” All these new things are destruct testing that resolve. The doctor upped her pills but, whether due to the pills or the bump and consequent faffing about, she’s feeling more stressed. She said one of the possible side effects of the anti-anxiety pill is increased levels of anxiety. I’m not an actual doctor, but I can see flaws in that medication regime. I’ve had a hugely productive couple of days. After my ride to Chorley to work (40 minutes, lots of it at *cough* motorway speeds) I noticed the front end still didn’t feel right. It wasn’t falling into corners but it was starting to wriggle at *cough* speed. I was worried it had the potential to turn into a tank slapper and throw me off. I couldn’t leave it like that so I decided on a course of […]

I’ve often heard that the only reason women can bear to go through with childbirth a second time is that they sort of forget about the unbearable misery of the first time. I’m fairly sure the same principle applies to motorcycle mechanic-ing. The front end on my bike turns in weirdly so I ordered new head bearings from the States. They arrived last week and I rang my local bike garage to get them fitted. He said because of the backlog from lockdown it was going to be the end of May at the earliest. Meh. I looked online to see how hard the job was. There was a video of a mechanic showing how to do it on a Kawasaki. He said you could buy a bunch of specialist tools, or you can do it without, then showed you how. It looked like an bit of an ordeal, but do-able. So on Sunday, forgetting past misery, I set to. Everyone agreed it was a faff. To get to the job you have to strip the fairing off, take the front mudguard off, the front brakes, the front wheel, the handlebars, head thingy and risers, and the forks. Undo a bolt at the top of the stem, take out the two nuts and a washer then drop the stem. *Then* you start. Inside the headstock are two cups that the bearing sit in. Obviously these have to wedged in beyond any danger of movement. Which means extracting them is terrible job. Not to worry, said the video, inside the headstock are two grooves in the barrel so you can just place an old screwdriver in there and hit each side until it eventually drops out. Nope. On the Kawasaki there are two grooves, on the Honda it a smooth barrel with zero purchase for hitting the bearing cups. Oh very dear. The bike stripped down to this and no way to proceed. Luckily at some point in the past I had bought a toughened steel rod to bash stuff out with. What I had to do was beat and bend it into shape then grind it into a thin blade at the end using the angle grinder. Not big or clever to look at, but that was the difference between me carrying on or being stopped dead. And blubbing like a girl. Then it was just a matter of hitting it with a hammer. Repeatedly. Again. And again. And again. Forever. Eventually I got the cups out. I bashed the bearing off the stem, which was supposed to be the hardest job but was comparatively simple. Then just to beat new cups back in. Again on the Kwak it looked a simple job. On the Honda the brake pipes run under the headstock so there is no room to swing a hammer. It took me all day. I started about 10.30, finished about 19.20. I’ve bought some fork oil and seals and I was going to do them while they […]