All Is Not Lost

Today is Green Britain Day, as promoted by a carbon-free and lycra-less Vicky Pendleton, so naturally I’m keen to do my bit and I cycle into work.



I might even have given her a run for her money had I seen her cycling on my commute in that combo.

Oh dear. L emails me to say she's going to have a whinge and advises me to not read any further. So I don't but I assume this means she didn't get to the gym this morning. On the plus side she appears to be on her bike, so all is not lost.

In her next email, which doesn’t contain any unsuitable content warnings, she says she’ll have to do so much fitness work tomorrow to catch up that she'll be crawling into the Beer Festival and landing head first in a pint of beer. That’s as it should be. All fitness regimes should finish head first in a pint of beer. It’s as life was intended.

Here’s an odd story. A family have resorted to very unorthodox methods in order to try and be reunited with their pet Labrador Simon, who has gone AWOL. Their novel approach was to leave a scent trail for him, leading back to their house. How did they leave this scent trail? Well the same way dogs do and the whole family have apparently been contributing. It’s innovative for sure but their local council weren’t terribly impressed.

They have stressed that they didn’t use the direct approach favoured by late night revellers in Nottingham City Centre but instead put a little bit in a bottle and then diluted it with water before spraying it on the streets.

Vets are not optimistic the plan would succeed but if it works, the flood gates could open...

On my way home, as I wheel my bike across the bridge out of Pride Park, I am accosted by two teenage cyclists coming the other way. They don’t seem about to mug me and instead greet me in what appears to be jovial tones.

‘Whazzarup’ one of them says to me.

Well at first I didn’t think they were talking to me but they were. OMG, is that Albanian? Belarusian? Perhaps it’s Chav? or just Teenage? I never was any good at languages. I do what I always do abroad and just return the greeting verbatim, offering a ‘Whazzarup’ in return. Phew. It works. They smile and seem happy with this.

‘Chezzerez’ they offer or something like that but I’ve already pedalled away, hoping I wasn’t too rude.

Then as I approach Nottingham at the busy Priory Island a woman steps out into the road in front of me. I miss her by millimetres; the chap in the white van in the next lane almost has more luck. Her husband will be asking her tonight how she got the Mercedes logo imprinted on her forehead but WTF, there’s a pedestrian crossing literally five metres away. I’d have hated to have had to have cycled past another one those road side memorials every day.

All is not lost. L has her One-2-One gym session and earns her towel. Free water bottle last week, towel this week, t-shirt next week. This must be why the council has had to cut back on leisure centre opening hours because they’ve spent their entire budget on gym related freebies. True, it’s only half a towel, if you stick two together you’d have a proper grown-up towel but it’s bigger than the handkerchief sized thing we were expecting.

After gym, she runs to meet me at the pub. So as I said, all was not lost. She sends me with a bag of clothes for her to change into. She obviously trusts me not to unpack the clothes she’s selected and swap them for a short skirt in instead... hmmm tempting.