No cicadas in my porridge....just treacle

Here I am looking at this big pan of porridge. It’s coming closer and I’m at the right end of the breakfast table, the near end. The other ten cyclists, especially the tapering souls preparing for la Marmotte, are further back down the line. They’ve probably hi-jacked bigger bowls than me……anyway…..

…. as I’m squeezing the treacle bottle (liberally) and mixing the gold steam in with Guy’s Scottish offering from the kitchen I have this twinge, well sort of pang of concern about Edward Scissorhands. I’m out in the Alps, up on the Col d’Ornon, and my mind is back in the office. Ridiculous. He sits on my left and his parting shot was “While you’re off I’m going over to the other side, I’m becoming one of them.”

So I’m visualising him in pink when I get back, with ear-rings perhaps. I’m picturing a Buffy-look. Certainly not a return of Tamara Press. That would be a surprise. But anyway I can take in my stride, like already on my right sits a guy who was previously known as Marilyn (he keeps telling me like it’s a fable) so I’m pretty broad-minded over these things.

Mr Sorehead has moved on and is now working in the Middle East and he wants to reclaim his spam. We’re due to move office and we’ve started packing and we’ve unlocked a big metal cabinet at the back and found 163 tins. He’s welcome to the lot.

You’ll remember Buttons, she with the goats in the loft in Putney and an angry neighbour with no shrubs as Button’s midnight forays (with a head torch that was once mine) to smuggle in greenery having denuded every bush with greenery within 300 yards.

Well, there’s been a riot and now there’s something of a make-up going on. You heard about that charity “durbar” in Richmond? No? Well it was an auction where they were looking for bids for this pile of elephant dung, enough to fertilise half of Kent. Well that would make things grow….well, regrow.

The neighbours sent Buttons and she got chatting to Lakshmi Mittal, steel billionaire….like rich but sadly ignorant of the existence of Contract Journal (well until Buttons collared him, that is) and he heard her plight and put her in touch with the elephant dung provider.

The result? She’s got a big barrow and has half the bushes sitting in shxx. And she’s bought a mountain bike.

I must just tell you that when we were having supper that night back in Sean-Jean-de-Maurienne at the end of my big long charity ride, that 13-hour marathon in the saddle, we were 30 at a long trestle table or three and I was sat reasonably near mine-host Jonny Wates as he had the red wine bottles and was splashing it about liberally and then I’m getting a hissing in my ear.

It was the hotel patron. Who is that girl? Well I hardly knew the answer, except that she was awesome, like she’d done the entire route thus far without being big on cycling beforehand. We all recognise her, they said. Well he said they said. But I certainly didn’t.

So I ask about. This Chrissie girl, who is she? Steve giggles and says he calls her Determinator. I work out the joke. She’s German. DE…Germany. And she’s so focussed. Somebody in the know says she is Chrissie Dietsche and is a world champion-type at something else like surfboarding. No wonder the guys with eyes think they’ve seen her face on the box.

Julius has had Appollo Screed (otherwise known as Appollo Creed) down at his hovel in mid-Kent (if it had windows I would call it a house) for the weekend. I don’t believe it….they’ve been getting themselves more and more wound up with my story (Twinkle-eye says I should say post) about the duck-gun and the nuts and bolts and the wooden punt on the farm back in Northumberland. They’ve Googled loads of bumff and have now started making one themselves.

You start with a thick plank and then axe the wood out of the inside by hand with this special tool. An adze. Well, one of these Japanese women who chase after Julius must have tracked him down because there’s now this video clip on his website of him stripped to the waist in the privacy of the back garden. Working.

It seems that the Japanese national tourist office is being inundated with enquiries. So they want to set up helicopter flights to Kent as well as to here at Sutton. She’s been asking HSS to price scaffolding and stuff so they can build this secret observatory. Hey, this is confidential. Don’t let Julius know.

The Welsh Woman is back but the bad news is..…she’s not been cured. It’s failed. The private tuition in Italy to learn to sing in tune, well it didn’t work out. She was down at the bottom end of Sutton High Street, this was yesterday, and the great unwashed, the general public and our people, all came running up the hill, hands to their ears, this is Carolyn and the rest. I didn’t get it at first as I’m pretty deaf in one ear and I was stood facing outwards.

That reminds me, and I’m not so deaf on this one. I’ve been teased for years about not being able to hear crickets on a hot summer’s day. The kids could point them out for me, no, they’re not there. Anyway, here I am in France, driving southwards back down the peage to Marseilles airport on that blistering Friday afternoon. The windows are all full down. The hire-fire Megane is nipping along at 150kph and what do I hear….this noise. Incessant. Just like house burglar alarm but everywhere…on, off, on, off.

It’s millions of cicadas. All singing/scratching/whatever in harmony. Then I’m stopped in the blister-hot motorway service station and it’s more-so. I’ve never heard these things before in my entire life and it knocks you over. There in every tree. If they can get themselves in harmony like this, why can’t the lady from Wales? Perhaps I could catch her a few.

I live in a cul-de-sec. The newspaper says that’s a problem. Statistically, people who live in cul-de-sacs weigh 6lb more than others who live in proper streets and lands and whatever. So anyone who wants to go tapering in order to ride the Marmotte or a big cyclosportif like that had best not start off from a cul-de-sec. You listening Dave?

Despite the warning, I have to say that I like living in a cul-de-sac.

Amazon have delivered my music, the CD. I’ve got Liam O’Flynn at last. It took well over two months. Also, I’ve got some Greek red wine. It’s lovely. It complements the palate when I’m playing my 4-hour special video, the one of the Tour de France doing Stage 16, my stage. It was Stef Steffanou who wanted me to try it. Cheers Stef.

Oh…..more adventure to announce….and I’m in danger of moving myself into post-dinasuar mode. You already know I signed up to TalkTalk, that was 12 June. Well after serious discussions with a guy they have, this is to a call centre in South Africa, as I found I’d been billed for broadband but didn’t have it….I got this cardboard box through the post with all the necessary gubbins. Hey, this is next day service. None of your Amazon two-month wait here. Pretty cool TalkTalk.

So I’ve looking at the cardboard box, well at the CD in the box. All the instructions are on the CD, it says, but my computer won’t play ball, the CD hole is a failure. So I told Annett and she’s coming to sort it. Lee as well, he’s also in IT and he’s a happening guy too. He’s blown his shoulder apart in a mountain-bike crash so I hope he’s mending up.

Before I go, I have to tell you this snippet…just picture this. Here I am sitting in Marseille airport. Everything is in place: the charity ride is done and the Eurocar hire-mobile is returned. Mind, my 1000 euros deposit doesn’t get handed back but I understand there’s nothing to get alarmed at so I’m cool. The hard black bike bag and the luggage has gone off somewhere and I’m reading l’Equipe and thinking about a second coffee.

The only couple sitting here about, like me in this little patch of shade, are my age, well OK 50-ish. I’ve never seen them before in my life but ask them the time. Then the guy hives off to the counter and the lady turns round and says: “How did you got on? Did you manage the ride?” So I start to talk, as you do, but I sort of feel this is really strange.