Siren

The day slowly starts

A sleepy hand reaches

To silence the alarm

All good intentions 

In our corrupted hearts

Slave to habit teaches

Where is the harm

Low willpower inventions 

Taste bud arrow darts

The tongue beseeches

Forget that pious qualm

No momentary suspensions 

A Siren’s song imparts

Weakening resistance like leeches

Nerve endings lacking calm

Spiritual needs dimensions 

The shortest route she charts

Our own will she quickly bleaches

A cup taken in the palm

No chance for abstentions 

She quickly works her arts

Submission as she preaches

Slave to her witchcraft charm

Coffee to relieve the tensions


 

Folly

 

Years ago I remember my mother shouting at me to ‘Take those wet clothes of before you catch your death of cold.’ During the winter months, when I was a child, I had to wear a vest and a liberty bodice to make sure that I did not get cold. I remember roasting at school where there were radiators in those old Victorian school class rooms. When my brother left home to work in London she would write to him to tell him he must wear a vest to keep his chest warm. 

These days in winter, for every twenty or so school children on their way to school there will be one ‘Hard Case’ boy wearing just a short sleeved shirt. I always smile when I see this and think ‘He’ll regret that when he’s older and started to get arthritis’. 

This morning, I am smiling again about the stupidity of hanging around in wet clothes or not having taken a coat or at least a cardigan when the weather looks dodgy. Except this time it is somebody who is old enough to know better that I am smiling about, and that idiot, is me. 

This morning, having been away at Windsor for the weekend racing, I have unpacked both of our race back packs that we took our kit to the event in. Everything was soaked through and not smelling that sweetly after staying in our van overnight in that sopping state. You lay the things you need out in the transition ready to put on after the swim leg, to change into your bike shoes and socks in my case. Put your helmet and sun glasses on and away on your bike for 25 miles. Then change to trainers and off on the run. 

Of course yesterday it rained pretty much most of the day and I rode my bike in a thin short sleeved top and equally light shorts. I got well and truly drenched and then put the soggy trainers on for the run. Afterwards, returning to transition having finished my race I put the coat I had worn to the race, several hours before, on over my soaking wet race kit. The coat was only a little bit damp and the cap that I had not worn on the run was very wet but I still put it on because two layers of damp clothing are still warmer than one layer of damp clothing, oh and the luxury of finding that my lycra Capri pants were dry, so I piled them on too. Then I went out in the pouring rain on the course to give support to my husband who still had two laps of the run still to do.  

When he finished the race as well, we collected our bikes and kit and walked a mile in the rain to our van and put out bikes away in the dry. We then drove around for bit with the heater blasting at full pelt to try to dry our clothes on our bodies before the Award Ceremony an hour and a half later since I was an age  group winner. It was funny then, when I asked the race elite winner, Olympian Stuart Hayes, to have a photo taken with me, because he apologised for being soaking wet having just thrown huge prizes of gallons of beer over each other on the podium as they do, beer this time rather than bubbly. 

When Steve and I got back to our hotel, we had hot drinks and a hot bath and got in bed for a couple of hours TV in the afternoon until we warmed up again. So Mum if you were watching, I know you would have given me a good slap for my stupidity yesterday. No vest, no liberty bodice, stewed in wet clothes for hours and old enough to know better.

 

Doing what we do.

 

After registration and racking our bikes for the Sunday morning that we would spend competing in Windsor Triathlon, we went out to lunch in a restaurant that is one of our favourite eating spots, Browns. We have been to get our pre Windsor race meal in Browns as long as we have been doing the event. It’s good for both of us because Steve can get a pasta dish and I can get my preferred meal of grilled fish with mashed potatoes. I got pasta’d out very early in our triathlon lives. I do occasionally have a pasta dish but not before a race and not often.

We rested most of the afternoon and evening and watched the final episode of Season 2 of Blood Line on Netflicks on my computer. Without giving anything away… I did not see THAT coming! Blow me down with a feather. What a great series it is and a fan-bloomin’-tastic cast. That boy playing Nolan (and Nolan when he was younger, and his father when he was young) is sure to be a BIG star. Look out for Owen Teague. 

After that we did go to bed early since my start time was 6.24 am with at least a ten minute walk to the start from transition. Steve set the alarm on his phone for 4.30 but it did not go off until 4.50! That is another mystery, or is it? I had a diabolical night, between about 12.15 am and 3.00 am I was up out of bed and into the bathroom every twenty minutes or so. I don’t need to explain that this meant that Steve also had a bad night. So there is the other possibility that the alarm did go off at the set time, but that we had slept right through it. 

 Whilst I was throwing up and giving myself a dilly of a headache to boot; it crossed my mind that maybe this was not a stomach upset but a return of the dreadful pre-race nerves I used to suffer with. The reason I say this is that a number of people have been talking to me as if they are concerned because I still do triathlon and the training necessary for it. The more folk have expressed these concerns, the more they have made think about it myself. I see the worry. I know that I have more aches and pains. I know how old I am! Yet, and yet, I still love doing it, its immense fun. It is quite hard and I am finding it more tiring than it was. Let it be known, that I have heard what you have said, but you have not heard me say that it makes me happy.  

I looked at Accuweather before we went to bed last night and it was not good news. To confirm the forecast it did rain. It rained more and more as the morning went on. I wore one of my Saucony lite short sleeve shirts with matching pair of light weight shorts, very comfortable. I don’t like Tri-suits.

 

When you finish racing you can get an instant print out of your times. Just put your number in and a little piece of paper winds out like an old fashioned bus ticket.

Steve was in a hurry to get this check of our times because when I saw him out on the run after I had finished (he started 81minutes after me). I yelled at him thinking he would be pleased that I have a 1.32.12 bike time. I felt quite sorry for him because he loves it when I do well, he is my coach after all but that time was nine seconds faster that his time. The additional fact he saw on the little piece of paper was that both of my transitions were faster too. He was not comforted by the other details that he had a better swim, run and total time. 

Please ignore theses results if you do not do our sport. If however you do, I know for certain that you will find them as interesting as we find checking on other people times. Triathletes love result sheets, it is a common failing with all my sport friends 

Name     Swim         T1              Bike               T2            Run                Total

Daf        33.07       10.12            1.32.12           4.11         1.18.20           3.38.02

Steve     25.49       10.19            1.32.21           5.13         1.09.06           3.22.48 

As final remarks about this race time of mine; I have over the years taken over four hours for this event a few times, so I am very pleased and Steve is too really, though as he said when I pointed out that he was fifteen minutes faster than me…. It’s not the 30 minute difference he would normally expect. I did win my age group and the most useful prize was an entry for another race.

 

The Lift Kiss

 

To call it passion would be to exaggerate

As sweetly softly lips upon lips we kiss

A practised habit of forty years to date

Enjoyed in happy situation past and of late

Each with the other prepare to reminisce 

Our eyes engage before this loving meeting

Less physical since arms are not employed

Just a few seconds because time is fleeting

The start of a tryst this most private greeting

So is the brief ‘Lift Kiss’ shared and enjoyed 

We secretly hold this tryst ‘twix one another

Whenever we stand side by side in a hotel lift

Usually holding cases or a bike in a cover

Husband and wife who were mistress and lover

See younger days as thru’ a memories sift


 

Mental Activity

I am a firm believer in activity. Not just physical activity but taking plenty of mental exercise too. Once every three weeks, I bowl along to Littlehampton High Street to have my nails done. It is sheer torture. Sitting still for about forty five minutes is almost painful to me. I prefer one of the guys in there to do my nails because they don’t try to talk to me as the girls do. The girls ask for co-operation. With a boy, I can just sit and think about something I’m working on; meanwhile a grip of steel manipulates my hands. I get funny looks. Sitting still is difficult. 

As long as I can remember, I have always enjoyed writing and as a teenager I had pen pals that I got from the NME.  Sheaves of paper would go off to each of them every week. I wrote to my brother when he was in the RAF in Germany, I also wrote postcards to radio stations requesting music for him. 

I read Mslexia magazine because it is aimed at women like me who enjoy writing. I find it most encouraging the way they try to get their readers to make writing a habit. Start with a simple goal it says…. Ten lines a day. It soon grows to a page per day. There are adverts for courses, weekends in peaceful places that they hope will inspire. For me it is a solitary thing. I work best when Steve is out. He cannot help disturbing me. Mslexia is full of competitions too, I send poems and flash fiction in, probably a few a month, just for motivation, although I did read a comment from an article in there this month that said ‘Entering poetry competitions is like queuing up for a slap!’ 

There are strict guide lines for competitions and I always read the rules very carefully, I think it is worthwhile. I take a shot at all sorts of things because it is like having a tutor setting you a test. I do rise to a test. It was a shame really that I had to leave school at fourteen to start earning something toward the household costs. 

In May, unfortunately in a way, I spotted one that requested a written work for which there were no restrictions at all. ‘You write it and we’ll read it’ they claimed. No line limit, no page limit, no theme, a modest entry fee but the deadline was close. Like a lamb to the slaughter. My entry took me three weeks of hours per day; it ended up at 47,427 words on 108 pages. It was hard work, and it gave me a few headaches, but it was most satisfying. 

That is how I believe you should tackle any aspect of life. It’s how you should work at your sport. It’s how you should work at relationships. Pity it doesn’t work for me with housework. Housework gets in the way of everything. If you let it!

 

 

 

Windsor Triathlon Weekend

 

It would be nice if the fine weather held over this weekend, it’s always good if its sunny on a weekend away. Windsor Triathlon is something of a tradition for Steve and I, we must have done it twenty three or four times. We did the very first Windsor event that there ever was, and it was very different to the route it has now. The run then went quietly through fields and paths on the north side of the River Thames in those days and poor Steve used to suffer with the dust and flying pollen. It did have a pre race party in the Leisure Centre in the early days and a really good, goodie bag.  

The swim route changed only last year making it a lot easier than it was on all the other occasions, when most of the swim section was a struggle against the current. From the start one had to cross the centre of the river and swim up to the second bridge for the turn buoy and then have a much easier swim from there to the finish.  Now there is a ten minute walk to the start from the transition and the swim starts at the leisure centre giving a far less arduous swim right up to the bridge over to Eton from Windsor, turning there and finishing where it always did before. 

The bike route is also changed and there is a very long run for the ‘Bike Out’ that goes back almost, to where the swim now starts. Once out on the roads it is pretty much the same as ever and it is a nice ride that goes out towards the motorway and then is a pretty country route all the way until you have returned through the marvellous Windsor Great Park and into the town.

For myself, I have to say the I much preferred the old run route that was three laps and after Windsor High Street and the turn at Queen Victoria’s Statue at the Castle entrance it made a sort of cross, the last leg of which took the athletes right up Eton High Street to the famous school where some of the pupils manned the water station.

Now I am sad that that quaint street has been taken out of the course and I can only think that it is because of complaints from the posh folk who live there. Now you have to run further along Datchet Road to the turn and that is not so attractive. 

However, it will be managed superbly as usual and a great fun day will be had by everybody, competitors and spectators alike. I simply love this race and have tried hard never to miss it. There have only been two occasions I think, that I have not been on the start line; the first time it was because the event clashed with a World Championships somewhere else in the world and the other time was because I had a leg and arm in plaster. Windsor Triathlon makes a great weekend destination. BRING IT ON!

 

 

 

 

Ross, at the CFT last night

Yesterday was a bit special. I had booked as soon as the ‘Friends’ booking period opened with ‘Ross’ as a main aim for the season. A big name always gets the theatre goers excited and this Terrance Rattigan 1960’s play would obviously be packed.

 

Adding Joseph Fiennes as the star, playing the heroic legend T.E.Lawrence, otherwise known to the world by the nom de guerre Lawrence of Arabia, made sure the Chichester Festival Theatre was a smash hit.

 

Joseph Fiennes could not have been more perfect to play the less than perfect arrogant, strangely withdrawn and troubled Aircraftman Ross. The whole of the all male cast gave excellent performances. Michael Feast, Paul Freeman, Nicholas Prasad, Eben Figueiredo and Brendan Hooper were all superb, what a great cast. 

We had never seen the play before but had seen the film with Peter O’Toole playing Lawrence creating an image that is in the heads of many people because of him. Joseph Fiennes portrayal of this hard to understand man, with so many contradictions, made the character seem less romantic, deeper and more troubled and complex, as I saw him. This is a great production, though quite hard work in a lot of ways. There is nothing fluffy and romantic about this version at all, it is tense, worrying and most unpleasant at times as it progresses. Thank God in his Heaven for the moments of humour. There was plenty to talk about on the way home and plenty to think about too and not all of it nice. It was, as the standing ovation displayed to the cast, an excellent evening of true theatre.  

The ‘We’ I referred to earlier, were my husband Steve and our friend and fellow triathlete Anthony Towers and yours truly of course. Our seats were in row D and had a clear view of the super set, seemingly simple but with so many scene changes appearing like magic actually through the stage, it was a wonder in itself and also a wonder, that during those changes, that appeared to be carried out by cast members, that there were no disappearances into the various dark holes. 

One of my theatrical foibles is that I get very cross with actors who have been known to the public previously as great singers. Peter Polycarpou is brilliant as Sheik Auda Abu Tayi; I have to admit that, but you see, I loved him to bits as John in Miss Saigon singing the powerful Bui Doi song. He was also in Pyjama Game a couple of season ago at the CFT, long before that he was the bloke who was always in prison in Birds of a Feather yonks years earlier.

The three of us had also enjoyed a very nice meal in Brasserie Blanc before the performance. Good value from the new summer Menu Fixe.