Life is cyclical but not for me!

March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb for me.

Professionally, I managed to all but finish a very thorough update of my A to Z of Everything for an October publication and am now eagerly awaiting the General Election results to complete the task.

Socially, I was flying around on my bike and with two solid months of cycling behind me I was beginning to leave my fellow Crawley Wheelers in my wake up the hills – the ability to climb hills bizarrely being the benchmark for respect within any cycling club. I say bizarrely because we only have one hill climb race per year so the ability to beat another rider to the top of a hill is far less important than the ability to hug a wheel or turn a huge gear or win the sprint to a post!
I had intended to ride to France last weekend with several of my team-mates but disaster struck mid- March. In an effort to ensure I would not struggle on the French ride to Boulogne-sur-Mer I rode a 100-mile training ride – my first ever!

After completing the ride quite comfortably I retired to bed only to wake up shivering an hour later. The shivering turned to fever and a feeling of dehydration and on rising I realised I had a very painful swelling in my nether regions. To cut a long story short I had managed to pick up some sort of infection and although various antibiotics prevented anything too nasty occurring I have been left with a rather painful calloused lump that simply will not disburse so is going to have to be removed surgically. So after managing to negotiate the cold winter months relatively painlessly (I did come a cropper on the ice in February) I am now off the bike as we approach the spring and summer months.

In mid-April a friend from Purley died and I was asked to arrange the funeral and put his house in order so to speak. This was obviously very sad but gave me an opportunity not to wallow in my own misery by being focused on making the arrangements for the send-off of a much-loved man.

Unfortunately, I broke the basic rules of lifting whilst doing a spot of house clearing and managed to tweak something in my lower back. So after not being able to sit down at my desk for the past six weeks due to my lump I now cannot sit down at my desk due to back strain! Happy Days!

Strangely, it has not been such a bad month. I have managed to get through more work than usual, answer all my backlog of mail and I have even caught up on some much-needed Bible study. I also took time out last Sunday to watch my friend, Ritchie Venner, annihilate the field to win the Southern Vets table tennis championship. Bolstered by a narrow defeat to British No 1 Paul Drinkhall, Ritchie was in inspired form and only dropped a couple of games in the whole tournament, and such was his superb form the other bamboozled finalist actually conceded before the end of the match!

I also found time to watch a recording of the World Junior ten-dance championships in Moscow. A cycling chum, Andy Duffin, had recorded the event as his two sons were competing and it was great to see young talent flourishing in a competitive but sporting environment. Young William Duffin and his partner Amy look like stars of the future and placed a highly-commendable 32nd out of 64 finalists.

My friend Bev invited me to a quiz at Nutfield Priory, nr Redhill and my winning prize was a couple of vouchers for a free back massage – perfect timing given my current position!

My only disappointment is that I had also hoped to walk in the footsteps of my hero, Jesus, whilst off the bike but the planned trip to Jerusalem in May coincides with the General Election stats and proofreading duties so will have to be placed on hold.

It is nice sometimes to step back and smell the roses as they say. I have tended to get into the habit of working all God’s hours and when not at my desk I’d be planning my training routines on my turbo or I’d be out trying to knock off a few seconds off my time up Box Hill. With the enforced rest I was now finding time for the theatre, films, a couple of quizzes, some television and I even sussed out a new church. The funny thing is after a few weeks the perspective comes back into your life and you realise that life goes on without cycling and it is good.

We humans are creatures of habit and when these habits are altered we become stressed and anxious until we step back and realise that our habits are actually a negative thing in many ways.

My friend who died was a great collector. Malcolm had huge collections of stamps, cigarette cards, books, cigar labels, scissors!, watches, and money...........yes money, not foreign money or rare coins but sterling coins. Eccentric perhaps but the product of an orderly mind or at least that is the perception. I am in awe of these collections but realise that these obsessions are the same ones as I used to suffer from. I also used to be a collector – of cigarette cards, coins, books, magic tricks, comics, classical vinyl records, playing cards, and the most bizarre one of all writing implements! Everything from quill pens to coloured chalk – what was that all about?

These things are all just habits – safe havens for us to escape into when feeling insecure or not in sync with the rest of the universe. The lesson I learnt and am relearning now is that none of us are islands. Things that seem important to us have little impact on the cosmos generally. What is important is that we have a perspective on life and how we use our waking hours.

Yes on the whole it has been a great past couple of months