"The Bus Driver's Knee" (part four)

I am the one that waits by the end of your bed whilst you sleep. I wait until you notice me standing there in all my grotesque beauty! I shall wait forever for you!



"Part Four"




As I stepped out from the hot but glorious cabin of Rob's boat, I noticed Beechams look up from his silent, sun induced sleep and turn around to see us.

I thought Rob said his dog was deaf? I said to Neil.

He is deaf, he can feel us through the vibrations of us walking on the deck, said Neil as we walked side by side to the shop. It is only about one minutes walk away. All the people that own boats in the marina shop there. We passed their very nice looking boats along the way, but none as cool as Robs boat.
After jokingly looking at all the beers and spirits on sale we opted for several cans of Shandy Bass "British style lemonade mixed with the world renowned Bass Beer" it said on the side of the can. The fridge they came from was very cold and hummed steadily like a little twin prop plane a mile up in the sky at three in the morning. Along with the shandy, we also grabbed a couple of packets of Wine Gums. On our way to the cashier I took a quick look up at the top shelf of the magazine section. The dirty mags displayed there looked promising, like a bottomless bag of sweets or a big box of colourful fireworks. I thought how much I would like a pile of those under my bed for later on when I was alone. The one thousand butterflies in my tummy felt as though they were all holding hands and kissing. Erections came and went like the 281 bus in those days! It didn't take much either. The sound of a womans high heel shoes clicking along the pavement and I was there peeping through the curtains to see. The underwear section in my mum's catalogue was my favourite section, not the bikes nor the toys.

Neil soon dragged me away from the magazines and we made our way to the man behind the till. He was Indian and wore a turban on his head. After we bought our stuff we made a b-line for the exit thinking that we had just bought real alcoholic drinks. In fact, it had only 0.05% alcohol in it but that didn't stop us from gulping the stuff down with great speed, as funny as it seems we really honestly began to feel more and more drunk by the second. It was a great feeling as we ran back, frothy shandy spilling down our suntanned knuckles and down onto the sun scorched concrete of the ground. We skipped back like a couple of little girls, burping like mad and enjoying every second of it.

But before we made our way back to Robs, we went for a little walk to Radnor Gardens which was right by the shop. It is a kind of fenced grassy area wedged between the main road and the River Thames, used mostly for fishing, taking your dog to shit and where old people could play lawn bowls and get bitten by red ants! There was also a playground for kids and a sort of old concrete gazebo thing where heroin addicts would go to eat their sweets.
Also in one overgrown and well hidden corner, by the road, was a man-hole cover where, if you lifted it up and crawled down inside, you could creep along the pitch black tunnels that stretched under the main road to Twickenham and Popes Grotto. We had been down there before with only a box of matches and an old newspaper for light and only had the courage to get to the first corner after spotting a strange man hiding down there in the dark, before running back the way we came at record speed and scrambling back out of the hole back into the safety of daylight. We scared each other even more by convincing ourselves that he wasn't a man at all, nor even human, who would wait for small vulnerable but ultra curious children to walk into his lair where he would grab you, undress you and cover your mouth with a strip of smelly, dirty old rag and then hang you up on rusty old meat hooks that were screwed into the dark damp walls of the tunnel like trophies. Sometimes he would sit you up by his side whilst he held a match close to your naked trembling body and stare at you! And when he'd finished with you he would cut you up into tiny little bits and at midnight would climb out of his hole and feed you to the ducks in the Thames! We didn't go in there too many times!
As we walked along the foot path right next to the rivers edge, we came across a fisherman sat by the steep sided bank. The concentration smeared across his face was almost as still as the float that was attached to the end of his line. He jumped and quickly looked around at us, almost breaking his neck as Neil said to him, Oi mister! Caught anything good?
No, not yet!, said the fisherman, as he looked back at his dead still, bright orange tipped float. Just a maggot. he sarcastically went on to say.
Alright Grandad, keep your fucking hair on! Neil burped back as he grabbed me by the arm and said Come on! lets leave the old bugger to play with his maggots.

With our bellies full of shandy and our gobs stuffed with Wine Gums we bloatedly walked back to the magnificent torpedo boat.





Jason








(C) JPT 2008

"Too Small Watery Room"

I am here, more than that I do not know.




Wow-weee! If I was minuscule enough, I'd Love to swim in that there rain droplet:)

Imagine that!!!!!! spoke the softest, sweetest voice I had ever heard!

I did, I did. I excitedly replied.

And, as I was in that there rain droplet, everyone looked like those cute dogs with the little bodies, big heads and even bigger noses. It was like looking into the back of a highly polished giant silver spoon! It was utterly amazing! Only when someone took time to come and visit me, that is. Because most of the time I would be alone, but happy in the knowledge that someone would be along to witness such a spectacle. Of course, I didn't mind spending most of the day and night all on my own. I Loved every moment of my isolations. It gave me time to think of all that had gone before me and all that might come. I could also make out the other rain droplets attached to the same leaf as mine and they were all empty! I couldn't decide whether it was a good or bad thing that I was the only one occupying one of these numerous land based cloud fragments. In the end, my little, and infrequent visits from my gigantic deformed friends and family stopped. I felt so alone all of a sudden and trapped! There was absolutely no escape. The walls of my watery sphere were so thick and strong, only a man with much more strength than I might succeed in making good a run to freedom. I wouldn't have got far, even if I had been able to escape. I was literally miles up in the air. With an endless space before me, full of all kinds of dangerous creatures and hazzards, all I wanted was to be back in my liquid lair, only for me to want to get out again lest a slug slithered across on his slippery tummy and drank my little minuscule home, along with me too! I wouldn't have lasted long in there anyway. I suppose a tiny droplet of water such as mine would only last a little while before it evaporated into thin air leaving me wriggling like a fish out of water on the rough surface of my new leafy home, only for me to quickly dry up into a little minuscule crispy version of myself. One by one the other rain droplets would ever so discreetly and invisibly hiss back into the sky from whence they came. I'd be totally naked too. I mean, you wouldn't want to swim in your clothes would you? My skin would very rapidly stretch tight across the thin fragile skelington of my withered, dried, sun scorched body. If I wasn't in so much pain, I'd be able to hear my skin as it cracked and split across the more pointy sections of my once beautiful physique. Anyone listening, even right up close, would not hear a thing as I slowly but inevitably disappeared completely. Unless of course I was eaten first by that hungry slug or greedy snail. Which wouldn't be so unlikely, because I remember seeing tens of the things at any one time, especially just after rain, and even more so their pearlescent trails criss-crossing the garden, before I ended up in this place. I thought it was going to be wonderful in here. I thought that I could live out the rest of my days inside this droplet, watching the world go by as I did so. I thought this was my new living place. I thought this was my new room to dream in. I wanted to die peacefully in here, but I can't even do that. My new home will be no more long before I die. My space is not mine. It never has been, nor will it ever be!





Jason

Special thanks to Shelley Skinner for the use of her wonderful photo taken in her garden in Margate on the 11th September 2008.








(C) JPT 2008

"The Bus Driver's Knee" (part three)

All action takes place, so to speak, in a kind of twilight, which like a fog or moonlight, often tends to make things seem grotesque and larger than they really are.





"Part Three"


Was this torpedo boat in the war? I asked, as I tried to look past the bus driver and into the kitchen to see where Neil had got to, but found myself strangely drawn to his eyes.
Oh yes Jason, it most certainly was, he said smiling. Although there are no torpedoes on her anymore. I still use her to sail across to the French coast and pick up cheap alcohol on occasion.
I didn't know whether he was smiling about the trips to France or maybe because he was pleased to have two young boys inside his spectacular boat? But he didn't take his eyes off me the whole time. I could see the tiny red veins inside the yellowing whites of his eyes, we were that close to each other. I imagined he was a smoker, although I could see no ashtrays or smell anything.
I knew all too well the signs of a smoker as my dad smoked and although he didn't seem to have yellowing eyes like Rob, he did have dark brown stains on the fingers of his left hand. As he held his roll-ups the grey white smoke would seep out in a steady stream and pass over the skin of his fingers and eventually turn them brown. They reminded me of burnt sausages!
Wow! I said while trying to step back a little. France is miles away, I thought. Although nothing was physically stopping me, I couldn't move an inch and breathing a silent sigh of relief as I saw Neil come back in from the kitchen holding a single cup of tea. I could see the steam rising up from the top of the cup. He handed it to his friend Rob and then asked him where his partner was.
Oh, yes, he isn't here at the moment. It's just the three of us and Beechams, He is on the buses all afternoon. he said.
Beechams was the name of his deaf Dalmatian dog who was lying outside on the deck of the boat enjoying the wonderful sunshine.
As Rob took hold of the boiling hot drink around the thin china sides of the liquid heavy cup he grimaced from the pain he felt from the intense heat and rapidly grabbed the handle that Neil had let go of. I noticed the hand that had been burned was down by his side, his fingers rubbing against each other to calm the pain.
MMmmm, Lovely cuppa Neil, as always. Aren't you and Jason going to have one? he said, looking at me as he supped the hot brown liquid.
I looked at Neil to see what he was going to say. I certainly didn't want a hot drink. A cup of tea on a hot summers day is just mental, I thought! I knew Neil pretty well and reckoned on him not wanting one either. I looked at Rob to make sure he had looked away before looking at Neil again and nodding towards outside, whilst pretend wiping sweat from my forehead and blowing air up the front of my face. I was hot, but I wasn't sweating. Neil used to sweat quite a lot in those days. I often wondered when I would sweat like that. Although he was just a year older than me, I saw him as a Man and was in awe of his ability to be able to produce such manly things as spunk and sweat. He even had pubic hair around his cock!

No thanks Rob, said Neil. We fancy a cold drink actually. I don't see any in the fridge...

Before Neil could finish, Rob had set down his steaming cuppa on the side and had his wallet in his hand. He was leafing through his money.

Hey! Why don't you guys pop around to the shops and get yourselves whatever you want? Said Rob as he eventually handed us a brand new crisp ten pound note. He handed it to Neil, who said thank you and stuffed it into his pocket without even looking at it. I hadn't seen too many ten pound notes in my life. Just the ones that I would occasionally see my Mum and Dad handle in doors. None of them as brand new as this one. The ones I had seen before were normally very tatty and covered in numbers written in biro and felt tip pen. I wished how much I had been handed the note. I would probably have made a fool of myself by just staring at it and feeling it, taking in that strange but rather enticing smell too! I would try and get to hold it once we were outside and on our way to the tiny row of shops by the entrance to the marina.

Thanks Rob, we'll just pop down to the shops then, we won't be long.




Jason








(C) JPT 2008

"My Cycling for August 2008"

Swinley Forest, Berkshire, August 22nd.


If last month's cycling (July) was hampered by the dreaded lurgee, then August was a month of dreaded falls! Lee had a silly fall and cut his shin...we even had bets as to wether the blood would reach his sock by the time we got back to the car park. It didn't, and I won:) After all, I know a little about blood;)
Phil fell off during his sponsored bike ride in the Highlands of Scotland and walloped his hip and I had two falls, the first of which where I inadvertently kicked my bike with my right shin (the bump of which is still there today!) when I failed to reach the top of a small but steep climb and went over backwards to the bottom and the second fall last Tuesday when I had to put my foot down to steady myself up some tricky roots and somehow managed to fall over right onto my left thigh right onto a root! The worst place really as it is the biggest muscle and is quite important for cycling. I am still feeling the result of the fall exactly one week later but think I am ready for another ride tonight to see if it is ok. Having to cycle back to the car didn't help either and I couldn't help laugh when I discovered on my trip computer the mileage:- 6.66 miles!!!! Fortunately, none of the falls were serious and we all lived to ride another day:)

The weather was ok though and a fair few rides were, er, ridden;) I have some new tyres (Maxxis Medusa 2.1) and a new bottom bracket after I had a failure halfway around Swinley Forest. The dent in my frame (Elvis) hasn't gotten any worse, which is nice. I keep expecting it to break as I'm hurtling down one of the many descents that we encounter. That'll be an interesting ride, that's for sure;)

And sometimes cycling buddy Matthew Moulding finally completed his off-road sponsored mountain bike ride from John O Groats to Lands End on the 25th August. It'll be nice to ride with him again soon and hear all about it. Fancy a blast in the Surrey Hills dude? You can read all about his ride by visiting his website at http://bloodsweatandtyres.blogspot.com/ where you can still donate and help raise money for The Haemophilia Society.

And as for my joints (damaged or otherwise) they have been up and down regarding pain. My right knee seems to have settled down after I thought it was going the same way as both my ankles and right elbow. Maybe it still will, but for the moment anyway, it has behaved well during the last few rides. My right ankle on the other hand has been a right pain in the arse as has my right elbow. Nothing new there really, it just prevents me from cycling as fast or as hard as I know I can! Besides all that, I am however feeling very fit and healthy and cycling is by far the best way for any haemophiliac to help keep those joints from seizing up. Keep them moving and build that muscle up around those joints and you'll last for years. Yes, you will be in a lot of pain at times (try every single day) but it's worth it...mostly;)


See you all next month:)



Friday 1st August 2008 @ 16:20pm, Lee, Matt, Swinley Forest (SF), 14.15 miles, av 8.2, max 24.6 mph, warm & breezy, bottom bracket seized up!, 1hr 43mins. Total 1486.09 miles.

Sunday 3rd August 2008 @ 16:30pm, RPx2 and a third, 30.34 miles, av 14.1, max 27.7 mph, 2hrs 9mins, first half dry and sunny & cool then rain and wind, temp 20, wind 14, Dessert Storm, right knee was ok but right arm hurt. Total 1516.43 miles.

Tuesday 5th August 2008 @ 18:50pm, RPx2 and a third, 25.59 miles, av 14.2, max 28.8 mph, 1hr 48mins, mild, breezy, tiny bit of rain, knee hurt a bit the whole way around, temp 25. Total 1542.02 miles.

Friday 8th August 2008 @ 16:20pm, Lee, Matt, HH, PH, 14.60 miles, av 7.6, max 21.1 mph, 1hr 55mins, right after downpour and was very wet and muddy under tyre, warm & sunny during ride, temp 18. Total 1556.62 miles.

Sunday 10th August (happy birthday Lee:), 2008 @ 20:25pm, RP, 18.02 miles, av 12.3, max 24.2 mph, 1hr 28mins, cool, dusk/dark, damp, temp 17, wind 13. Total 1575.64 miles.

Tuesday 12th August 2008 @ 19:40pm, Lee, SF, 11.74 miles, av 7, max 24.4 mph, 1hr 39mins, very muddy from recent rain, dusk/dark, cool, I fell off near the sandy cutting when I didn't make it to the top of a steep slope and fell backwards hitting my right shin on my bike as I went!, I also managed to hurt my other leg and my right ankle was hurting a lot before I even started!, spotted a little mouse and an ugly toad too:) Total 1586.38 miles.

Thursday 14th August 2008 @ 17:50pm, RP, 18.22 miles, av 13.1, max 26.2 mph, 1hr 23mins, mild, sunny, damp after rain, saw Jac & her mum in Kingston on their way to see Mama Mia at the cinema. Total 1604.60 miles.

Friday 15th August 2008 @ 18:50pm, BP, RP, Lee, 17.10 miles, av 13.3, max 27.9 mph, 1hr 17mins, cool, sunny, Dessert Storm, right knee hurt a bit, temp 19, wind 11. Total 1621.70 miles.

Sunday 17th August 2008 @ 13:00pm, HH, LH, Phil, 13.53 miles, av 7.6, max 28.9 mph, 1hr 47mins, mild, dry, very busy with other mountain bikers, Phil's first ride since Scotland ride with Matthew. Total 1635.23 miles.

Tuesday 19th August 2008 @ 19:40pm, SF, Lee, 12.05 miles, av 8.4, max 18.9 mph, 1hr 25mins, rain at first then sunset and then dark, muddy, wet but very good ride, ankle and knee felt great!, right elbow lock into bent position at the end and didn't unlock itself until I had bath 2hrs later!, temp 19. Total 1647.28 miles.

Friday 22nd August 2008 @ 16:20pm, SF, Lee, 15.02 miles, av 8.3, max 20.2 mph, 1hr 47mins, sunny, mild, sunset, Lee fell off doing a silly wheelie and cut his shin!, temp 20. Total 1662.30 miles.

Sunday 24th August 2008 @ 13:20pm, HH, PH, Lee, Phil, Stuart Howe, 13.65 miles, av 7.9, max 22.5 mph, 1hr 44mins, sunny, muddy after rain, warm, temp 21, Phil didn't feel too well at the start but soon got back into things after a nice hot steak & kidney pie and a cup of tea from Peaslake Village Store, we saw Dunsfold Wings & Wheels airshow from the tops of Holmbury & Pitch Hills. Total 1675.95 miles.

Tuesday 26th August 2008 @ 19:40pm, SF, Lee, 6.66 miles!, av 8.4, max 19.7 mph, 47mins, dry and warm new Maxxis Medusa tyres, I fell off riding up some roots in the dark and put my foot down funny and went over onto the roots on my left thigh!!!! I am still recovering as I type this (Tuesday 2nd Sept) but hope to get out later for the first time since to see how it has healed, temp 20. Total 1682.61 miles.




Jason








(C) JPT 2008.........1682.61 miles (to end of August)