Nearly caught a soaking in Westerham

Andy loves his bike, by the way... or so says that bell.

A good weekend of cycling and we managed to dodge the rain on Saturday. Chevening Lake was on the cards, but an email to Andy didn't get through so we met at our usual time of 0730hrs (I was hoping to meet at 7am so we returned home early, had we gone to Chevening). As it turned out, meeting at our usual time was a blessing in disguise as, the night before, I'd discovered, while flicking the channels on my TV remote, that BBC 4 was screening a documentary about the making of the album Quadrophenia, followed by the movie of the same name. I caught the last 15 minutes of the former and then I watched bits of the movie, starring Phil Daniels and Ray Winstone (not forgetting Sting and other actors who can now be found mainly in television dramas).

In all honesty, Quadrophenia the movie was absolute rubbish. Seriously. A load of complete tosh. Not only were there the well-documented continuity errors, such as blue and white trains, which weren't around in the sixties, and V-registered (1980) cars in the streets of Brighton, it was just generally a crap movie full of a load of second-rate actors (as I said, a lot of them appear today, much older, in run-of-the-mill soaps and dramas on the box). But still, I found myself sitting there, occasionally flicking over to Graham Norton (with Danny DeVito, Charlotte Church and Rhod Gilbert). Either way, I should have gone to bed, but didn't, until around midnight.

Still, when 6am rolled in, while I was feeling fine, I was beginning to realise that meeting at 7am would have been a mistake under the circumstances. Andy later confirmed that he hadn't received my original email so all was fine with the world.

We decided to head for Westerham. The weather was looking dodgy overhead. It was warm, but the roads were wet after rain in the early morning and through the night and there were moments when it started to rain and then stopped. We managed to avoid a soaking and reached Westerham at around 0815. As we set up shop on Churchill's statue it started to rain so we took cover under an awning in front of a chocolate shop and engaged a woman with a 'Cockerpoo' in conversation. A 'Cockerpoo' is a cross between a spaniel and a poodle. The rain poured down, the skies were grey and all we could do was moan about the weather - like true Brits.

Soon, shower over, roads wet, we set off for home, except that something was wrong. My rear brakes - recently fixed by Halfords - no longer worked. It looked as if the pads had fallen out but later, when I called Halfords, they said it might be a lack of hydraulic fluid, making me wonder why? Surely, if Halfords had fixed the brakes, they would have checked the hydraulic fluid? Obviously not so it's going back to the shop sometime this week after work. All very frustrating and another reason why I won't be using Halfords again after this last time.

Sunday saw us heading off for a short run to the Tatsfield Churchyard. The weather was much, much better and we sat there laughing and joking about a range of things, including the fact that we haven't really grown up.

The bike was fine, but there is (at the time of writing) only one brake (the front one) although I've found that if I pump it, it works. Still, it has to be fixed.

Generally - well, Spain won the European Championships, Nidal was knocked out of Wimbledon by a player from, I think, the Czech Republic, seeded 100, the chairman of scandal-ridden, scandalous Barclays Bank - Marcus Aguis – has resigned and Will.i.am's solo single tops the charts. Oh, and in Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto is leading the pack in Mexico's elections signalling a return to the old ruling party there - the PRI.