Easter Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday...

I've got an issue with the text app on this machine. I'm sitting here writing this and wondering what will happen to it, not the app, but the text I'm writing. Will it be lost forever or will it be easily found? The answer is I don't know. All I do know is that I've written stuff here before and then lost it, so it's anybody's guess.

It's Easter Sunday and I'm not cycling today purely because we're going out for lunch. What kind of a reason is that? Well, we're leaving around 1100hrs so if I'm out on the ride and I get a puncture, I'll have to walk home and if I walk it'll take ages and I'll end up missing lunch and ruining everybody's day. And if you're wondering why I would have to walk home, it's simple: I've run out of leeches and need to buy some more.

So, not going cycling you'd think I'd lie in, but no, I was up at 0600hrs as normal. There used to be a time when I could lie in bed all day, or certainly not get out before 1100hrs. Breakfast became lunch, slobbing around was the order of the day and the very idea of getting up early made me shudder.

Heading home from the churchyard...

Then, one day, things changed and I don't know how or why. Alright, one has to get up early during the week for work and, I suppose, that conditions us all into a routine of sorts and it means we're capable of getting up early, but rising at the crack of dawn when we don't need to? Yes, I do get up early for no reason; as soon as I open my eyes I'm ready to jump out of bed and do something. If I wake up ahead of my alarm clock (which I often do) then I try to stay put in bed, I try to get back to sleep and sometimes I succeed. Other times I lie there for about ten minutes and then I give up and go downstairs, make a cup of tea and and a slice of toast, say, or even go for it big time and make porridge, official confirmation that I'm up and raring to go.

Normally, once I'm up I switch on my lap top and faff around, checking the BBC website first, then my emails and then I might glance at my blog, see how many readers I had the day before. Often a disappointing moment, I can tell you, although, sometimes, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Right now I guess I'm experimenting. It's not early, but I have been up since the crack of dawn, 0600hrs to be precise, although I was up earlier,or rather awake earlier, lying there, getting fidgety, thinking about getting up. Eventually the alarm, actually no, the alarm didn't go off because it wasn't in the room, it's normally in the room, on the ironing board, but not last night. I'd charged it downstairs in the conservatory and, sure enough, when I went downstairs and slid open the 'patio' door, the sound of birdsong rang out. It's like that thing about 'do bears shit in the woods?' Do alarms go off when they're not in the room and you can't hear them? The answer is yes, they do. I switched it off and got on with my day. First, breakfast. Porridge with fruit and a cup of tea, apple and cinnamon, new tea I found in the store yesterday. What is it with me and fruit or herbal teas? I love them. Beats the usual builder's tea.

Andy's Kona Blast at the churchyard

I put John Martyn's Solid Air on the sound system, arguably the most chilled out music around, ate breakfast and then messed around on the computer doing everything I mentioned earlier: the BBC website, email, my blog, you name it, and then, normally, I hit the road, but as I say I'm not going today because we're all heading into deepest Surrey, or is it Sussex, for a bite to eat, an Easter treat.

On the weather front, it's great for cycling; another amazing day with temperatures expected to be in the mid-twenties, probably hotter. I bet Andy's out there, he's probably taken a ride to Westerham or the lakes, places we both tend to visit only when we're alone, which is odd. I can't remember the last time I rode to the lakes, but I bet I was alone when I did it.

Actually, it turned out Andy didn't ride yesterday. He'd driven to Cornwall and back in a day on Saturday and felt very tired, so he stayed in,and probably started to wish he'd gone out, the weather being the way it was and, I hasten to add, still is.

The ride to Cornwall and back in a day seemed like a huge effort to me, a long haul. I would have been falling asleep at the wheel, but not Andy. He got there around 1pm and after doing what he had to do, headed home, arriving some time after 2100hrs. Americans think nothing of driving such distances and more, but in the UK it's a different story. I know if it had been me I'd have stayed over somewhere, that's how much of a wuss I am, but then Andy needed to be home.

He told me about his mammoth drive when I reached the green after cycling from home. It is now Bank Holiday Monday, or Easter Monday, and for a lot of people it marks the end of the holidays. Back to work on Tuesday for what amounts to a short week. I've got the rest of the week off. Take four days leave and get a total of 10, that was my thinking. I don't see my desk until Monday 29 April.

We rode the slow way to the churchyard, passing the aromatic oilseed rape fields on the way and occasionally glimpsing bluebells in wooded glades. As I probably mentioned in my last piece of writing on the subject, the churchyard is a wonderful place in the good weather. I could sit there all day with a newspaper and something to eat and drink. The same could be said for any field in the sunshine.

The Tatsfield churchyard

After drinking our tea we lingered awhile, savouring the moment, perhaps, but then accepted that we had to ride home to live out the rest of our day. Andy had shopping to do, but my chores had been done on Saturday so I was in the clear.

You find me now sitting in the garden at just before 1700hrs, it's still warm enough to be relaxing alfresco in a tee-shirt, there's a warm breeze, the sound of a distant light aircraft and, of course, the tweeting birds. I have an apple and cinnamon tea on the go and behind me to my left the wind chime plays its chilled out tune. I'm looking at a bed of tulips to my left, a lawn directly in front of me and a flowerbed on my right full of what I call The Devil's Forget-Me-Not. It's a weed and it covers my garden at this time of year and later becomes unsightly green leaves secured by a huge root. I've tried digging them up, but they always return so I've surrendered to the futility of gardening.

Bank holiday rain and a word or two about David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries...

Bank holiday Mondays are traditionally rained off in the UK. The very phrase 'bank holiday Monday' brings to mind past days of gloom when there was nothing much to do but watch the television and look out of the window at rivulets of rain in the gutters and the occasional person wrestling with an unruly umbrella.

I knew it was going to be raining this morning and I was right. When the alarm went off at 0600hrs I just lay there listening to the news headlines without any sense of urgency – EU crisis talks on migration, the death of US horror movie director Wes Craven, Isis inflicting severe damage on an ancient temple in Palmyra and, of course, the death of neuroscientist Oliver Sacks.

Well, at least the grass is greener after a downpour...

At 0700hrs I looked out of the window to see the rain hammering down on next door's conservatory roof. There would be no cycling today, I thought. Now, sitting in my own conservatory, the rain hammering on the roof above me and the time rapidly approaching 0730hrs, I feel quite relaxed about the prospect of not riding the bike. Sometimes it's nice to just not go out, although I'd much prefer sunshine and blue skies and the prospect of a ride somewhere.

A book I've been dipping into of late is David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries. I bought a hardback copy of it back in 2011 and have been reading it here and there in between other books. Reading about his rides around Buenos Aires in Argentina makes me want to visit the city and follow in the footsteps of my grandfather, George Harry, who lived in the Argentine capital for a short while before enlisting in the army to fight in the Great War.

My hardback edition of David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries

I've referenced Byrne's Bicycle Diaries in past posts and will continue to write about it in the future as Byrne is an interesting man. I flicked to the back of the book where he discusses bikes and the fact that he doesn't like the folding bike with small wheels. Byrne rides around the cities of the world using a foldable bike and while he started off with a small-wheeled Peugeot he now rides full-sized folding bikes with some form of suspension. He talks about Montague and Dahon folding bikes with full-sized wheels, which can be folded into a large suitcase with wheels and checked in (when travelling by air) as a second piece of luggage. But I wonder if Byrne is making a rod for his own back. Surely, if he knows where he's going he can check out local bike hiring or the availability of a bike share scheme.

Avid readers of this blog will know that I've used bike share machines in Indianapolis, San Antonio, Montreal and Essen and have hired bikes from hotels in Berlin and Amsterdam. Although, to be fair to Byrne, he writes, "An alternative to all this luggage and packing is to rent a bike when you get to where you're going."

I agree with Byrne's thoughts on bicycle maintenance – that bikes with expensive gears and brakes are a constant headache. "...keeping it in tune and running smoothly was such a never-ending process that when it was eventually stolen...I didn't bother to replace it," he writes. I feel the same way about my bike, although I don't want it stolen. At the moment, however, my bike uses only eight of it's 16 gears and has a faulty front brake. I can't remember the last time everything was running smoothly. It is, as Byrne says, a constant headache.

He is also right about helmets. They are 'notoriously uncool-looking'. He's tried other headgear, such as a baseball batter's helmet and an English riding helmet (I assume he means horseriding). He's even decorated his helmets and once tied a raccoon's tail to the back.

Proof that Byrne would be more than welcomed on a NoVisibleLycra ride at any time comes with his remarks about Spandex (Lycra). Byrne prefers semi-baggy shorts with a crotch pad. "We guys have read about bikes and the prostate," he writes, claiming that 'only once in a rare while' has he ever experienced what he calls the freaky feeling of numb nuts. David, that's why I bought the Spongy Wonder bicycle saddle – it also negates the need to wear Lycra cycling shorts.

Outside the garden is wet and dripping with rain and it looks as if the rain is here to stay, at least for today. I'd planned to visit the Peaslake Fayre near Guildford and will probably still go as the British tend to 'carry on regardless' and won't let a spot of rain get in the way of Morris dancing and tug-o-war competitions. That said, plans keep changing. We might drive to the south coast, we might simply go to Croydon. Who knows what the day will bring?