Monday 6th June, Flight BA860 from London Heathrow to Prague...

Waiting to take off...

First, let's get all the commercial crap out of the way. I hate it. As soon as I am through security – which this time was relatively painless – I found myself surrounded by booze and perfume and then watches and expensive leather goods, clothes shops and so forth. I was elated to note that shops like Tiffany, Bvlgari and other big brand names I'm having difficulty remembering were all empty, no customers whatsoever, it was so heartening. I've always hated the false notion that air travel is somehow glamorous and that we should all be considering some Beluga caviar before we fly (another shop, incidentally, that had no customers, much to my amusement, all those oysters going to waste, I thought).

Unfortunately for me I'm still on antibiotics, thanks to my last trip abroad. The course finishes tomorrow, but I almost forgot and ordered a chicken burger, which I swiftly cancelled, keeping only the mineral water in order to swallow my pill at the desired time, which just so happened to be at lunch time. I had the prospect of not eating for one hour, which was very depressing especially when I later discovered that the inflight service consisted of a bag of crisps. If I wanted anything else, I was told, I should have ordered something on the BA shopping app prior to flying, except that nobody told me about this. Next time I'll buy food before I fly, I thought. The other option was to use the app to order something from the limited selection they had on board, which was rubbish and consisted only of coffee and a couple of biscuits. And considering that I was now at 30,000 feet and the option of pre-ordering was out of the question, it was all I had left. I made the cabin crew work. I had many questions and I needed them to help me use the app in order to buy an awful cup of black coffee and those biscuits. The coffee came in the shape of a coffee bag which I had to place in a paper mug of hot water they had given me. The coffee was awful, no taste at all despite claiming to offer 'notes of dark chocolate and burnt caramel'. I squeezed the bag as per the instructions on the back but it made no difference, it was still absolutely awful. So much for their 'Signature Blend'. 

Looking down at the M25...

To use the app, the cabin crew told me I had to take the phone off airplane mode (which made me a little apprehensive as I imagined the plane suddenly nose-diving and the captain coming out and saying "whoever's turned their phone off airplane mode, switch it back on" and then the plane levelling out). Nothing of the sort happened, fortunately. 

The biscuit and the coffee set me back a fiver and didn't represent value for money in my world. The annoying thing here, of course, was that once again, I found myself being forced to eat rubbish. I had no dinner on Sunday night because there wasn't any food, no breakfast for the same reason the following morning and then no lunch because I had to take an antibiotic at a specific time and I was really looking forward to the inflight meal, but it wasn't to be thanks to British Airways, the airline that likes to disappoint its customers.

The flight was only 90 minutes and as I looked at  my watch, I realised we had started our descent. As soon as we land I'm going to grab something decent to eat, I thought to myself. I was really glad that I got the cabin crew working on that app. I was like a dog with a bone.

The captain said the weather conditions in Prague were 'cheerful', which was more than could be said for BA's food offering. The muddy water they passed off as coffee was a joke as, indeed was the whole experience. I think the crew thought that nobody would be bothered to use the app, but I proved them wrong. They're probably still cursing me as I write this; at least I hope they are!

BA's idea of lunch!

Outside the window and far below me, there were green fields and sunshine and scattered cloud. When I looked at my watch, there was around 15 minutes until we landed. I could see little villages below and the usual patchwork quilt of corn fields and grass fields dissected by narrow country lanes and peppered here and there with forests, the occasional river and even a few wind farms. Ten minutes to landing.

Once down, getting through security was a doddle, so was baggage reclaim and then I spotted a cafeteria, a spacious place with hardly any customers. There was a servery counter so I ordered a pasta and chicken dish and a decent dessert and chilled for a few minutes before finding a taxi and heading for the Grandior Hotel.

Postscript: Just going back to British Airways again, one thing I always used to enjoy was reading John Simpson's column in the High Life magazine, but now it's not available as a print publication – or so it seems. Now it's an app that you can read (I'd imagine with huge difficulty) on a mobile phone. I didn't bother. Fucking apps!

Totally wired...

 "Legends were born surrounding mysterious lights, seen in the sky, flashing". I've been listening to Jethro Tull in the car on a trip over to Sutton to see mum. Passion Play was the only track I could listen to again and again, I kept pressing the repeat button in between trying to drive the car. I love those lyrics in quotes for some reason and, oddly, I remember there used to be an ad on television back in the seventies for the Passion Play album. Strange.

Covid left the building a few days ago and we're all testing negative. Last Sunday was an amazing day. We were all 'allowed' to be out and about so we drove to Wakehurst Place for a long walk in the winter sunshine. It was amazing. In fact, it was an amazing day all round, which kicked off with a ride to Westerham to meet Andy. I was wondering how I would perform on that ride and it was alright, although I need to get my act together in terms of exercise and diet, the latter is becoming a problem as I appear to be addicted to crap: chocolates, cake, the usual vices, but it simply must stop. Up until going down with Covid, I was doing well: cycling daily - or almost daily - and then riding on Saturday and Sunday. But going down with the virus put a stop to all that. For two weeks I felt a little weary and decided not to ride anywhere until I was allowed to go out. So, two weeks of no exercise, although I managed a lone walk on one or two occasions, roaming the streets after dark in the cold, although it wasn't that chilly.

This has got to stop, but the cake is far worse, and the chocolate bars

It was good to get out on the bike and it was great seeing Andy again. The ride was perfect all the way, there and back, but it was the only ride I was going to do; all week I didn't ride, despite having planned to get out there. I don't know why, but I simply didn't have the motivation. Instead I made myself comfortable in front of the television. On the diet front I found myself nipping down to Tesco Express solely to buy a Wispa Gold. On a walk home from Purley railway station, on two occasions, I bought Wispas, and on one occasion two cinnamon buns (I ate both). You can see I'm having a problem.

Last week's bowl of coffee and Millionaire's shortbread

My growing addiction to coffee is a problem too, cappuccino to be precise. During the week, while in a place called Amersham in Buckinghamshire - a strange place full of rich people who, for some reason, I think are unhappy - I found a Costa Coffee inside an enormous Tesco. Why Amersham has a huge Tesco and not a massive Waitrose, I don't know, but Tesco it is and I was foolish enough to order a large one. A large one! And when I say 'large' I mean enormous. It was huge. So huge that it required two handles instead of one, I was drinking a kind of cappuccino soup and it was doing me no favours whatsoever, as I found out later in the evening. I made matters worse by eating two, yes, two, and then, as time progressed I noticed that I was pretty wired. Over a dinner I was almost holding on to the table, trying to keep my head together. I was tanked up with caffeine and sugar and it would continue into the night. I went to bed around midnight but didn't get to sleep until 0200hrs, but then I woke up again at 0500hrs and then I awoke at 0700hrs, took a shower (a luke warm shower) and then hit the breakfast room, feeling a little weary. I had a full English, plus Alpen, two pastries, a yoghurt, two slices of toast and a glass of fresh orange juice. That kind of did the trick. The hotel was in Old Amersham, a 25-minute downhill walk from the station, meaning just one thing: I'd have to endure a 25-miniute uphill walk to catch a train home.

Cake, cake and more cake, it's got to stop

On the train home I did little but stare out of the window at the passing countryside and then, along with a colleague, I crossed London to Victoria where I took a train home. As I write this, it's Saturday. I should have gone for a ride this morning, but I didn't, although I'm 'getting there' and by that I mean that the bad habits of the past fortnight or so are on my radar, and that's a good thing. It means that I'm aware of what I'm doing and I need to stop the cakes, the biscuits, the cappuccino and so on. Today, for example, I drove to a place called Trading Boundaries where I consumed not only a sausage roll and a bowl of butternut squash soup with bread, but also a slice of coffee and pecan nut cake and, yes, a cappuccino. If that was not enough, earlier, while filling up with petrol, I purchased a sneaking Wispa Gold and kept it secret. Later, on that drive to Sutton mentioned earlier, I decided that I would enjoy the chocolate bar with a cup of tea round at mum's. I followed up with two milk chocolate digestives and then headed home listening to Jethro Tull.

There's a track on the Tull album called Fat Man and I reproduce the lyrics here as they seem kind of appropriate:-

Don't want to be a fat man

People would think that I was just good fun, man

Would rather be a thin man

I am so glad to go on being one, man

Too much to carry around with you

No chance of finding a woman, who

Will love you in the morning and all the nighttime too

Don't want to be a fat man

Have not the patience to ignore all that

Hate to admit to myself

I thought my problems came from being fat

Won't waste my time feeling sorry for him

I've seen the other side to being thin

Roll us both down a mountain and I'm sure the fat man would win

I really must learn to shut my cakehole!

I really must, this is serious. I'm eating too much cake. Can't get enough of it! But what about my biscuit hole? That too! (They're one and the same). I don't know what it is, but cake and biscuits are fantastic. I love them! But you can get too much of a good thing and in my world that's an occupational hazard.

A few years back I embarked upon a diet. I limited myself to just three slices of bread per day (which was a little better than my (easily) one dozen slices. Put it this way, I'd wake up in the morning and have between two and four slices of bread, normally with marmalade (something I've given up completely, along with any 'spreads', so jam, honey, it's all been off the agenda for years now). Also off the agenda, 99.9% of the time are chocolate bars – wrapped chocolate like Twix, Mars bars and so forth. There was a time, about five years ago, when I lapsed for a while and enjoyed a Mars bar once a day, but that was short-lived.

I could have done without the dessert...

I think it's foodstuffs (better make that food groups) with the letter B, so bread, buns, biscuits and now, of course, beer, since I've stopped drinking (coming up for five months on 28 March – actually, that's today!).

But of late I've lapsed on the letter B foods. I simply can't resist a biscuit or two during the day and I really wish this wasn't the case. I've also lapsed on cake. Whenever I visit a National Trust property, which is roughly once a week (forget the culture, I go purely for the cake and the gift shop) I enjoy a slice of cake. And then there's Westerham's Tudor Rose café, where I've been a regular fixture over the past few weeks, and guess what? There's a great selection of cakes. Only last Sunday I enjoyed a chunk (make that a brick) of bread pudding and the week before there was a rather nice Bakewell tart with icing and a large cherry and just a day before that a lemon sponge with lemon curd sandwiched between the two sponges and lemon icing on top – wonderful, yes, but good for me? Well, spiritually, perhaps, but I've noticed my trousers are a little tighter, which means they've got to stop.

I've forgotten to mention my weekly trips to mum's. My mum makes exceedingly good cakes and I make a point of having two slices (make that chunks) with my tea and I have been known to raid the biscuit tin too – it's all got to stop. Perhaps I'll stop everything but my weekly ration of mum's cake. Yeah, that's what I'll do.

Now that the severe weather has lifted (that said, it's raining today and for the foreseeable future no doubt – it's the Easter bank holiday this coming weekend) I'm getting out at lunch times for some long walks and I've even walked to Merstham railway station some evenings. That's the good news. I'm also guaranteeing myself 40 minutes of additional walking everyday simply by taking the train from a railway station 20 minutes' walk away (as opposed to just 10).

Breakfast and dinner are fine, it's just the bit in between that is causing problems. While my lunch, give or take, is fine (normally baked potatoes, heatlhy stuff, or a sandwich from M&S) it's the snacking in between that's an issue. God forbid if anybody has a birthday in the office as the rule is they have to bring in cakes and stuff and most people push the boat out and display an array of goodies, normally from Sainsbury's, including mini millionaire's shortbreads, doughnuts (I'd only eat the custard ones, but they never get them) and other snacks that carry labelling saying 'not good for you'.

Fortunately the summer is coming, and that can mean warm weather. Warm weather suppresses the appetite a little and with sunshine comes exercise, so the future is looking good, but I must resist foods beginning with the letter B and as I said earlier, there's loads of them, although a lot of them good be grouped under the title 'Baked Goods'.

My rule on chocolate has been broken a couple of times this week as I've bought, as part of my lunch from M&S after a walk, is a small bar of chocolate (containing tumeric – so I think it's healthy). The bar boasts just 144 calories (not bad) so, well, no more, let's say that, no more.

Anyway, that's just to let you all know where I am on the dieting front. I'm not doing too bad in the scheme of things, but I think my report card would read 'could do better'.

This week and last week

Last week, possibly Sunday, I can't recall, we rode to the Tatsfield Bus Stop, mainly because the bus stop is covered and this means the seats are dry when the weather is been cold and wet. However, not having mudguards meant that I was wet so from my perspective it was pointless; we could have gone to Westerham and stood up to drink our tea. Either way I would have been wet. I need mudguards or a sensible bike, let's face it.

So, we rode to the bus stop on, I think, Sunday 9 November. We haven't spent a great deal of time at the old Tatsfield Bus Stop of late. We've been riding to Westerham or taking suburban rides or, as the week before last, to the Tatsfield Churchyard where the seats were dry but then it started to rain and, as avid readers will be only too aware, there's no cover at the churchyard.

This week we planned to ride to the Tatsfield Bus Stop, mainly because of the aforementioned dry seat argument, which, as I've said, means nothing if you're wet anyway, thanks to no mudguards. But I won't labour the point.

Last Sunday at Tatsfield Bus Stop

Yesterday, as we rode along the Limpsfield Road, past the new cycle shop opposite Sainsbury's, we decided to take the slow route, until we remembered the state of my gears. Whenever I ride up any hill they slip and clunk and then the chain falls off or slips on to the smaller front crank. The bike needs a service, but, as always, money is short so, like everything else in my life at present, I leave it until it gets so bad I have to fix it. Like now. However, today I had to make do with dismounting every time a hill approached. Yesterday morning, as I reached the top of Church Way, I had to dismount and then, as we weaved our way around the country lanes adjacent to the B269, I found myself dismounting again and again.

Instead of riding the slow way to the bus stop – Andy figured I'd be walking the length of Beddlestead Lane (a long and winding hill) – we decided to investigate Scotshall Lane, one of the very few roads in the area we haven't explored. It was pleasant for a while, but when we reached the end we found ourselves in the Farleigh area (turn left for the Harrow pub and then?). Opposite the pub we found a covered bus stop but it was so depressing and cramped with its fold-up, heavy duty plastic seats and its ugly green paintwork that we decided to ride back into Warlingham and part ways at Warlingham Green – without drinking tea or munching biscuits. Not a brilliant ride but at least we know what to expect at the other end of Scotshall Lane – nothing!

To make matters worse (what with the faulty gears, the rubbish bus stop and the short ride) it started to rain and we both got soaked.

Last night I had sent Andy and Phil an 'abort' text. I was tired and feeling a little despondent, but I texted Andy and said that I might change my mind in the morning. Clearly, if you have read this far, you already know that I did change my mind. I texted Andy again and said I'd meet him at the usual time on the green. Perhaps I should have stayed in bed.

Sunday 16th November – to Tatsfield Village!
Another place we haven't been to for a while is good old Tatsfield Village. After yesterday's miserable ride, we decided to pay it a visit. The weather was much better: no rain for a start and it brightened up as we headed along the 269. Perfect cycling weather and, once I'd got underway there were no problems with the gears. I found that the bike rode well if the chain was on the smaller crank at the front and mid-way through the rear gears.

Tatsfield Village hasn't changed a bit since our last visit – why would it, I hear you ask.  It's the same old, same old, so we sat there for a while discussing our bikes and my gears and other bicycle-related chat as we sipped tea and munched our biscuits.

Tatsfield Village, Sunday 16 November 2014 – 

manic expression due to almost missing the self-timer

The journey home proved very troublesome for yours truly. Those gears decided to play up big time. In fact, there was no way the chain was going to slip on to the larger front crank, making the ride home extremely slow. Andy must have been relieved to say goodbye half way along the 269. As for me, I limped home at a snail's pace. Despite the fact that we only went to Tatsfield Village, I reached home just before 1000hrs – half an hour later than I would have returned had we gone to Westerham (and my gears had been working properly).

So the bike needs to visit the repair shop and I'm thinking of Ross Cycles in Caterham. I can't abide the thought of Halford's. Every time I've taken my bike to Halford's it comes out worse than when it went in or there's something wrong with it. For instance, the last time I had it serviced in Halford's they did something to the forks – making them more springy than necessary and, it has to be said, for their own ends, not mine! I'd told them to tighten up the front forks; they loosened them – probably so they could mess around doing jumps in the car park. Either way, I wasn't happy and resolved there and then never to get the bike serviced in Halford's again. I'm also a little reticient about Evans Cycles (where they're bound to come up with some spurious reason why they have to charge me a fortune. Equally off the list is the bike shop in Redhill as I believe he's miles too expensive and probably suggests things that need doing when they don't. I wouldn't mind, but I'm at rock bottom financially. I've even considered buying a secondhand bike for £75 rather than shell out more on getting my existing bike serviced. Andy says it would be a big mistake – a false economy – as a cheaper ride means cheaper parts and cheaper parts mean more frequent servicing. It's looking like Ross Cycles, but that means no riding next Saturday or Sunday, although I can live with that. The only problem will be getting over there as the ride is hilly and the bike ain't up to it.