Lockdown, Pt.40: Winter is coming...

September is coming and so is the bad weather. Let's face it, winter approaches and with it Christmas. I'm a summer person, I like the hot weather and the very thought of dark mornings depresses me. Sometimes, like this morning, when I make my way downstairs to make breakfast I refuse to switch on the light if it's too dark in the kitchen, to do so would be an admission of defeat, an acceptance of the end of summer and the awful realisation that cold weather and rain and wind and everything I hate about the United Kingdom is on the way.

So-called 'lockdown' is leaving the building too. I'm heading back to the office on 7 September as part of Bubble One. Bubble Two is the other half of the office, so there's people I won't see for many months, possibly not until the Christmas Party (which always takes place in January and might not take place at all this time round, thanks to the virus).

Yes, lockdown is coming to a close and the signs are there for all to see. My fictional restaurant, Handel's, has shut up shop. I'm no longer in charge of the kitchen as I have been these past six months. The novelty of making evening meals has started to wane and I'd even go as far as to say I don't have the energy anymore. In days past I would return from a 20-mile ride and get on with making the dinner. There would be a lit candle on the table, knives and forks laid out and many a culinary delight on offer, but of late, the very idea of coming off the ride and getting cracking in the kitchen is not as appealing as it has been. Perhaps it's the end of the summer that's caused me to feel this way. We've had a lot of rain, which is always a bit depressing, and rain means no cycling. In fact, as I write this I can tell you that it's raining out there now, on Saturday morning. This time last week I was preparing myself for a ride to Dunton Green and some tea and cake at Bojangles. Now, I'm sitting at the dining room table, resigned to not riding anywhere until (hopefully) tomorrow, which looks like it's going to be the only sunny day we get this August bank holiday weekend. This week I've cycled something like 36 miles. Last week it was 103 miles.

The Rockhopper 10 miles out and close to the churchyard on the outward ride

Lockdown for me was characterised by eating, cooking, watching box sets and staying up too late. That, in a nutshell was the way it was. Oh, and cycling, of course. I've cycled more over the last six months than I've done in the last 10 plus years. Everything has been aided and abetted by good weather. The highlight of my lockdown week has always been the weekly shop at Waitrose when invariably I'd over spend, but it didn't matter because I wasn't spending a fortune on trains or lunches at work. We've managed to save a bit too. In the early days, back in late March, it was like being on holiday, sitting in the living room, late at night, mug of camomile tea in hand, watching Ozark or the X Files, staying up until around 2330hrs, sometimes later.

Most of my cycling, as you'll know if you've read all my Lockdown posts (all 40 of them so far) has been in the late afternoon/early evening. I've worked out new routes, which is all good, but there's also been an element of cycling becoming a necessity rather than a leisure activity, it's a necessity because of a need to maintain fitness levels. In the past there was a social element to riding the bike as Andy and I would meet at the Green and head off to the Tatsfield Bus Stop to chat about this and that while drinking tea. Now it's all about how many miles I get under my belt. I have Strava on the iphone measuring the mileage and it's all about 'getting it done' rather than enjoying the moment, except at the weekends. The Saturday morning ride has taken me back to the lakes or to Redhill or Dunton Green where I've relaxed with a cup of tea or, like last week, with a cup of tea and some cake from Bojangles, a great cafe. Andy and I didn't meet for a long time. Instead we rode alone, keeping in step with the Government's social distancing rules. But then we started to meet again, at the Churchyard and that's become a regular thing to do on a Sunday morning. It used to be an 11 o'clock meeting, but this tended to take up the whole day so now we're meeting at 0800hrs, getting back to the old routine. I'll be heading off to the churchyard tomorrow around 0700hrs, it represents the start of my cycling week and if the weather holds it'll be good.

What is there to look forward to? Well, there's the prospect of Donald Trump getting a second term. People say he's going to struggle, but I reckon he'll win because Biden just isn't the ticket in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I don't want Trump to win, I want him to be trounced, but Sod's Law dictates that he must win, to add to everybody's misery. Another four years of Trump. Awful. What else? Oh, Brexit. Well, it's kind of obvious that we're going to get a no-deal Brexit isn't it? It's what the Tories have wanted and they've engineered it to happen and it will, in the same way that they've engineered the whole 'herd immunity' thing. Alright, they had to scare us into staying at home back in March to save lives and protect the NHS (because they hadn't adequately funded it), but as soon as the economy has shown signs of faltering, bugger the safety aspect, suddenly it's fine to get on trains and go back to the office. They want the kids back in school too, it's all designed to spread the virus again and hey, we won't have to wait too long before the second wave shuts us all down for Christmas.

It's funny how everything has become so samey. The days plod on, nobody really sees anybody else, we're all kind of confined to the house unless we're out shopping or taking a drive in the car somewhere. I know we're not confined to the house in reality, in the true sense of the word, but the house has become the main base, the hub, from where we venture out, normally just to the shops. That's why the bicycle is a such a good thing to have because it does offer that added sense of freedom. When we first locked down and people were quite literally confined to barracks, I was out on the bike riding around 100 miles per week. That was true freedom, being out there on the bike on deserted roads, stopping to chill in a field or on a village green with a mug of tea, just sitting there, sun beating down, there's nothing better.

It's 0842 and the rain has stopped, but it's grey and cloudy out there. I've texted Bon. "Cycle? Or is it likely to rain? Might get away with it." He's writing back to me, hold on... "Off to Middleton-on-Sea at 10 so can't. Tomorrow?" And now he's writing some more, hold on again... a movie. 'Tap to download'. It's of Bon swimming in the sea at Felpham. We might try and get a ride on Monday as it's a bank holiday here in the UK and we've all got a long weekend.

Apart from last Sunday's ride to the Churchyard, I went out on Wednesday on a Chump Bastard Womble (it's one of my rides, 20 miles). The photograph accompanying this post is from that ride, which was a non-stop ride that took me down to the Churchyard, through Tatsfield Village and then home. I should have gone out Thursday, but I couldn't motivate myself, which was a shame. Anyway, let's hope for better weather.

Early morning thoughts on a Sunday morning

It catches me out every year and 2019 was no exception. I woke up, turned to look at the digital clock on the bedside table, noted it was saying 0611hrs and started to wonder why my iphone hadn't woken me up. Last night I had checked that it was set and while it needed charging, which meant I left it downstairs in the hall, plugged to the wall, I knew that I would hear it when it sparked up. Not today. So I got up, found my cycling trousers, jumper, socks and what have you and was about to head downstairs when I remembered: the clocks had gone back. It was really 0511hrs and I found myself with a dilemma. Do I undress and climb back into bed or simply carry on? After a moment's thought I decided to stay up, go downstairs and make some breakfast, listen to classical music and do what I'm doing right now, write this blog post.

It would be misleading of me to say we're 'well into October' because we're more than that: it's Halloween next Thursday and then it's November. Already the bad weather has set in. When the alarm went off yesterday I aborted because when I got out of bed I peered out of the window and noted rain falling hard on next door's roof. Then I climbed back into bed and didn't get out until gone 0700hrs. Saturday was one of those awful, drizzly days when the rain nagged at everybody all day. Everything was wet and miserable and I found myself in a shopping centre in a galaxy far far away looking yearningly at a Sekonda Midnight Blue watch and going as far as trying it on, but not buying it. There never seems to be enough money and that, added to the drizzle and the wet terrazzo flooring of the aforementioned shopping mall added to a cloud of depression that hung over me for the rest of the day.

Now that we're in November, of course, we're into what I've always called 'typical NoVisibleLycra weather'. Grey skies, the threat of rain, cold temperatures, although not that cold, reign supreme as Andy and I cycle somewhere with only the promise of a cup of tea at the end of it. Oh, and the prospect of cycling home again too. But we love it, although sometimes - particularly on Saturdays - I could do with longer in bed, or simply not hearing the alarm at 0600hrs.

Soon the mornings will look like this (if we're lucky!)

It's not yet 0600hrs and I'm sitting downstairs with just one light on listening to Radio 3. Classical music is good when you're writing something as it takes place in the background and never intrudes on the thinking process; in fact, it probably helps things along a little bit and so I sit here, the sleep banished from my head, an empty bowl of cereal and an empty mug on the table next to me looking at the hour stretching before me and the distant thought of being out in the garage, unpadlocking the bike and heading up the road to meet Andy.

It's dark outside, although now that the clocks have gone back, the mornings will be lighter for a week or two before the darkness takes over and Christmas becomes a dawning reality. Already the shops have sprouted Christmas trees, but most sensible people ignore them, for the time being, content to cling on to any last hope of summer weather. Sunrise today was at 0644hrs, roughly 15 minutes ago and the cloud and sun icon on my iphone's weather app means it's going to be a day of sunshine and cloud. Hopefully no rain.

In Dusseldorf... day two

This morning, around 0540hrs, I was awoken by an alarm, somebody else's alarm. It was a slow beeping sound that continued for the best part of 20 minutes. At first, I just stayed put, lying on my back looking at the ceiling, waiting, I suppose, not to hear it or, in other words, I was expecting somebody to depress a button and shut the thing off. Nothing happened. A deep sleeper, perhaps, I thought; or whoever occupies the room, which I'm guessing is the room next door to me on the left hand side, Room 212, had vacated the room and forgot to switch off his (or her) alarm. They could have left early but not taken their alarm clock with them when they checked out of the hotel. Or, I thought suddenly, they're dead. They died in their sleep or were murdered, and the murderer forgot or overlooked the fact that an alarm had been set and, for all intents and purposes, was now miles away, on the autobahn, perhaps, heading God knows where: to Russia or Kazakhstan or anywhere. They might be in the air as I write this, far from the crime scene and never to return. I started to imagine what scene might await whoever entered the room: a blood-stained bed, a knife protruding from the chest of the former occupant, his eyes staring blankly, like mine were, at the ceiling, but lifeless. I can't recall having been awoken in the dead of night by the sound of gunshot, but then if I was going to murder somebody in the dead of night in a place full of people sleeping in the centre of a big European city I think I'd use a silencer. Then the alarm stopped and I figured that my first guess was correct: the person in the room next to mine was a really, really heavy sleeper and probably needed those clocks from Dark Side of the Moon to get him up in the morning. But then the alarm resumed; it was clearly gathering strength for the long haul task of waking up its owner. Either that or my suspicion that somebody had died or had been murdered by a trained assassin was closer to the truth. Perhaps the alarm clock had drawn the short straw back in the store waiting for somebody to buy it. Perhaps it watched on helplessly as a huge, hairy, fat bloke with serious health issues waddled towards it and plucked it from the shelf. "Oh no! A lifetime of hard work," it thought as it reached the cash desk and to this day has regretted all of its bells and whistles that had prompted the sale in the first place.

Should I in some way get involved, I wondered to myself. Perhaps whoever occupies the room 'next door' is in some kind of trouble, unconscious, perhaps, having a heart attack, needing immediate medical attention and the people in the rooms on either side, including me, both having heard the alarm, did nothing. Perhaps as I write this he or she is breathing their last and are lying contorted and half naked on the bed. Perhaps they committed suicide, an overdose, and as I'm sitting here now, half naked myself but very much alive and awake, they are about to die, or they died hours ago?

But what to do? Call the front desk and tell them what's happened? Go next door myself and rather than waste time, kick down the door as if I'm Tom Cruise in a Mission Impossible movie only to find an indignant individual, his face covered in shaving foam, headphones covering his ears, looking at me as if I'm half crazy and reaching for the phone to call security. "But your alarm, it wouldn't stop ringing. I thought you might be in some trouble," I might say in my defence, but perhaps he doesn't speak a word of English and instead is now advancing towards me holding some kind of weapon. Perhaps I turn and run, but not back to my room, down two flights of stairs to the front desk and out of the door, on to Karlstrasse dressed only in my Alfani boxers (poor man's Calvin Klein's) that I purchased about a year ago in a store in Chicago. The sound of police sirens reach my ears prior to my arrest and incarceration and as I sit there, alone, in my cell, a white towel draped over my shoulders, trying to come to terms with what has just happened, a small paper cup of steaming hot tea is put through the aperture in the cell door and I accept it gratefully. What next, I wonder? I'd have some explaining to do at home and at work, but the reality of the situation would be that I was only trying to help in some way. I'd be done, no doubt, for criminal damage of the hotel room door, that's all, but how humiliating it would all have been!

The alarm stopped and started a couple of times and just this second I heard somebody knock on the door and then enter the room. A woman's voice, but no screams so she obviously hasn't found a dead body, unless she's the sort of person that's calm, very calm, in stressful situations. There's a few noises of somebody, the woman I'm guessing, pottering around in the room, looking, perhaps, for the rogue alarm that is probably hoping its owner is dead so that it can be re-housed somewhere else, sent to a charity shop where it might find somebody a little more considerate, a little more alive.

It's 0626hrs and in four minutes my own alarm will sound and I'll have to take a shower, have some breakfast, find a shop that sells toothpaste and then head out for a day's work. I'll need some shaving foam too, although I'm used to relying on the soap provided. With two minutes to go until my own alarm sounds I hear the sound of the alarm in next door's room again. It sounds briefly but is then silenced, possibly by the woman who entered the room a few moments ago. She can't work the alarm. It might be a clock radio. I've never understood them; they seem to have a mind of their own. Perhaps the room was unoccupied, but the clock alarm, set by a previous occupant, somebody who checked out yesterday morning, had not been deactivated. I don't know and I don't care, but if when I leave my room in about half an hour to get on with those miserably mundane chores of hunting for toothpaste and shaving foam and a notebook, there are police in the room next door, I'll know that my initial suspicions were right and that I and the man or woman in the room on the other side of next door, not forgetting those opposite, all of whom are probably wondering what's going on, were wrong to simply surmise things and then decide to take no action whatsoever, based on the assumption that stuff like this doesn't happen to them.

Was it anything to do with an unanswered alarm clock?

When I did eventually leave the building after breakfast this morning a police car pulled up outside the hotel and two bulky-looking German policemen entered the hotel. Perhaps there was some truth in what I was thinking, I thought, as I walked in the direction of the railway station in search of a shop that might sell notepads.

I write a lot of hotel and restaurant reviews on Trip Advisor, which can be read by clicking here.