A hard rain is gonna fall..

...or rather a hard rain IS falling. There's a blustery wind too and it hasn't let-up for some time. By now, of course, there would have been 'abort' texts flying between mine and Andy's mobile phones, but today it's irrelevant as we're not planning on a ride. Our next outing will be Boxing Day, when hopefully the weather will have picked up, ie no rain.

I'm in my usual place, sitting in the conservatory listening to the rain hitting the flat roof above me and looking out on the bare trees swaying to and fro in the wind. It wouldn't be pleasant on a bike today and you can bet that any cyclist out there will be wearing wet and shiny trousers. Fortunately, it's not cold.

Instead of going out, I've been scrolling back through old posts and I've realised how stagnated we've become. By that I mean we're no longer pushing the boundaries, heading out for Merstham (the long way) via the infamous Enterdent or heading down Jackass Lane to Tandridge via off-road routes. This, of course, is because of time constraints, but in the new year we ought to be heading for these places again and, indeed, trying my new route to Redhill (which avoids the A23).

Also available in bright red.

I get the impression that the rain will continue for most of the day and at some stage I've got to drive to the garage to put air into the offside front tyre of our Picanto. Yes, I'm the (ahem) proud owner of a Kia Picanto, which, to be fair, is alright for driving around town. The only problem is that it looks like Postman Pat's car – it's bright red. All we need is a black and white cat and I've seen one in Robert Dyas, but couldn't be bothered to spend the money.

If you recall (although I might not have written about it) my own black BMW was written off when some complete idiot whammed into the back of it back in September time. We went without a car for about a month or two and spent our weekends on buses travelling to car showrooms to look at cars, none of which really appealed: they were either too expensive for what they were or simply not right for us – or both.

We looked at a Ford Focus, an old Mercedes, a Vauxhall Vectra and many others until we decided on the safe bet, the Picanto. The only problem with it is that it's not the sort of car to travel long distances. Or rather it will go the distance but not at any great speed and certainly not in comfort, like the old Beamer. Still, it's a car and for the moment it'll have to do. The key thing is that it gets my daughter to school, which was always the main consideration.

For a minute I thought the rain had stopped. It hasn't.

Tatsfield Bus Stop

The pond at Sanderstead.

Went on a ride to the Tatsfield Bus Stop, virtually non-stop as I had no tea to drink and I was riding alone. Fairly busy going through Sanderstead High Street, but it thinned out as I headed along the 269 towards Botley Hill. Good weather too, as the above photograph of Sanderstead pond illustrates. Note the blue skies and cotton wool clouds reflected in the lake.

The Kona at the Tatsfield Bus Stop

I'm going to try and ride daily from Boxing Day in a bid to lose some weight and keep a little fitter than I have been – but let's see if I can find the self-motivation needed.

Warlingham Green's festive spirit

Christmas tree on Warlingham Green.

This photograph marked the start of our ride to the Tatsfield Churchyard on the weekend of the 8th and 9th December. We cycled back through Tatsfield Village to see if the village tree was up, but it wasn't. Last year's Tatsfield tree wasn't switched on when we cycled past it around a year ago.

The Kona on the urban ride

The Kona on Saturday 15th December during a nice urban ride.

Photograph of the Week...from Oslo

An interesting statue I stumbled across in Oslo on Friday 14th December

Urban ride....on Saturday 15th December

"I'm not cycling today. I sent you an email. Enjoy your ride." There was a smiley face after the message, I noticed, as I stood on the doorstep, rucksack on back. But there was no point in going back in the house. I was outside now so I might as well make the most of it. Had Andy's text arrived any earlier (following one from me stating that I'd be ten minutes late) then I might have said no to a ride, but I'd done the hard bit – woken myself up and made the tea – so I resigned myself to a ride.

Through the industrial estate off the A23 heading towards Stafford Road.

And I was pleased with my self-motivation, although a little unsure of where I was going to go; definitely a short ride to the bus stop was my first thought, but I considered an urban ride to Carshalton (a 12-miler there and back) to see mum and have some breakfast. It was a good ride. The weather was good too and it was easily one of those mornings when everything seems right. Cycling is a very spiritual thing and I was feeling uplifted by the freedom of it all as I cut through the industrial estate off the A23 and headed down Stafford Road towards the top of Wallington High Street.

The traffic was building but it wasn't anywhere near troublesome and I reached mum's at around 0800hrs. After placing the Kona in the garage to keep it out of sight from thieves (if there were any in a tiny Carshalton cul de sac at such an hour) I went in for breakfast and four cups of tea, courtesy of my own flask and teabags.

Breakfast at mum's. What could be finer after an urban ride on the Kona?

Breakfast consisted of a boiled egg and fingers, some bread and marmalade and Alpen. Mum and I chatted about this and that and then I headed home, going back through the famous Dog Shit Alley, through Grove Park and out on to Acre Lane towards Wallington Green then up towards Five Ways, through the council estate (along Denning Road) and then a brief spurt on the Brighton Road before hanging a left and joining the Selsdon Road towards home.

On Sunday, Andy and I cycled to the Tatsfield Bus Stop.

Minus 12 and snowing, but it doesn't phase the Norwegians

The 1505 Oslo to Skien train leaves Torp...and check out that snow!

A bit of snow or the wrong kind of leaves and it all comes to a standstill in the UK, but not in Norway. Last week, while in Oslo, the temperature plummeted to minus 12 degrees, but guess what? The trains were on time and so were the planes.

Snow on the tarmac, but we were ready for departure

The view from my Oslo hotel window...

Proof, if any was needed, that international travel isn't what it's cracked up to be.

In Oslo...

Lone figure in the snow. Shot taken from my hotel.

In many ways, December is probably the best month to visit Oslo because it's cold and there's plenty of snow on the ground. In fact, it's minus 12 degrees here and there's a light dusting of snow everywhere.

I flew in here yesterday on a Norwegian Air flight from Gatwick, which was very, very smooth and took just under 90 minutes. I'm staying at the Anker Hotel in the centre of town and it's very good. There's no restaurant, which is a bit of a bind, although it means I have to go out (in the cold) to find something to eat.

I wandered around for a bit, being careful of my footing. The worst thing about Dr. Martens shoes is that they have slippery soles. I managed not to fall over and eventually found a nice Italian trattoria just across from the hotel where I enjoyed a glass of Cabernet Sauvigon with some Italian ham and a very pleasant and colourful risotto.

The restaurant was crowded and, as always when I travel on business, I was the only one dining alone with just a copy of Chavs by Owen Jones to keep me company. Although, having said that, the light was poor so I resorted to simply enjoying the ambience of the place.

I'm really sad, but I love this photograph.

I write this from the ground floor of the hotel where the WiFi (which is free) seems to get a better reception than when I'm in the room. Outside now it's cold and white and there's not many people around.

Somebody told me that the temperature was up on yesterday's minus 12. Today I think it's hovering around minus 3 or 4 and believe me, you can tell the difference. It was snowing this morning when I went out to buy razors and toothpaste.

Two paragraphs back, the one starting 'I write this from the ground floor...' it was the morning of the 13th December. Now, two paragraphs later on, it's 1750hrs in the evening and I'm back in the same place I was sitting earlier, listening to Amy Winehouse, which is on the sound system, and drinking a glass of Frydenlund, a Norwegian beer. Alright, lager. My work is now done and I'm taking it easy, checking emails, writing emails, that sort of thing.

You might be wondering about the shot of the toothpaste. It's like this: when I was in Qatar the other week I didn't have any toothpaste so the hotel gave me the small tube of Colgate. I've never seen a tube of toothpaste so small. I mean, I've heard of Tinie Tempah, but never Tiny Toothpaste, but there it is in all it's glory. Zendium is a Norwegian toothpaste brand, by the way. I know, I'm sad. Very sad.

The hotel's not bad at all, although, as I mentioned earlier, no restaurant. I am beginning to wonder whether the Anker Hotel has a letter missing somewhere.

Room 520 in all its glory. Nice hotel, despite no restaurant, but it does have a bar.

I like Norway. I like all the Scandinavian countries. The people are laid back. I was going to say 'cool' but that would be an understatement with snow on the ground and temperatures below zero. What is refreshing is the way the Norwegians deal with the poor weather. They get on with it. The trains and the buses continue to run, the workmen in the streets continue drilling. Life goes on and doesn't come to a standstill.

Happy Birthday to me!

Here's a very young me with all those exciting birthdays
ahead of me.

I always keep quiet about my birthday these days, mainly because, once beyond the age of 15 they have become progressively less exciting. In fact, the moment somebody suggested that I should be asking for clothes for my birthday – instead of train sets and toy soldiers – it was time to crawl under a stone and die. Well, perhaps that's a bit dramatic, but when socks and underpants become a key focus it's time for something. Time, perhaps, to admit that I should grow up?

For me, however, socks and underpants are things I should buy as a matter of course and should never be considered as birthday present territory. It's like waking up to a wrapped present, opening it and discovering a box of 80 English Breakfast teabags or a tube of toothpaste, shaving foam or toilet paper. Imagine gift-wrapping your weekly shop for somebody: a tin of baked beans, an orange, a loaf of bread...whatever next?

So, these days, birthdays go and come (but Earth abides) and they are nothing more than another day in the calender. There was a time when my adult birthday meant quite a lot. I had a pal who shared the same birthday – rather annoyingly he was one year younger than me and if he's reading this, Happy Birthday – and we used to make a weekend of it: a few days in Suffolk with our respective other halves, a curry, a few beers, some invigorating walks in the countryside; but those days are long gone and now, as I sit here looking out on what is a fairly pleasant day (I'm off work today) I'm looking forward to doing 'practical' things, like a bit of Christmas shopping.

I hate the word 'practical' as it shares the stage with 'sensible' and the phrase 'grown-up'. And, of course, they're all things I should be by now: practical, sensible and grown-up. In many ways I am all three: I'm married, I have kids, a mortgage and so on, but I yearn for the old days of childhood when there was little to worry about and plenty to look forward to. Now I'm sounding miserable, which I'm not and to be honest with you, what the hell would I do with a train set today? Where would I put it for a start? If I did have one, I'd be taken right back to my childhood and my mum telling me to take it upstairs 'out of harm's way' – except it would be my wife telling me to grow up and why did I waste the money on a train set when I could have bought (ahem) a washable suit from Marks & Spencer?

In the old days, once a toy went upstairs it found itself sharing the same status with the older toys from Birthdays and Christmases past; it was no longer the new kid on the block as it was on Christmas morning.

When I lived at home with mum and dad and my sister and brother, Christmas was a big, big thing. Dad would arrange our new toys in the living room and when we tip-toed our way downstairs around 4am to see what 'Father Christmas' had brought us we would be presented with what amounted to the window display of Hamley's in Regent Street. However, the person whose toys were on the dining table had to find space somewhere else in the room as lunch time approached and that would mean finding an unoccupied corner and attempting a reconstruction of dad's inspired display (it was never as good). Far better if your toys were already on the floor, somewhere away from the television and out of harm's way (as mum might say).

Christmas, of course, was far more egalatarian than a birthday. With the latter, one person was in the spotlight: the birthday boy or girl. One could say, of course, that on Christmas Day Jesus was the birthday boy, but most people have lost the true meaning of the festive season, which these days is more about greed, getting drunk at the Christmas party and then going on a diet during the month of January.

My dad tried to make birthdays more egalitarian than they would otherwise have been by giving smaller presents to whoever wasn't celebrating a birthday. This made other people's birthdays quite exciting as, on 10 December, my brother and sister knew they would be getting a present too, which made things a little more bearable for them when the 'birthday boy or girl' was parading around like Lord Snooty, getting out of doing virtually anything because it was their birthday.

There came a time, however, when the birthday cards would have to come down and make way for the Christmas cards and this was always a sad moment as it meant that my ever-diminishing 'birthday boy' status had finally ran out of juice and wouldn't be getting new batteries for another 52 weeks.

Being born on 10 December is better than you might think, mainly because it's just far enough away from Jesus' birthday to warrant separate presents. In the old days it meant that the month of December was a rollercoaster of fun as nobody would dare to suggest a 'joint birthday and Christmas present', the scouge of all December-born people. If you were born any later than the 10th, the risk of a joint present was very real.

But now, as I look out on the world from my conservatory window – it's a bright day with a mix of blue sky and cotton wool clouds against which the branches bare trees are silhouetted – all of these concerns of yesteryear are irrelevant and mere memories that bring a smile to my face. I've been fortunate enough never to have received a joint birthday and Christmas present and, over the years, I've had some great toys. My toy fort (known as Black Cross Fort) still lives round at mum's; my remote-controlled Tiger Tank – which once entered a disused war-time mortuary in our local Grove Park in Carshalton – is a pleasant (and mildly harrowing) memory and there are many other great gifts that made 10 December a special day. In other words, I'm not bitter and I'm not miserable (well, not about my birthday).

In short, I'm a grown-up with my own children to think about. My only child-like fun these days revolves around cycling at the weekends on my Kona Scrap, which is far from a sensible choice of bike and for this reason, I love it. I'm rambling now, so I'm going to stop and enjoy the rest of my day.

For a related article, click here.