Alan Coleman

Floods! Which can mean only one thing. Canoeists! It’s almost as if the TV news is using library pictures from a bygone era when the obligatory grinning buffoon paddles in front of the cameras. No need to worry about the warnings of an appending climatical apolocolypse, no, not when you can get out in the pissing rain and paddle through raw sewage. Haven’t these people got anything else better to do? Maybe the idea of staying at home and watching it on TV seems a little conventional, especially when one can get out and be part of the fun.

Which incidentally reminds me of the time when we were little and it used to snow. Everyone used to pile up the recreation ground and sledge down the little hill onto the football pitch. Although there had to be one kid who turned up in skis wearing the full outfit, and what a load of shit it was too, a simple kitchen tray was much quicker.

Canoeists though, have always been a slightly strange breed, always skinny, probably with some wispy facial hair and permanently dressed in a blue Berghaus Fleece. The sort of people you see from the river bank on a tedious bank holiday in the countryside, I can almost imagine him now, floating past with a self satisfied grin, ‘Splendid day for it!! Good day to you!!’ Or walking about in the car park strapping the offending article to the top of an old Volvo, still wearing the spraydeck from under which his unusually small penis pokes through the damp neoprene.

So is that what happens to a canoeist when he sees everything his neighbours have spent their lives working for under six feet of shit stinking water? ‘Don’t worry too much about the displaced sweetheart, it’s quite cosy in the community centre…. I’ll pop down there in the canoe and see how they’re coping shall I?’ The thing is, it’s not just the canoeing in front of the camera like a smart arse is it? It’s the inane grin plastered across the smug face, ‘Not for me the folly of living at lower levels, the good canoeist know better!’

I have the solution

In the event of flooding a state of national emergency should be declared, which would include permission for any member of the Countryside Alliance to use whatever force necessary to sink any canoe on sight. Members holding a shotgun licence will have facility to call in air support from The Royal Air Force. So any event of Mr Smug turning up in a Kayak will be met by either the double barrels of a fat red faced bloke in a wax jacket, or a jolly good strafing from an Apache.

The first cycling shirt I ever had was the back and white Peugeot strip from in the early eighties, I must have been about 10 or 11 at the time and it was probably a Christmas present from Mum and Dad. I remember clearly that just like the shirt worn by the French professional team, it was simple in design with the Peugeot logo printed clearly above black and white checks around the chest. It was, and still is, a classic.

I would learn later that it was the same shirt worn by riders like Robert Millar, Phil Anderson and Stephen Roche as they made the move to professional cycling from the top French amateur outfit, ACBB. These are sportsman whose careers I’d follow closely over the next few years as I’d became a keen, if below average, amateur rider.

Up until 1985 my exposure to the sport had been little more than the annual Grand Prix of Essex, a prestigious early season amateur classic usually won by a rider from the fantasticality named, Manchester Wheelers. Along with the Grand Prix of Essex there where of course Dads own cycling stories, which amounted to little more than a rusty track frame hanging nostalgically the garage. It was an Ephgrave, and he’d talk about it in almost reverential tones, smiling with pride as he ran his hands gently over the lugwork. There was no doubt that it had once been a truly lovely machine, however I don’t think that he’d ever actually ridden it, not whilst awake anyway.

So that was that, a ten speed racer and the Peugeot team shirt, nothing more than an occasional interest. All that would change in the summer of 1986 when Channel 4 covered a sporting event that would change the course of my life.

Enter, The Tour De France. And men like Bernard Hianault, Laurent Fignon and Robert Millar, sportsmen demonstrating unimaginable feats of endurance with one of the world’s most picturesque countries as a backdrop. Continental cycling has always been the aspiration of British cyclists, and The Tour is no exception. A three week traveling show of guts, glory and the human being in its finest form. And some EPO as well.

Anyway, it’s on for another week, so there’s enough time for plenty more about The Tour, the prologue in London and why cycling is better then football.

I have a new job in the West End, which means I’m great, but also means no more walking through Whitechappel on the way to work. Not that Oxford Circus is anything to rave about but it beats running the gauntlet of Brick Lane at 8.30 every morning.

I don’t know why everyone goes on about it so much, I used to dread those slightly peaky mornings after a bit of a bender, the pavements smeared with the debris of stinking fast food and puddles of gob. Mmm, piles of human phlegm flopping around like uncooked omelette, some of it even spilling out of overflowing wheelie bins. grotesque.

It’s not as if it’s got any particular charm about either, just moody blokes in bad clothes pestering bored tourists into distinctly average restaurants. Apart from that boozer up the side street near where the Seven Stars used to be, it’s a shithole and won’t be missed.

On a more positive note, The B52s. Highly underrated, especially a track called Roam which I think is better than Love Shack, but Mand doesn’t agree. Also, I listened to The Police this evening for the first time in what must be twenty years, and strangely remembered all the words to Everything She Does Is Magic, a fantastic track.

Without meaning to be all nostalgic I recorded it off the old mans vinyl onto a grey TDK C60, I used to listen to it under the covers at night on a pair of massive white ear phones with a curly lead. The steel drums brought it all back, the soundtrack to Industrial unrest, Pershing Missiles and Insignia deodorant.

Great days. It only started to go wrong when I began watching the Nine O’clock news whilst listening to Dark Side Of The Moon on earphones. Then as if from nowhere we discovered the Tour De France on Channel 4, saved if you like, a welcome respite from apartied, Thatcher and the Soviet Union. The Tour has remained a little bit special to me since then – Hainault , Lemond, Roche and the sheer bloody romance of it all.

On Saturday The Tour De France starts in London, and with near on a million people due to turn up, hopefully it’ll be one big European celebration in the worlds best city.

The last week or so has seen the vortex of politics and violence momentarily slow for viewing, with the four quarters of hypocrisy facing each other in perfect symmetry. On one opposite Piety faces is old office as peace envoy to the Middle East, an appointment straight out of The Onion, Viz or Public Eye. Further unnecessary evidence of the supreme egotism of a man so caught up in self to beg belief. As the humour wears off, the sheer inanity of religious belief really starts to show the unbelievable level of ignorance at play.

As Piety and the wife bail out in a bizarre piece of camp theatre, they leave the pitch as player manager after scoring a couple of penalties, both from Italian style dives and a Tuscan appeal to the Scandinavian ref. Walking into the sunset with the family as the chaos is just about to begin, It’s poetry that Huxley could only have dreamed of.

Which leads nicely to the two other opposing quarters of the circle. On one side Iraq, a mess of biblical proportions as a distant memory on the all smiles African campaign trail, ‘A scar on the memory’ seeming like a wet village fete compared to the holocaust waiting in the east. On the other side, the Great British Public looking on wide eyed as dumfounded fools, shocked that the well meaning war on terror has finally bitten its Royal arse.

Honestly, what did we really expect? We’ve had all this before with the IRA, remember them? Equally as pathetic and underhand and it seems too that we’ve learnt nothing from it. And as flabby journalists whip us into a frenzy of indignation, we still can’t figure out that the just war has finally come home, like it always would.

So you that supported the invasion, where were you when thousands of well meaning people marched for peace? No doubt watching the real men on the Ten O’clock news as some sort of personal fantasy of achievement.

No point waving the tabloid around now, it’s too late. You made your bed, you lie in it.