Chion one year old today

Today marks exactly one year from the arrival of the first print-run of Chion. I’ve sold/distributed 373 copies since then. I’m pleased with that result, especially since I concentrated on online sales rather than bookshop sales. Bookshops are an administrative nightmare to deal with when you’re an indie, as I found with Ulterior. I made a decent amount of money through that avenue, but I mostly decided it wasn’t worth the hassle this time round. I’m happy to carve my niche online. The best news of all is that Chion is selling with greater frequency now than ever. I can only put that down to the excellent reviews the book received.

School readers raise £356 for orphanage

A special thank-you to each Clounagh Junior High School pupil who purchased a copy of Chion since the book’s release last year. The books were sold to the pupils on a charity basis, with £2 per copy donated to Katya Vanchev Orphanage in Bulgaria. Last Wednesday I was delighted to be able to present a cheque for £356. Clounagh has a long-standing relationship with Katya Vanchev, helping out each year during the Ski Trip. Various school activities over the course of the year have raised the grand total to around £2,500.

With charities, you never really see what happens to your money, and you never know how much of it disappears to cover various admin fees. The personal connection with Katya Vanchev makes this a lot more special than raising money for a faceless organisation. Here we can be sure that every penny raised goes to benefit the kids (see photo).

My first accident on the new bicycle

Well, on Friday evening I had my first accident on the new mountain bike. I was heading into Andrew Harrison’s housing estate where there is a rather pointless roundabout with only two exits (Craigavon’s a bit like that). Since there was no traffic in sight, I decided to cut across the roundabout the wrong way, just to save ten seconds. When making a typical turn, a bike naturally tilts a little, and one’s centre of gravity goes off-centre. That was all it took for the bike’s wheels to lose their grip on the road … thanks to the ice. Normally, icy weather conditions are okay to cycle on, because so much car tyre rubber has already melted the ice. But thanks to this ridiculous roundabout design, I didn’t take into account that there was a small portion of the roundabout that never gets used. Hence, I fell roughly on the side of my pelvis. For a moment, I thought I had really badly injured myself, but I was fine - except for the pain, which, as you’d expect, was worse the following day. (It’s now six days later, and I still can’t sleep on my right side.)

This got me thinking about all the times I’ve fallen off bicycles in the past. There’s so much I have forgotten from my childhood, but I think I can remember every single crash; trauma is funny that way. For your amusement, here are some of the funnier moments (well, they’re funny now).

I was about nine years old, and my bike was the Raleigh Grifter. Who remembers those cool motobike-style handgrips with the twist action for changing gears? Asthetically, the Grifter was the predecessor to the BMX. But looks are where the resemblance ends. This was one heavy bike. Even though I was well aware of the limitations of this cumbersome beast, that didn’t stop me trying to show off to a couple of girls. There was a playpark near my house, with swings, climbing frames, and a big circular sandpit about thirty feet wide. The surface of the sand was at a depth of about two feet below ground level. While the girls were chatting on the monkeybars, I decided to ride my bike into the sandpit. I had done the leap successfully before. All you had to do was put the Grifter into a slight wheelie when you reached the edge of the pit. Despite the weight of the bike, this was doable … some of the time. This time, the bike went into a dive and threw me over the bars. I still remember the thud of my chest hitting the sand. As I got up and dusted myself off, I could hear giggling coming from the direction of the monkeybars. I picked up the bike and left the pit in defeat, feeling all my self-respect evaporating through my burning cheeks.

As a kid, I was never one for bike mantenance, and I had that old Grifter for many years. One day, it let me down big-time. I was cycling from the road onto the footpath at the entrance to the housing estate where I lived. As my back tyre bumped the kerb, the entire bike seemed to split into two or three pieces. It literally fell apart under me. At least, that’s the way I remembered it. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except there was a bunch of teenagers enjoying an afternoon booze-up on a nearby lawn. How they laughed at me! How they mocked me! The worst thing was I couldn’t just walk away. Somehow I had to get my bike home. So I half carried and half dragged the remains of my Grifter along the footpath, forced to move at a snail’s pace, enduring a continual verbal barrage for many minutes until I was finally out of sight.

When I was about eleven, the BMX craze was just beginning, and I became the proud owner of a Raleigh Ultra Burner. Since the bike was lightweight, I naturally tried to do various stunts on it. I don’t remember how many seats I broke, abusing that bike. My least fond memory is of doing a short race with friends down a housing estate. My brakes weren’t functioning at the time, and I should have known it was foolish to race with no brakes. Especially when there’s a big house facing you at the end of the road. By the time the house was looming I realised it was too late to stop, or even to turn. There was no garden at this house. Nothing but a footpath running perpendicular to my approach. For a moment, I had the crazy notion that if I held the front of the bike to the ground, the impact on the kerb would propel me over the handlebars, so that I would land on the footpath instead of crashing into the wall. It didn’t work (and maybe that was a good thing). My momentum was too great, probably around twenty miles per hour. The bike continued onto the footpath; the front wheel struck the house; the bike went into an “endo” (one of my favourite stunts in more controlled circumstances); my jaw struck the wall hard. Finally at rest, I reached up to touch my jaw. It felt numb. My fingers came away covered in blood and small white pebble-like things. My teeth! I thought. Thankfully, it turned out to be nothing more than the pebble-dash from the wall. Pebble-dash is pretty resilient stuff. You get an idea how great this impact was when I end up with the pebbles sticking to my face instead of the house. The scars from the accident aren’t too noticeable. It just bugs me now that I’m into beards, because there’s a little piece of my jaw where hair will no longer grow, right where the moustache joins the beard on my right hand side.

There were many more accidents. I remember our labrador knocking me off the bike. Another occasion, my foot slipped off a pedal when I was pumping hard, resulting in me sliding down the road on my back with the bike wrapped around me; my sweater was shredded. I remember losing control of my BMX in mid-air whilst jumping. I remember trying to cycle down a steep ice-coated road, and I ended up “skiing” the whole way down on two wheels and one foot, like some ridiculous tripod. I remember doing a massive arc of a skid, when the bike suddenly found grip again and flipped me off itself. I remember colliding with another cyclist around a blind corner and wrecking his brand-new bike. Amazingly, I’ve never broken a bone.

On the one hand, there are all these bicycle accidents. On the other, I’ve never had a car accident. Wonder what will happen if I buy a motorcycle? The speed of a car combined with the flimsy protection of a bicycle. Not a great combination. But still, I might get one anyway.