Breathtaking scenery near Ballycastle

Once in a while, here in Northern Ireland, you get a beautiful day that coincides with you being in a beautiful place away from the big towns and cities, and you are reminded of what a lovely country you live in. And if you’re lucky, you’ve brought your camera.

Before heading home from Ballycastle Film Festival on Sunday morning, we took a trip Torr Head and Murlough Bay, just a few miles outside the town. Thought I’d share …

If you’ve been watching our Film Club movies, you may notice a familiar-looking cliff face in the bottom-centre photo. Ballycastle’s just round the bend.

Cycling vs. driving - Part V

Abanding your car and choosing to do 100% of your travels by bicycle does wonders for your health, but not the health of your car (see photo). Back in December, when my car had been sitting in the driveway for a few months, I peered inside one day and noticed a few spots of mould growing on the seats and steering wheel. I promptly cleaned them off. During winter, I thought I would do the sensible thing and put my car away from the elements in the garage. I even put a few of those little silica gel packets along the dash to help prevent dampness. And I left it for three months. A few days ago, when I decided to bring the car back out into the sunlight, this is the present Father Time left me. Mould. Lots and lotsa mould.

Amazing what the lack of human companionship will do to a car. Well, when the apocalypse strikes and wipes out 99% of the human population, you won’t find me hotwiring many cars on my travels. Yeuch! Mad Max never had to put up with this.

Anyone want to buy a 1995 Nissan Terrano, real cheap? Actual vehicle featured in the famous Irish horror films Dark Light and Saul’s Pupils? No? … Oh.

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.

Cycling vs. driving - Part IV

It’s official: my car is gone. Well, it’s still in my driveway, but it’s untaxed and the MOT test is long overdue. And I’ve just noticed there are spots of mould growing on the steering wheel. Yes, it’s been a while since I’ve driven it or anything else on four wheels. For at least three months now, I’ve been using my bicycle for 100% of my travels. Long-time readers will know that I’ve been working my way toward this arrangement for a year or two - ever since this post. I like what this change in lifestyle has done for me, not only physically but psychologically. Last winter, the thought of cycling to work in the morning was unbearable. Now, I simply put on my gloves and grab the bike without a second thought. There’s something to be said for embracing a state of mind that isn’t constantly seeking the greatest personal comfort every moment.

The bike has held up pretty well for the six months I’ve owned it, except for a couple of minor quibbles. The pedals (something you rarely have to think about replacing) were useless. The plastic on both of them broke in half after only two months; of course, I am over seventeen stone in weight, but still. I replaced the pedals with a pair of mean-looking bear-trap-style metal ones from my old bike. More recently, my brakes started working poorly. In my usual lazy manner, I let it slide, until one morning a car decided to reverse out of a driveway while I was cruising down a hill towards it. I couldn’t stop, but I could veer. But the moron’s windows were all misted up, and he just kept coming. I was literally one or two inches from having an accident - the closest I’ve ever been. That experience was enough to make me check the brake pads. I discovered they were worn right down to the metal. Naturally, I’ve now got new ones fitted now. Once bitten, as they say.

At this time of year, it’s pretty dark while I’m pedalling to work at 8.15, likewise when I’m heading home at 4.15. In my usual lazy manner, I’ve been making the journey with no lights. Well, despite the fact that none of my not-quite-an-accidents have been related to darkness, I thought it best to rectify the situation and avoid any unpleasant surprise visits to Craigavon Area Hospital.

No regrets. Bicycles rock.

DeLorean: A dream within reach

Some of you know I have a thing about DeLorean cars. It’s based on nothing more concrete than a childhood memory: I recall being about ten years old, glued to the TV set, watching a documentary on the now-infamous car, and wishing I could own one. The power of nostalgia compells me to love this car today; I can’t help it.

There were only ever about 8,000 DeLorean DMC-12 cars made, 6,000 of which are believed to still be in circulation, most in the USA. Now and again, I tap the name of the car into eBay. Occasionally they show up for sale, in various locales and conditions. I never seriously thought I would have an opportunity to own one. However, last week, one of these cars showed up in County Down, of all places - just a short drive from where I live. The car was described as pristine condition, and had had its original rust-proof stainless steel panels painted black by one of its owners. I liked this unique look a lot. DeLorean Noir! Bidding began at £10,000, but with a reserve of who knows what.

So I started thinking, was it truly possible for me to buy this car? Well, the only way for me to raise the funds was to remortgage my house. It’s not as drastic as it sounds. I have a pretty small mortgage currently. More importantly, was it worth it? Let’s say the total cost came to £15,000. Fifteen grand just to make driving feel like piloting an X-Wing Fighter. Since I’m currently getting around on a bicycle (and intending to keep on doing so), the car would be for special occasions only - largely kept in storage, free from wear-and-tear, retaining its classic status for a long, long time. Again, I have to ask, is it worth spending fifteen grand to own a car that you will hardly ever drive?

At the end of the day, it wasn’t money that put me off; the car would retain its value over time and could be re-sold whenever. I opted out because I thought long and hard about what owning something like this does to your mind. I pictured myself driving with acute paranoia about damaging the car. I pictured myself parking in public, leaving the car there and going shopping, constantly worried about someone deciding to run a key along the side of the door because the car is so eye-catching. This mental issue can be summed up in one Bible verse: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). What the verse is saying is that the things we own form attachments to us, or rather we form attachments to them. It’s a basic, unavoidable principle of human life, rooted in our own greedy natures. We care deeply, usually too much, about what we own. Naturally, the less you own, the more your heart is free to set itself on what’s important in life. Bottom line: I don’t want to become the kind of person who owns all sort of pretty things and worries about them constantly. That’s what the DeLorean would provoke in me. In my youth, I had a terrible collector’s mentality for books and videos. I seem to have grown out of it, to the degree that I hardly ever buy anything these days. If I buy a DVD, I’m usually thinking about its resale value on eBay! I’m glad about that and I don’t want to be lured into materialism again. Maybe I have a better grasp on my mortality than I used to.

So I let the DeLorean go. All things considered, I would be better served pursuing my dream of one day owning a boat. On the surface, it sounds like the same pursuit as the DeLorean, but what I’m really after is the experience of life on water, away from civilisation and close to nature. And experience is far more valuable the ownership of rare treasures. After all, if we get to take anything with us to the afterlife, it will be our memories of what we did in this life.

How to bring an eBay thief to justice

Let me tell you the true story of the videogame I purchased that took three months to arrive. As I’ve done countless times before, I got the winning bid on an eBay auction from a seller who had 100% positive feedback (I always check), this time for a copy of Crackdown for the Xbox 360, a game I was looking forward to playing. Unfortunately the seller did not accept Paypal payments. No big deal, except I would probably have to wait a week or more for delivery due to the cheque having to clear. Two weeks went by, and there was no sign of the game. I emailed the seller and got a positive response. I did some more waiting. Still no game. I emailed again. This time no response. Well over a month later, I rechecked the seller’s feedback rating and saw that three negative comments had appeared. So, I wasn’t the only person this guy had decided to rip off. Well, either that or he had died. Who could tell?

Anyway, I added my own negative comment to the others. Fair’s fair; he cashed my cheque and walked away without sending the goods. And if he’s now in heaven, he’ll hardly mind an extra stain on his eBay account. Next, I registered a complaint with eBay. Nothing happened except the seller’s account was shut down. So I had to decide: do I take this further or put it down to experience? Well, this wasn’t the first time I had been ripped off on eBay; it was the third. So I thought, No more. This time I’m not letting it rest.

eBay had turned out to be prettty unsupportive, so I formulated my own plan. First, I used Google to locate the nearest police station to the seller’s address. Then I used eBay’s “Contact Member” form to write a message to the three other victims of the seller. I asked each of them to compose a letter addressed to the police in the seller’s area, detailing exactly what the seller had done, including as much detail as possible, right down to the cheque numbers and dates cleared. Instead of having the buyers forward their letters individually to the police, I asked them to mail them to me. Two of them did so. Along with myself, that made us a party of three. I then forwarded all three letters directly to the police in the seller’s area. This whole approach saved several different police stations having to forward and collate (and possibly misplace or ignore) the data. Instead, I provided them with a nice tidy all-inclusive package. I was prepared to leave nothing to chance.

Sure enough, I eventually received a call from a police sergeant. He advised me there were two ways he could play it. He could either have us fill out an official form of complaint, or he could simply call round to the seller’s house today and quiz him. Collectively, we all agreed to the latter, because it was simple and quick. Boy oh boy, I would have loved to have seen the seller’s face when the sergeant arrived at his door and told him why he was there. Little did the scoundrel know that there were three offended customers from different parts of the country secretly conspiring against him.

Yes, the seller was very much alive, and quick to make his excuses. His story was that shortly after the auction he had been admitted to hospital for three weeks, during which time he also had problems with his girlfriend. And it was the girlfriend who was the actual owner of the eBay account he was using to trade. He was actually able to show the sergeant the very games he had listed on eBay and he then agreed to post them the next day. The presence of the games indicates that there actually was some original intent to make good on the sales, and I’m willing to believe that the seller’s story would check out, if investigated. However, the excuses are rather feeble when you consider how I had been waiting three months for the game. I think it was more theft by laziness than theft by intent. But theft is theft, and if I had never brought the matter to the police, I doubt that I would ever have received the game. Crackdown finally arrived yesterday.

There you have it. Honourable eBay users take note: if someone rips you off, now you know how to bring him down!

My trip to the USA

The story of why I spent August in Kansas, USA, goes like this: About two years ago my local friend Chris was doing his PhD in Astronomy at Armagh Observatory. His boss said, “I want you to attend a conference in Spain.” Chris sighed, bowed his head in resignation, and went. Whilst in Spain, he met an American lass called Stacey. It came to light that both were big fans of Farscape, and Chris just happened to have in his possession a laptop full of Farscape episodes. This ensured that these two spent plenty of time in each other’s company … alone. And so, Stacey soon swept my best friend off to the Land of the Free … or not so soon. Bravely, Chris battled the evil Red Tape for a year, until finally becoming an American citizen. Now he’s married with a kid. So off I flew to Kansas, to see my buddy for the first time in over a year.

One of the unexpected highlights of the vacation was spending time with Isabel, Chris and Stacey’s one-year-old girl. She got accustomed to this big six-foot-four monster quite quickly and we had a lot of fun. It’s amusing figuring out things that make babies laugh. One not so amusing moment was when Stacey decided to sneak out and do some shopping, leaving me alone with Isabel. I was able to keep the kid occupied for about fifteen minutes, then her wee head started looking around for mummy continually and nothing would distract her. After crawling around in frustration, she had a complete tearful, snot-filled meltdown. Luckily, Stacey arrived back within a few minutes.

One evening, Stacey and Chris put the baby to sleep in the bedroom and went out on a date. I watched some DVDs, keeping one eye on the baby monitor. For the most part, Isabel kept still, but occasionally she would give a little moan, then I would give a panicked glance at the monitor and see her changing position in the cot. Don’t wake up! I thought. Please don’t wake up! Thankfully I got through that evening without trauma.

Someone who comments occasionally on this blog is Jeffrey Allen Davis, a fellow indie author from Springfield, Missouri. I always remembered Jeff linking to my site with the words: “A brother in Christ from Ireland that I’ll probably never get to meet.” Well, it turns out that Springfield is only a four-hour drive from Chris’s abode in Olathe, Kansas, and it happens to be the town where Stacey went to college. So, we took a trip down there. Stacey went off to meet up with her old college buds while I met up with Jeff and two of his friends, Evan and Karen. It’s not often that I’ve met up with someone that I know purely from email, and it’s pretty amazing to be able to meet with someone so far from home. The four of us had a great time, chatting mostly about writing and filmmaking. Hopefully we’ll meet again on future trips to the US.

Some snippets of unusual things you don’t experience in Ireland.

• Walking out of Kansas City Airport for the first time and being slapped across the face by a wall of heat.
• Driving down the highway and spotting hawks with a five-foot wing-span gliding overhead.
• Standing in a garden and looking at a tree that’s making more noise than a radio tuned to static. Cicadas are very noisy critters.
• Motorcyclists without helmets, with fashion senses somewhere between Easy Rider and Mad Max.
• Big flatbed trucks with deliberately raised suspensions and tyres that are much too wide for the body.
• Obese people whizzing around indoors on motorised granny carts, far too young to be grannies. It’s a tragedy what some people regard as normal life.
• Watching an incredible lightning storm. The sky flashed every few seconds; the forks were long and laboured. Over here it’s a quick flash every few minutes, if we’re lucky.

The vacation also afforded me an opportunity to obtain a couple of items that are unavailable in Ireland and the UK. I picked up season one of The Fall Guy and the complete series of The Greatest American Hero, two shows that I enjoyed as a kid, and which thus far have not appeared on region 2 DVD. Also purchased Bruce Campbell’s autobiography If Chins Could Kill, which looks like a fun read. Oh, and I bought some new trainers. Over here, they don’t stock my size (13″, although it’s called 14″ in the US; yes, I’m a freak) in shops and I have to mail order. So, it was pleasant actually being able to try-before-you-buy for once.

Americans seem to love the Northern Irish accent. As an experiment, I tried to put on the American accent, but apparently I sound effeminate when I do! You should hear the Americans trying to speak like a Northern Irishman. The ultimate test is to ask them to say, “How Now, Brown Cow.”

I enjoyed my holiday, but it’s good to be home, too. If there’s one thing I just can’t stand about Kansas, it’s the terrible humidity of mid-summer and the afternoon temperatures of over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s necessary to be indoors most of the time. On one occasion, Stacey’s brother Loren travelled the fifteen-or-so miles to visit me at Chris’s apartment. Unfortunately the air conditioning in his car wasn’t working properly, and when he arrived, he was soaked with sweat, to the degree that it looked as if someone had thrown a water balloon at his back. I love the cool summers of Ireland and the ability to go cycling whenever and wherever I want. Unlike Chris, if I ever hit it off with an American chick, I will be dragging her back here.

Sleep deprivation

Well, I’m back! And where was I? Not just off the blogosphere, but out of the country. I was in the USA for three weeks - Kansas, specifically. I decided not to blog about the fact that I was going on vacation in case somebody local decided that it would be an opportune time to break into my house, given the fact that I live alone and had to leave it vacant for three weeks. Paranoid? Maybe, but my dad once had his boat shed looted in a similar scenario.

I’ll blog a little about the trip once Chris sends me the digital photos I took. Right now, I’m operating on about two hours of sleep, and not feeling like doing much of anything. I flew through the night for six and a half hours across the Atlantic, arriving back in Ireland on Wednesday morning. Didn’t get any sleep on the plane. A six-foot-four person in a cramped plane seat isn’t conducive to rest; about the only thing it is conducive to is Deep Vein Thrombosis. When I got home, I decided not to go to sleep, because I needed to force my sleeping pattern back into a normal routine. So, at 11.30 pm I finally tumbled into bed … and didn’t wake up until 1.30 pm the next day. That’s fourteen hours of solid sleep! Two nights for the price of one. I really wish I had set the alarm. I knew I was going to pay for that mistake the following night, and sure enough I did. I lay in bed from 11.50 pm until … Well, the last time I looked at the clock, it said 5.30 am, and I had to get up for work at 7.45. I was unable to sleep because my body didn’t need it. So I am operating on two hours of kip, and I have to struggle through the day again until it’s bedtime (and right now I’m back at work). Instead of getting rid of my jetlag, all I’ve done is move it forward a day.

I once learned a couple of interesting things about sleep. There are apparently two rules that help you get a good night’s sleep. One is to get up every morning at exactly the same time, without fail. The other is to go to bed when you can hardly keep your eyes open. This means that some nights you will go to bed earlier or later than other nights. As long as you keep the wake-up time the same, your body-clock knows what time to start knocking you out at night. Any time spent in bed whilst not sleepy is time wasted (as I can testify last night). So there you have it: the cure for insomnia.

None of that helps me right now, of course.

A visit to Kinnego Marina

See that big puddle of water right smack in the middle of Northern Ireland? That’s Lough Neagh. Legend has it that Fionn mac Cumhaill, our national giant, scooped up a giant-sized handful of earth and tossed it into the sea as a stepping stone over to the UK mainland (the hole became Lough Neagh and the stepping stone the Isle of Man, both roughly the same size). The lough is about twenty miles from north to south, so big that all you can see is water on the horizon when you look across it - like you’re on the edge of the sea. I’ve been interested in the lough lately because I can’t get the notion of boating out of my mind. I live a mere ten miles south of the lough, so it’s the most appropriate place to exercise this potential new hobby of mine. A couple of days ago I visited Kinnego Marina on the southeast corner of the Lough, and took a few snaps. Beautiful, isn’t it?

The marina also has an indoor boat shop, so I went in for a browse. The boat that really caught my eye was the Bayliner 246, which is the one you can see me crawling about inside on the photo. I say crawling because, curse my DNA, I’m six-foot-four (I blame that on all the excessive milk-drinking I did as a kid). It would be nice to stand up straight inside the lower cabin of one of these boats, but I’m out of luck. Thankfully there’s one spot where I can stand with my hair touching the roof. Any further towards the bow (that’s the front of the boat; see, I’ve been learning boating terms), the roof slopes downward and I have problems. The saving grace in all this is that the standing-spot-for-tall-freaks is right by the cooker, and the cabin is so small that you’re not likely to be doing a lot of standing, anyway.

I love the thought of taking friends out to the middle of the lough, doing a bit of fishing, then gutting and cooking the fish on board. As the sun sets, with a boat this size, you have the option to drop anchor and make a night of it. The lough has access to the sea via the north coast of Ireland, so there’s the potential for long range trips - to the Isle of Man (and the various other islands in and around the UK and Ireland), Scotland, Wales; maybe even to the likes of France.

I’m dreaming. These boats are selling for silly money, like around £30,000. However, I did see plenty going on eBay second hand for much more affordable prices. Most of them are in England. How would I get one home? Well, smaller boats are often sold on trailers, so I could take the jeep over on the ferry. But I’m a lot more interested in a bigger cabin cruiser. These are generally berthed on a river somewhere. The idea is, you buy the boat and pilot it home on water. Wouldn’t it be nice to be sailing home in a second-hand boat only to hear the engine sputtering to silence when you’re in the middle of the Irish Sea? Did I say sailing? Oops. This is a motor boat and there is no sail. Something tells me I won’t be buying a boat from so far away. What am I talking about? I don’t have the money to buy one, anyway. Like I said, I’m dreaming. And why not?

Cycling vs. driving - Part III

Well, I’ve made good on my decision to cycle to work every day. We’re experiencing some erratic weather here in Northern Ireland these days: continuous brief showers, often several times a day. This has sometimes meant that I wake up in the morning to a pleasant, dry atmosphere, only to open the back door after breakfast to find the rain pounding down. A couple of times I’ve had to bring a change of jeans with me to work. Then there are those evening times (like yesterday), when I venture out on my bike wearing a T-shirt, because the weather has been nice all day, only to feel the first drops of rain on my face when I start to head up the road. I sometimes feel the rain waits for me to emerge from my house before pouring down.

But weather is the least of my problems. Motorists are the big problem. If there’s one rule that should be written into the cyclists’ road safety manual, it’s this: “Expect no courtesy.” Of course, I can’t tar all motorists with the same brush, but a significant percentage of them are bad-mannered and dangerous enough to put me on my guard for every eventuality. Some motorists simply do not view bicycles as traffic. I guess they see a cyclist as something between a pedestrian and a motorcycle, so maybe they wonder what set of rules are supposed to apply. And sometimes they choose pedestrian. This is evidenced by the fact that a motorist barely overtook me before turning ninety degrees left into a side road, causing me to break and yell, “Wake up!” One of the teachers in the school car park did the same thing to me, and I was fuming. On another occasion, a car was emerging from a side road and was required to give way to me; I was cruising along the main road. I saw him preparing to gun forward and I yelled. Unfortunately, this was in the town centre, and every shopper within earshot suddenly whirled around and looked at me, to my embarrassment. Well, at least I got the guy to stop. Sometimes, when I ride my bike, it feels like I’ve put on an invisibility cloak. Once, I stuck my right hand out as an indicator, and the motorist behind me decided to overtake me regardless. Some other jerk had the bad manners to overtake me then blare his horn at me because I wasn’t keeping to the edge of the road; what I was actually doing was trying to filter into the right hand lane of a road that was branching into two. There are now certain junctions that I simply will not cycle through. I get off and walk, and it’s a terrible reflection on the attitude of motorists today. Another trouble spot is when I have to overtake a parked car, and I can hear another car approaching behind me. You’re never sure whether the guy is going to cut you off and force you into the back of the parked car or allow you to overtake it.

I’m not the sort of guy who is prone to outbursts of anger, so I disappointed myself on those couple of occasions when I let loose. It doesn’t happen any more; I’ve learned to simply accept that there are many idiots in the world and some of them drive cars. So I shrug off anything bad that happens. Notice I haven’t spoken out particularly against the “boy racers.” I’ve been quite alarmed that people of both sexes who are older (and should be wiser) are equally to blame in their poor attitude to cyclists.

On another theme, school kids (who recognise me from the school) can react strangely to things that are not often seen - like a member of staff on a bicycle. Often it’s a pleasant, “Cool bike,” but once, some guy spotted me and started laughing his head off like I had just cracked the joke of the century. In his trendy, teenage, pop-culture-infested excuse for a brain, I guess the idea of a thirty-four-year-old on a mountain bike just didn’t compute - because thirty-four-year-olds are just ancient and couldn’t possibly take an interest in something like personal fitness. Oh, of course. How could I have been so dumb? I must look like a fool; I’ll sell the bike immediately and go lie down on the sofa.

I’m now quite a bit fitter than I was when I bought the bike a few months ago. Chinese takeways don’t even have their full flab-increasing effect, because I have to fly down on the bike to get one. Well, in all honesty, I don’t think I’ve lost much weight, but my thigh muscles feel really strong and my endurance levels are much higher than they were. Cycling’s also a lot more enjoyable than all the jogging I put myself through in recent years.

In mid May, I allowed my car insurance to lapse. I actually came very close to selling the jeep (something I’ve been thinking about since a post I wrote in summer 2006), but in the end I put the insurance back on again. Although most of my activity revolves around Portadown, there are certain things that four wheels are indispensable for. I’m especially thinking of my long-standing desire to get into canoeing or boating. Can’t exactly tow one of those on a bicycle.

A couple of days ago I took the jeep out for the first time in about two and a half months. Thankfully, nothing had seized up (although I did find a little moss growing in the door). Today, I’m in work - and, yes, I got here on my bicycle. Now that I’ve managed to make this change in my life, there’s no way I’m going back to driving to work. Well, a good hail-storm might make me keep the bike in the garage, but that’s not going to happen very often. So, my life won’t be going completely “zero emissions,” but close … at least until I get myself a big stonking diesel-sucking cabin cruiser! Well, a guy can dream.

Life as a First Aider: Accidents will happen

I renewed my First Aid certificate recently. It’s valid for three years, and this is my third renewal. Many people stick it for a while, then give up. But I consider it a valuable skill, and something I want to maintain indefinitely, for the benefit of my personal life as well as my those I work with. I thought I’d share with you some of the thrills and spills that have come my way over the past six years as a qualified First Aider in a school of seven hundred pupils. Statistically speaking, with those figures, accidents are bound to happen once in a while. Occasionally it’s something scary, and other times it’s even funny.

The scariest incident was when I was called into the girls’ gym to take a look at a girl who had fallen roughly on her knee. We’ll call her “Sharon.” Sharon was sitting on a bench, barely able to keep her eyes open, similar to how I imagine someone who had been drugged would look. I couldn’t discern the correlation between hurting one’s knee and struggling to keep conscious. After several minutes, I made the decision to take her to hospital by car. Sharon was asthmatic, so while I carried her out to my car, another teacher went to fetch her inhaler. Walking briskly through the foyer, the teacher accidentally dropped the inhaler, causing it to come apart. No matter. Sharon didn’t appear to need it. When I got her placed into the passenger seat of my car, she was so weak that she couldn’t lift her arms out of the seat belt once I had fastened it across her body. The teacher got into the rear seat, and we set off on the three-mile journey to Craigavon Area Hospital. About one mile down the road, Sharon became frightened, not knowing where she was or what was going on. About all she could do was hyperventile. No problem. We would give her a squirt from her inhaler … Oh. It’s broken. The teacher frantically started trying to put the inhaler back together. A couple of times, she would half re-construct it, then hold it to Sharon’s mouth, and it would come apart again. I had to raise my voice and tell her to calm down and fix the inhaler properly. I was having visions of stopping the car on the high-speed carriageway, dragging the girl out onto the road, and commencing CPR. Thankfully, the teacher did manage to repair the inhaler and give Sharon a squirt. Sharon’s breathing improved a little, but she was now more awake and expressing considerable pain. Nevertheless, we drove the rest of the way to hospital without incident.

On retrospect, what I think happened was that the pain of Sharon’s fall was so intense that it almost knocked her out. That explained her semi-conscious condition. When not fully conscious, you’re not as receptive to pain. So, as the journey got underway and she started coming round, she felt intense pain in her knee. That led to hyperventilating. In the end, it turned out she hadn’t even broken a bone. But the whole incident shows you how difficult it can sometimes be to diagnose someone’s condition, despite all the detail in the First Aid Manual. The girl has no memory whatsoever of the journey to hospital. Once, I recounted it all to Sharon and one of her friends, and they thought it was hilarious … as you would.

Another case was a girl who would inexplicably collapse with some regularity: “Emma.” I dealt with her five or six times over the course of her three years at Clounagh. She had seen a few doctors, but no one could find anything medically wrong with her. And yet, every once in a while her legs would give out, and I would have to carry her to somewhere comfortable, then wait with her. Usually the condition would worsen; she would start to drift out of consciousness and breathe rapidly. Always, she came out of it in ten minutes or so. It’s possible that the reason no one could find anything wrong was because we were watching panic attacks - a psychological rather than physical issue. But it was odd to see the attack escalate after we’d made her comfortable. Emma has now moved on to high school and is alive and well.

A boy, “Derek,” once ran across the empty school playground, straight into a car door, while the driver was opening the door. The scenario was doubly unlikely to happen because cars are not normally allowed in the playground; this was a special circumstance of facilitating a pupil in a wheelchair. But it happened. Unfortunately, Derek was running up from behind the car, so the part of the door that hit him was the edge. The sharp bottom corner of the door actually entered Derek’s ankle, causing a deep, dry, bloodless wound - the first of its kind I had ever seen. His ankle struck the door so hard that the impact caused a slight bend in the metal at the corner. For a short while, he was lying on the ground panicking that he was dying. But by the time we were halfway to hospital in the ambulance, it was a different story. He asked if he could see the wound. The nurse let him. His reaction was “Sweet!” They kept him in hospital for a few days with worries about his spleen, because he was peeing blood, but he was right as rain in the end.

Then there are the funny incidents. A boy, “Charlie,” came to me with a massive bump on his forehead. I asked the usual questions, like “How did it happen?” He replied, “I hit a wall in the playground at break time.” I’m thinking, Someone pushed him. He denied it. “How did you hit the wall, then?” No answer. I had been thinking it was the usual shenannigans, but now I’m suspecting bullying - and it’s a serious sort of bullying when the kid won’t admit to the identity of his attacker. I found out later from a third party what actually went down. Charlie ran into a wall, because he was being chased by a seagull.

A girl, “Jane,” once came to me with a red face and eyes so bloodshot that they made me think of Regan from The Exorcist. I have never seen so many veins in the whites of eyes before or since. She looked like she had been beaten about the head. “What happened to your face?” I asked. Nothing at all. Turns out that the demonic possession was slightly more accurate. The bloodshot eyes were not the result of physical attack. She held up her hand and said, “So-and-so called me a [censored], and I got so mad I punched the wall.” I wouldn’t want to get on this girl’s bad side … and she was only eleven or twelve.

The Vice Principal once asked me to come to her office. Once I got there, she handed me a small spray can for wasp stings, and asked me to deal with a boy, “James,” who had been stung. Why couldn’t she apply the spray? It was hardly rocket science. Well, it seems she needed a man. Not because men are better at this sort of thing, but because the sting was inconveniently located between James’s legs just below the groin. And so, there I found myself in the rarest of circumstances, alone in an office, asking a thirteen-year-old boy to pull his trousers down. Sheesh! When you get Child Protection training and they instruct you to avoid circumstances where you are alone with children, they don’t reckon on days like that one.

Well, those are the incidents that stand out in my memory. Added to those are a plethora or cuts, bruises, swellings, sprains, suspected breaks, nosebleeds, and the occasional dislocation and diabetic episode … to name a few. That’s life as a First Aider in a school.

Cycling vs. driving - Part II

Well, I’ve gone and got myself some new wheels - two, rather than four. I am in no position to afford a new car, and frankly I don’t want one. As I indicated in a previous post, I am determined to make a transition to a healthier lifestyle. Whether that means obliterating a car completely from my life has yet to be determined. Nice bike, isn’t it? And where, pray tell, is it sitting? That happens to be my office at the school. Yes, I have finally got off my backside and pedalled my way to work. I intend to keep this up, come rain or shine.

I was a little self-conscious cycling past school pupils on the way to work, knowing how they can sometimes react in an over-the-top fashion to the sight of anything out of the ordinary. A member of staff on two wheels might provoke a similar reaction to news of aliens landing at the White House. Okay, now I’m being over-the-top, but you know what I mean: “Gasp! It’s Mr. Sloan on a bike!”

I could have fixed up my old bike, but I took the notion to get a new one. It’s nice to ride a bike that you can feel some trust in. The chain on that old one used to let me down regularly; I was always afraid to lift my bum from the seat when pedalling hard, for fear that the pedals would slip, then my groin and the frame would have a painful close encounter. The new bike was £200. I could have bought a cheap one for £75, but I thought I’d go for quality. It hardly breaks the bank. When you think about it, £75 is little more than one tank of diesel in my 4×4’s engine; little more than 350 miles drive-time. Amazing how we throw our money away.

Cycling vs. driving

I reckon one of the best things that happened to my dad (in terms of his health) was when he lost his driver’s licence a few decades ago. Dad belongs to that generation of people who never had to take a test before being issued a licence. Unfortunately, when he lost his licence, driving tests had become mandatory, which meant he would have to subject himself to one before being allowed to drive again. He never did. And so began a few decades of cycling to work on a bicycle, come rain or shine. As a consequence, he is pretty fit for a man in his late sixties. I know another lady who’s in her late seventies and fit as a fiddle due to a lifetime of cycling (I actually remember her from my teenage years, long before I knew her in person; an old lady riding a Chopper is not the sort of image you forget).

From childhood to age twenty-six, I didn’t own a car. When I worked at Lismore Comprehensive, I thought nothing of the four-mile journey by bicycle. In fact, I enjoyed it. Even when I worked twenty-five miles away in Belfast, I would take my bike on the train, then cycle the remainder of the way to work. In my early teenage years, probably the only thing that saved me from ever increasing obesity was my regular paper round. Bikes are great.

So, last weekend, I got the mountain bike out of the garage for the first time since last summer. I feel like I really want to make a go of things in two-wheel fashion again. Maybe get stuck into cycling to work on a regular basis. But the car is such a temptation. You can stay up later in the evening, knowing that you can spend extra time in bed the next morning, because it only takes ten minutes to get across town by car, whereas it’s twenty by bicycle. Then there are those mornings when it’s raining, or when the roads are covered in ice. Worse still, the thought of cycling in last summer’s heat wave is more horrifying than the thought of a bitter winter cold.

The thing is, if you don’t have a car, you find a way to overcome these circumstances, whether that means bussing it on certain days, or walking, or whatever. Transportation for the weekly shopping is another problem. However, one solution would be to do the shopping twice a week instead of once, carrying what I need in a backback. You see? There’s always a way - as long as you don’t mind a little extra effort.

Am I seriously contemplating getting rid of my car? On the one hands (and assuming I can resist the temptation to drive it to work), it’s terrible to spend so much money every year on insurance, tax, MOT, repairs, if you end up using the vehicle for only 10% of the time you did before. On the other hand, there’s nothing worse than waking up in the morning to the sound of torrential rain beating on the window. So, I don’t think I will be rashly selling the car anytime soon. My main concern is my health.

The modern trend is that we spend a portion of our leisure time doing exercise, but this strikes me as slightly freakish - even though I do it. It’s like we’re making up for something that our bodies should be doing in a more general sense over the course of a day. I’m always questioning the culture that I live in, and I think we could learn a lot from the way things are done elsewhere in the world, particularly from the Chinese, who have a lot more respect for the idea of cycling to work than we in the west do.

Well, I’m not going to make any drastic decisions. In true lazybones fashion, I’m going to break myself in gently and wait for warmer weather before experimenting with cycling to work.

For cycling fans, here’s a great blog I subscribe to: Free Advice on How to Fix Your Bicycle.

Vinyl forever!

I’ve been in a retro mood lately. On a whim, I searched eBay for an old comic I remembered buying when I was ten years old: Load Runner - “The galaxy’s first computer comic.” As luck would have it, I was able to pick up a complete collection of the comic right there and then. Issue nine had a free flexi disc containing a pop single, “Talk to Me,” by a virtually unknown band called Mainframe. This was no surprise; for some reason, that song has been embedded in my brain for the past twenty-four years. The next thing I knew, I was keying the word “mainframe” into eBay, and now I’m the owner of a 12″ single and LP.

The only thing is, I don’t own a turntable. I had to get my friend Graham to fish his old 1980s stereo system out of his attic. CDs were invented when I was in junior high, so I belong to the last ever generation of teenagers who bought vinyl. And I still have some of those records lying around. I was keen to listen to my old stuff again and compare the sound quality to CDs.

You know those people who insist that vinyl has a better sound? They’re right. And I’ve always had the feeling they were right, ever since the internet file-sharing explosion allowed me to revisit the music of my youth digitally. Recently, I was listening to “Calling All the Heroes” by It Bites. It’s a nice, clear digital recording from a CD source. But the song’s opening blast lacks the oomphf (for want of a better word) that I remember from my old vinyl single of the same song. This is something you can’t recreate by simply turning the volume up. Vinyl, despite the crackles, undeniably provides a richer, fuller sound. I’ve a good mind now to buy a turntable and start collecting oldies from car boot sales.

As for Mainframe, they’re an interesting band. They’re sound is in keeping with the New Romantic material of the 1980s (Ultravox, Depeche Mode, etc.). Some of their less pop-oriented stuff is a little like Tangerine Dream. More info, including an audio sample, on Mainframe’s Wikipedia entry. It’s nice to find something from the 1980s that was almost unknown in the 1980s.

A change of heart on ebooks

Electronic books never really caught on. The most obvious reason is because glaring at a monitor for long periods tends to cause eye-strain. But another reason is because people read in bed; they read on the train; they read on the loo. And you can’t very well lug your computer to all those places. What about laptops? Of course, but one of those is still not exactly as versatile as a typical paperback novel, is it?

I’ve never been a fan of ebooks. I’ve read two in the past, and at some point in each case, I couldn’t stand the experience and resorted to printing the book out.

However, all that has changed with my recent acquisition of a Pocket PC. I decided to give the ebook phenomenon another whirl, and what do you know, I’m discovering that it’s a great experience. There are probably several factors that have led to my enjoyment. The screen is small, so that your eye isn’t roaming across a wide space and struggling to find the next line of text in sequence; the pixels are so small that they’re practically invisible, making the text resemble an actual page; the device can be taken anywhere, just like a book.

For the past week or so, I’ve really been enjoying my bedtime reading. There’s something atmospheric about being able to read a horror story with all the lights out. (Incidentally, the book I’m reading is David Moody’s zombie novel, Autumn, soon to be adapted as an audio drama at Darker Projects.) I’d go as far as saying that I actually prefer reading from the Pocket PC than from a physical book.

However, I still don’t think there’s much market potiential for ebooks. For one, not everyone owns a Pocket PC or similar device. And personally, I just feel odd about paying money for bits of data; I feel cheated somehow. Maybe it’s because many books that I buy, I sell on eBay afterwards. And there’s not a lot of resale value in mere data. Besides, I checked out the ebook scene and it’s as DRM-infested as the online music stores.

Sony has recently developed an interesting ebook reading device that uses a new kind of display technology. Check out the Sony Reader. It’s cool, but I imagine it’s going to be one of those niche interest things. Perhaps ebooks will catch on a little more as iPod screens get ever larger. All I know is, I’m hooked.