A life more ordinary…

Saturday – Xmas Eve

All of us were up early today – Michelle went off with the kids to the dales to see Father in Law at 6:30am and to pick up the turkey. (It helps having an in-law who is also a butcher!). At the same time I got up and went out for a great 30 mile bike ride. The weather was lovely and very mild too, although a fairly vigorous SW wind made some bits a little heavy going. It’s the only thing that makes me frustrated is riding into wind. Just seems so soul destroying.

Home and Michelle and the girls were already home. I had a freshen up whilst they all went for horse riding lessons.

Watched Nativity! (the Martin Freeman film) which appeared on iTunes for rental the other day. Didn’t realise it had been on BBC2 the night before! I could just have recorded it to the Sky+ box or watched it on iPlayer. Great film, though.

Brother in law came round in the evening and we had a nice christmas eve playing some party games and demolished the rest of the ham from last night.

Sunday – Christmas Day

I woke up early this morning feeling quite poorly. I hadn’t been drinking so it definitely wasn’t self-inflicted. Kids came in around 6am and opened a few presents, then we went downstairs and opened the rest of the gifts.

Smoked Salmon and Scrambled eggs for breakfast, along with some bucks fizz. Very civilised.

Then we went into the kitchen and in between watching Gordon Ramsay with the Hoff, we prepared our christmas lunch – a nice turkey roasted with butter, apples and onions, covered in bacon, roasted in a roasting bag. Meat was brilliant. Then you have to have pigs in blankets, some stuffing, sprouts, roast potatoes in goose fat, roast parsnips, and a parsnip/swede and carrot mash. During the cooking I was feeling progressively worse. But whilst the meal was cooking we realised we’d run out of washing up liquid. Thank god for 24 hour petrol stations next to McDonalds

Weather was amazing today – if I hadn’t felt quite so ropey, I’d definitely have gone out for a walk or a bike ride. Bright sunshine and the thermostat in the car read 14C!

Once we’d had a lovely lunch, we settled down and watched TV and chilled out for the rest of the day! A nice relaxing christmas.

Monday

Last day off of the year and a day for daddy and girls. We were up early this morning – mainly due to the fact that Michelle had to go to work today. Once Michelle had gone, I gave the house a quick once over and a tidy. Then I took the girls down to the Bowling Alley. We did two games – first game Lottie used the ramp but for the second game she tried to do it properly. The kids really enjoyed themselves – even if there were some weirdo teenage girls on the next lane that kept stealing their bowling balls. Once we left there we had a vote as to where they’d like to have lunch and it was decided to go to Heston’s Little Chef, which just so happens to be less than a couple of miles from our house on the A64. Great food as always (why can’t they make all Little Chef’s like the Heston ones? Although I do think some of it is down to the boss of Little Chef having a rather large ego and thinking he knows best, if the programme was anything to go by.) Then we came home and watched Lost Christmas on iPlayer – with a sterling performance by Eddie Izzard.

Tuesday

Up early again. Bah. Michelle was at work early that day, so I was primary carer today again. I dropped off kids at Out of School club and went into work today where it was one of my team’s last day before Christmas. A big team pub lunch was had, which was great fun. I never knew that pub had a massive upstairs bit! Then home via Bishopthorpe to pick up the kids. With wifey out tonight, we had a daddy and girls night in and watched Super8. I have to say I was worried the kids would find it a bit scary but Lucy has watched it twice since!

Wednesday

Another normal day today (booooring) – Dropped off kids again. On own in office but worked through stuff as usual. We had a quiet night in.

Thursday

Did some preparation for the meal on Friday night and wrapped a few last minute presents. Sky ADSL was up and down like a yo-yo this evening, but was not a problem with the line but must have been some work they were doing internally, as the line never dropped – it was just the authentication (PPP/MER) that was down. Glad I didn’t need it this evening

Friday

Worked from home today.  First thing in the morning we put a ham in to boil for dinner – sliced an onion, put the Ham in (which was massive), and put in some cloves, ground cloves, star anise and peppercorns, along with a bayleaf. Instead of water we used 2L of Coca Cola. It was then put on 1 (so very low electric) for the best part of 10 hours. We were meant to roast it when it was finished to complete it, but it was so tender it just fell off the bone when I tried to retrieve it out of the pot! Had to skip the roasting bit. We served it with some carrot/swede/parsnip mash I made and froze last week, along with crushed minted new potatoes and peas. We had a houseful round for tea and everyone seemed to go back for seconds which was great although we still have enough ham left for stacks of sandwiches. I’m tempted to make a turkey and ham risotto for Boxing Day! One of our friends made the desserts – an AMAZING white chocolate and raspberry cheesecake which was just to die for. Probably consumed way too much red wine, but if you can’t do it at Christmas, when can you do it!

I sometimes wonder why I do enjoy riding so much, but I think there’s many things I enjoy.

The main thing I enjoy is the solitude – it allows me time to ponder things. It’s amazing what you think about out on a bike ride. I’ve been riding through a forest in France and suddenly a sticky work problem has popped into my head, or I’ll plan stuff. But none of it is planned to be thought about – it just all pops into my head randomly. The peace and quiet enables you to switch off. Well, unless there’s something wrong with my bike which will niggle me until I fix it. (Who knew a badly-fitted bottle cage frame pump could make quite so much noise?)

The other thing I enjoy is the being outside. The freedom of being able to go wherever I want, pretty much whenever I want (well, except when it’s super windy or snowing – but even then spiky tyres on the mountain bike don’t stop me). Being out with nature and seeing it at it’s best is awesome – one of the coolest things I’ve ever experience on a bike is riding along and having a wild bat as a companion – flying alongside me for 300 yards on a road not far from my house.  Having to stop and wait because a herd of deer were crossing the road right in front of you. Seeing Owls sat on fenceposts and hedgerows. And even just seeing amazing sunrises and sunsets.

Finally you get a moving meditation. Getting so comfortable on the bike you become part of it – and the brain empties and the noise of the chain is almost hypnotic. You feel at peace with the world.

It’s a great way to start the day – you are energised for the rest of it.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

A post by Lord Sugar on twitter made me think about some experience recently with my bike;

 Just done a 60 mile bike ride up coast in Florida(total 280 miles this week) no flats since I changed to Continental Grand Prix 4000 tyres

I also use Continental GP4000 tyres, and have done for a couple of years. They are brilliant. Everyone I know who rides a bike I’ve evangelised about them to – and quite a few have moved to them. The current set on the bike have been on it now for nearly 2 years. They were the new type (GP4000S) that had just come out when I got the bike replaced when the rear mech decided to self destruct.

The bike has now done near enough 5000 miles on the same set of tyres. In fact, I’ve not had a puncture since I put them on. (They’re the 700x23C road bike type, although to look at them they are much rounder than normal tyres – at first look, they seem like a 25).

However, I did find an issue – but not with the tyres.

I went in the garage early on a saturday morning a few weeks back ready to go on a ride to find the tyre flat at the front. Oh sod. But I couldn’t believe I’d got a puncture – because I have the tyres pumped up so high (usually 120psi) if I get a flat it manifests itself very quickly – Usually whilst I’m still on the bike as I’m not a light kind of guy. I use conti tubes too – again – both in my MTB and Road Bike. It’s not just the bright yellow dust caps (I know – thou shalt throw them in the bin according to ‘the rules’) but they also seem to be bombproof.

So I whipped off the wheel and tried to re-inflate the tyre to see if I could find where the issue was. I screwed down the end of the presta valve after inflating but there was a definite hiss coming from what seemed to be the valve hole in the rim. I wonder if 2 years of riding had weakened the valve seat or there was a slow puncture somewhere.

So I deflated it all and took the tube out, pumped it up a bit, and filled a bucket with water. I immersed the tube section by section to see where the hole was.

No hole.

How bizarre. Yet I could hear it hissing.

I submerged the valve – and a little stream of bubbles appeared from the valve. But it was screwed right down. How strange.

When presta valves were first put on  bike tubes, they didn’t have removable cores like a schrader valve (like the one on your car) does.  This caused problems for tubeless tyres, so people like continental and specialized came out with removeable cores. I didn’t know this, so was puzzled as to why what I thought was a sealed valve was leaking. So a bit of googling and I found that a valve that has flat bits on either side of the cap thread is a removeable core, like the picture on the left. The conti tubes I have had these flat bits.

So I got a small pair of pliers, popped out the core, put a tiny bit of lube on the o-ring (the diver coming out in me here!) and popped the core back in. Once tight, putting the tube back into the tyre it inflated perfectly and has stayed inflated since.

In a twist of fate, my rear tyre was flat a few days later and it was the same symptoms – I did the same core remove / lube / replace and it’s been fine too.

Even funnier is that I’ve recently measured my chain with a chain gauge, and I need a new 9-speed chain. So my tyres have outlasted my chain.

And better than that – I’d only had the bike with these tyres in a few weeks when it threw a spoke at the rear. The aerodynamic spokes were such a pain on the Miche wheels and with my local bike shop struggling to get stock in (and with me hating the wind shear I got from aerodynamic spokes) I relegated them to the turbo trainer and bought a nice set of Halo Rims which have done me proud for the best part of 4000 miles – with these tyres and tubes having survived that too – so without a puncture I’ve changed wheels and chain!

Continental GP4000′s rule.

Note – I bet I get a puncture before the weekend having written this now

It’s amazing what your mind goes through when flitting between positive and negative.

In a down phase, I tend to be very rearwards looking – wondering what I have done in the past to offend people, ruminating on wondering how other people felt about stuff. Was my perception skewed. What did I do wrong. Analysing things that I really should just dump out of my head. This tends to cloud the brain, making me forgetful, and to some people just  wilful – they think I haven’t done something because I didn’t want to, but alot of the time it’s down to feeling stuck – not knowing the best way to approach something or wanting something to be perfect even though I know that just doing it will be enough. I can’t just tidy the house – I have to make sure everything’s put away properly, whereas most people would just sweep stuff under the carpet. Mentally, too, this can have bad effects.

When I’m in a positive mode, I became very creative, but also very frustrated. I take loads of pictures but if only one out of 100 is any good I feel demoralised. I start blaming he camera, for example, rather than actually working out what the problem is. I get frustrated. Thus starting a cycle. So I end up controlling my urges to be creative because otherwise I know it’s a self perpetuating cycle.

Limitations, whether inadvertently or otherwise, are caused by me being in either mode and wanting to do something about it but being constrained by things outside my control. Very positive and itching to go out for a dive or bike ride but not able to. Wanting to meditate but being constantly disturbed by the kids or other half wanting to know what I’m doing. Struggling with someone who doesn’t always understand how I feel or who I really am, and them finding it hard to cope with me. Even being trapped indoors by the weather or the darkness. Not having anyone to talk to about it.

Saturday

After a late night Friday having only got in at half past midnight, I slept until 8am this morning. I gave my car a bit of a once over as during the mega journey on Friday it seemed to develop a bit of a fault – if I was driving uphill and had my foot fairly heavily down on the accelerator, when the turbo was on, the revs would be high and then suddenly drop down from 4.5k to 3.5k and wobble, even though I hadn’t lifted my foot off the accelerator. The first time it did it, it was quite unnerving. I was worried the turbo might be on the fritz, but I’m thinking now it’s more likely it needs the Diesel filter replacing/cleaning as it could be fuel starvation. Checked the oil (which was full) and put some TF2 which I use on my bike on the door hinges. A good tidy and lifted up the extra 2 seats in the boot as we were using it in Bus mode today.

Went round and picked up a couple of the kids friends and went to the Panto at the York Health Club – a good version of Wizard of Oz, plus a bar. Can’t be bad.

Panto done, went to Tesco to get some bits and bobs, then home and we cooked a great roast beef dinner. Yum. Whilst the family watched the strictly final, I read on the iPad. I also dug around in my photo library and after strictly it ended up with us all, as a family, trawling through the old photos of the kids as babies. Reminds me – I need to do the next phase of my Apple Photobook. I did one around 5 years ago with the kids up to and including the birth of the smallest one. I need to do Volume II for the folks.

Sunday

Up early and over to Mother in Law’s near Ilkley for the morning. Then stopped at Waitrose in Otley on the way home on the off-chance they might have a Heston Hidden Orange pudding. They didn’t. But they did have some rather nice San Pellegrino Lemon water, which Tesco don’t stock, and they also had some Pimms winter cup, which Tesco’s don’t stock either.

Quick change and then back into York as the youngest had a party at the Barley Hall. Found a bit of York we never knew existed too. Whilst Lottie was at the party, wandered around York for a bit and had a lovely Creme Bruleé coffee at Costa. Glad my diet is on hold . Whilst we were in Costa I was idly reading my emails and got one from the Hyena Comedy club in York saying Phill Jupitus was confirmed as a special secret guest tonight, and after negotiating with my fairer half, I booked a ticket there and then on my iPhone. Technology is wonderful sometimes!

Quick home via Blockbusters for some DVD’s for the girls, a steak and potato pie made from yesterday’s leftover beef, and then I went back into town, leaving the girls to have a girly night in, to see Chris Martin, Phill Jupitus and James Redmond at the comedy club. Chris Martin was very good – very observational – and a couple of really fantastic belly laughs. Phill Jupitus was very surreal – he came on saying Phill Jupitus was dead and had died in 2032, and this is a hologram of Phill Jupitus that had been sent back in time and asked for any questions. Very bizarre but quite amusing – I get the feeling this was something special, to be honest, so I’m not going to write about this here because it’s best to see it. Phill being totally off the cuff is a joy to behold. And he’s lost a shedload of weight too – looks good for it.

Then after the interval came James Redmond. You may remember him as Finn from Hollyoaks, or from Casualty. I couldn’t believe he said that the last time he was in Hollyoaks was 10 years ago. The comedy was very self depricating, talking about stuff as a celebrity, getting sacked from SMTV, and mostly funny. Some jokes could have done better by him not explaining the punchline after it had been delivered – if he’d have left them hanging it would have been much funnier and would flow. A couple of times he seemed to lose the audience, only to drag them back again a few jokes later.

Back home and suffered Michelle watching Take That.

Monday

Up early and off to the pool for a swim. I’m sure they used to have three lanes roped off in this pool – a laps lane, a slow lane and just free swim. However, they just have two lanes now – a free swim lane and a laps lane. Problem is that where most of us who swim laps are all pretty much doing so at the same speed, you get a couple of old gents who we do two laps for every one of theirs. But whereas we all give way to faster swimmers, these guys are totally oblivious to those around them. So I try to peg my swim so that I’m just in front of them. That way I’ve clear water in front of me. Anyway – 800m done today. Eventually I’ll settle down to 1500-2000m as a standard once I get better.

A day at work trying to work through the resourcing issue we have. It’s just getting a joke – they’ve cut us to a skeleton staff to save money over the last few years and made working life unbearable. It’s been getting progressively worse throughout the year, but in the last few weeks it has become extremely problematic. Even if all of us in our team worked 24 hours a day for the next 6 months we won’t get through the backlog of work. Everyone shouts at you because they think they are the number 1 priority, 5 major projects all intersect at the same time, and as such life becomes unbearable. I can honestly say that in my working life I’ve never felt this bad. I personally am finding it very very difficult to cope with and it’s making me very ill.

Home and packed for the next two days.

Tuesday

Train to London this morning. Worked in London for the day, had a social night out with my fellow management team (which we paid for) which was quite enjoyable. I didn’t drink at all – mainly because I know I’m feeling so ropey at the moment if I did I might say / do something I’ll regret.

Wednesday

All day meeting. Felt very depressed. Had little lunch and nothing else to eat all day. Train home and then went to daughter’s Christmas Concert. Packed again.

Thursday

Into work in the morning – planned for some work on friday and then left late afternoon and drove down to the midlands to stop over at my mum’s place. Had a callout at 1:00am with some webex browser issue.

Friday

Left mum’s quite early and arrived at a customer’s site 120 miles away at 9am. Spent all day trying to do something that should have taken 2 hours due to a management company not having the passwords to something they should have done. Left that site at 5pm, drove from there to a colleagues house near London to collect some servers and kit from a site which needed to be relocated for next week, and then spent all of my own time at night driving back from London to the office (whilst my colleagues had a nice night out which I missed due to this), dropped the kit off around midnight, and then home to York. Due to the kit in the car I couldn’t stop, so I had no dinner and only had lunch today. Total mileage for 2 days – 523 miles. Home at around 12:45am saturday morning. Very very depressed.

Saturday

After the winds had subsided I needed to fix the roof. Saturday morning was lovely and sunny (albeit very very cold) so first thing I hopped in the car and took a ride round to B&Q. Needed some no more nails, some weatherproof plasterboard screws and little nails to hold the filters on with. Back home and got out the new set of ladders for the first time.
I always feel a little unstable on ladders – these ones were great but I always feel like unless I’m leaning right in on the ladders I worry I’ll lose my footing and fall backwards. Also, I needed more than one pair of hands – carrying a drill, screws and a piece of plasterboard took a bit of skill but eventually I managed to screw the plasterboard back onto the joists. Then it was time to fit the filters back. Stacks of no more nails and some little nails to hold them onto the joists. Except no more nails doesn’t dry very well when it’s cold so no sooner had I fitted the filter than it dropped on my head, rubbing the no more nails on my jacket and falling on the floor. I’m not the most skilled workman. But after many attempts and some contortion on the ladder we eventually managed to get everything up and done. Phew. The guttering can wait for another weekend
By the time we’d done this, Michelle and Lucy needed to go off horse riding. At the same time I was sorting out some bits and bobs on the computer, ready for when they came back and we could get into town.
We had a quick bite to eat at the Christmas market in the coppergate centre (I can heartily recommend the gourmet burgers – and not too calorific either) before wandering through town, making our way to the matinee of the pantomime at the Grand Opera House in York.
The main actor was the guy who played Ashley from Coronation Street. Very entertaining, although I couldn’t help think the guy who played Abernazer looked just like my younger brother.
For dinner we decided to get a Frankie and Benny’s – they do some pretty good low calorie stuff now – a steak salad that works out at only 400 calories which is great. However, youngest child decided to not eat most of her meal and then proceeded to have a paddy which caused some friction for the rest of the evening and put a bit of a black spot on what was otherwise a wonderful day. I let the family watch x-factor whilst I read a book.

Sunday
Up early and left Michelle in bed and went out for a rather nice 20 mile bike ride. When I returned home I was summoned up to the loft to pull down all the Christmas decorations. So whilst I was having a nice shower Michelle was assembling the tree.
Then back into town for the second time this weekend and met up with Karen and Claire who were looking after the kids for an hour or so (thank you!) whilst we went to have a rather spiffing preview meal at Wagamama’s new branch in York gratis! Great new site, lovely location, and I’m sure we’ll end up being regular customers. I used to go to Wagamama alot when I lived in London and always try to eat there when I’m down on business. (I’ve been to the Bloomsbury, Covent garden, moorgate, st Paul’s, canary wharf, tower hill and Oxford street ones in London, and the Harrogate and Leeds ones up here – can you tell how much I like their food? ).
Met up with Karen and Claire at the castle museum after having done a little bit of shopping and then we went home. Bit of a drama (maybe an understatement) with Lucy and us having bought the wrong book. (she wanted One Direction book, we bought JLS one as it was cheaper – thought she would be happy – ended up with a massive row ). Made our evening very interesting.
I made dinner (omelettes)after which during a quick social media session we discovered that our youngest should have done some homework she hadn’t told us about. So another mad panic and a big of a do, I downloaded the instructions from the VLE but couldn’t open the file on my mac. (thank god for online MS .pub to PDf converters – Who still uses MS Publisher anyway?)
So the end result was whilst they were watching the xfactor, I was making meringues!
Once that was done, I saw the Coldplay songs on the Xfactor and checked whether there were any tickets for Manchester in June 2012 – and there were! So I got some.
Tired so bed and looking forward to a swim tomorrow.

Dear Diary.

It’s long time no see I think. About time I wrote some stuff on here again.

Saturday

Drove down to see my folks in the midlands for the weekend. We would normally travel down on a Friday night, but having been in our office in Liverpool running cables and plugging in shiny Cisco Nexus kit all day on Friday, I really didn’t fancy another 150 mile drive on top of the journey from York to Liverpool and back. This journey to my folks was the first proper family run out for our little Polo Bluemotion and it’s fuel economy really shines and it definitely drives well on the motorway with lots of ‘go’, even though it’s only got a tiny engine. The Volkswagen engineers certainly know how to wring every last drop of performance out of their cars. Probably by bolting a huge turbocharger on top of the engine. Even with 2 adults, 2 kids and an overnight bag, the Polo seemed bigger than it looks. And cruise control definitely was a bonus on a quiet saturday morning motorway. With the cost of fuel at the moment, my 4WD car is definitely the polar opposite to this – to fill this up costs £50 and road tax is £0. To fill the Pathfinder up costs £100 per tank (with an annual road tax bill of £460). And the Polo does way more miles to a tank than the Pathfinder does.

As soon as we arrived my Dad dragged me back out to the pub for a pint. The local pub in the village is a Bathams pub and is one of the only pubs I know left where food is a sideline and beer is the most important thing. They do a wonderful pint of mild. (Their bitter’s nice too but I prefer the mild if I can get it). We ended up talking about the economy and how it’s all going down the tubes. Quite scary, really.

When I visit, I’m the odd job man for my parents. ‘Can you replace the security light outside the flat’, ‘we need the water filter cartridge changing on the tap’, ‘can you fix the computer and put some new shortcuts on the desktop for your Dad, please?’. But I don’t mind – it gives me something to get on with and keeps me busy I suppose, whilst the kids run around like some sort of whirlwind tiring my dad out, and the Mrs sleeps on the sofa because she’s imbibed too much whisky.

Sunday

Went into the Frankfurt Christmas Market in the centre of Birmingham today. It’s a long time since I’ve wandered around the centre of Birmingham – probably well over 10 years. It’s changed an awful lot since I was last here. Things look almost the same as I remember, but the shops have all changed. No more Spud-U-Like and a nice bike shop that never used to be there. Sadly it looks like the centre of Brum is dying. There are many empty office buildings, and walking up back streets that used to be full of bars and pubs, many have closed down – even the City Plaza, which was a lovely little shopping centre, seemed to be closed on that Sunday. Everything seemed much darker and dirtier than I remembered. Even Rackhams, which when I was young I thought was epic, was showing it’s age and looked quite small. The kids wanted to see Father Christmas, so Michelle queued up whilst I took the kids round the toy department (which still seems to stock loads of actually really good toys). 30 minutes later we went back and Michelle was still in the same place in the Queue – in fact, the queue hadn’t moved at all. Seemed like Santa had eloped with his elves and decided not to return. So we decided we’d take his tip and decided to not bother. As a treat we let the kids go on the carousel instead and I had a nice coffee. Mum, Dad and Michelle had a warm Pimms Winter cup with hot apple juice, which apparently was very nice. Once we’d got home we had a slowly roasted a piece of pork which had been slowly cooking in the Aga – and tasted lovely. More odd job work fixing a sunken light in the kitchen where one of the wires had frayed and was short circuiting. Then it was back to attack the M1 home.

Monday

One of my local twitter friends recently replied to me (cheers, Nat!) when I was grumbling about being fat, and recommended ‘My Fitness Pal’ which is a website, but also an App on the iPhone. I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now and it’s really good. The best bit is that you can scan the barcode of pretty much any food in and it’ll do the portioning and calorie bits for you. I’ve already gone from 111kg to 108kg in a couple of weeks but I hadn’t really been exercising that much. Going from cycling 200 miles a week to pretty much no exercise in 2011 meant I ended up putting on all the weight I lost in 2009/2010 (I got down to 95kg at one point). I did a swimming course earlier on in the year which taught me how to do front crawl properly (I never learnt how to breathe whilst swimming even though I’ve been swimming for years! I must have been away the week at school they taught us how to side breathe).

Last week for the first time in a while (probably since I donned a wetsuit and swam the 1500m Swim for All at Pugneys) I went to the pool before work and really enjoyed it. So first thing Monday morning I’m at the pool at 7:20am and find it even easier and enjoy it even more.

New member of my team at work today, so was a day of looking at our workload and trying to fit a quart into a pint pot. Nothing unusual there I suppose.

Got home and was trying to work out a plan for a cycle tour I’m thinking of doing with Mrs W in 2012, Cycling to Hull and then getting on the ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge, then cycling from Zeebrugge in Belgium all the way up the dutch coast to Rotterdam with an overnight camping stop en route, carrying all our own gear. Having never been to Holland (well, except a 5 hour layover in Schipol airport) I thought it would be a nice way to see a bit of the world I’ve never seen. Then we get the ferry back from Rotterdam to Hull and cycle home. Except what should have been the easy bit ended up being the hardest bit. P&O’s website doesn’t let you book two people, two bikes and one cabin online. Dur. So I tweeted about it.

Tuesday

P&O replied to my tweet saying it was a limitation of their website. No surprise there then. Conf call hell day at work and not much on at home. Although I’ve realised that if I want to go swimming regularly it’ll cost me quite alot because a single pool swim is £4.20. However, they do this off-peak monthly pass in Leeds which covers you from opening up until 4pm – perfect for 7am swims or lunchtimes if I want to. Best bit is they’re £25 per month which means if I’ve swum more than 6 times in a month I’m saving money. Well if I go 3 times a week then I’ll definitely be quids in. Plus we get corporate discount so I get another 15% off the prices. Nice one. So I went to Tesco to get some passport photos and went and got my temporary card. After work I got home and ordered some more road bike tubes and some swimming stuff from wiggle. Rock n Roll.

Wednesday

A great early morning swim and used my shiny new card – managed to get to the pool for 7:10am and did a good 40 minutes and swam 750m. Once I’m confident and happier I’ll probably do 40 lengths / 1km per swim every other morning during the week. Scarily if I do this every week I’ll be swimming 12km per month. The first morning I went in to have a swim when I finished I felt utterly wiped out. Now even only 1 week on I’m swimming further with less effort and enjoying it much more.

The winds were really bad when I got in the office. You could hear it whistling through every gap between every window. The weather changed from bright sunshine to overcast to bright sunshine every 20 minutes, and then it rained. And rained. Was worried about the loose soffit under my guttering at home as our house is south west facing and pretty much always get the brunt of any storm.

Today was a day of conference call hell. I think I had 5 in total during the day. More work and less play makes Mark a dull boy

Thursday

Worked from home today. Needed to get some documentation squared away but also was slightly worried about the house. Another bit of the roof had dropped off overnight leaving the soffit very very loose. I ended up ordering some Ladders from Amazon because it’s the one thing I don’t have which is why I can’t fix it. One of my local friends offered to lend me their ladders in case mine don’t arrive. But the wind just got worse and worse and worse. Then at lunchtime it rained. It was like some biblical storm. The whole close filled up with water – I reckon it was 6 or 7 inches deep at the deepest point. People’s drains were overwhelmed with the torrent. The radio (which was playing via satellite) stopped playing and all you could hear was the rumble of the rain. Then the wind came. We saw peaks of 65mph pretty much at the back of the house. The loose board was getting even looser and I went outside to see if there was anything I could do. I poked it with the handle of my apple picker but it just seemed too loose. But with the wind and rain I dived back indoors, made a mug of tea and  resigned myself to the fact it’ll probably be gone soon.

The noise stopped around 9pm.

Friday

WFH again today (waiting for the man to deliver the ladders – which amazingly were delivered at Lunchtime – great service by Amazon considering the time of year).

I really wanted to go swimming again this morning but I’ll probably end up going for a bike ride on Saturday morning instead. I was drawing visio pictures most of the day for a customer, but I was also helping one of my team who was having a mare of a time with a piece of hardware in a customer’s in the north east (ironically the same customer) that we’re doing an implementation for. Meh.

Went outside mid morning to investigate the carnage (it looked like someone had got all the bins and just let a bomb off near them – the recycling bin is nowhere to be seen) and saw the soffit had snapped in half and was laying on the patio. Well, at least it broke near a joist so with my new ladders I should be able to fix this now. So I remembered to put the drill on charge and dig out the drywall screws so I can get this done tomorrow when I get some time.

Got some tickets to see Dave Gorman in Harrogate in June 2012 – and tweeted that I couldn’t wait, at which point Dave Gorman replied to me and said “Um… you don’t have to wait. I mean you can if you want, if you can’t, you don’t have to!”

I think it’s time to come clean somewhat.

I was diagnosed as Bipolar about 2 years ago. They seem to think I’ve had it since I was little. It sort of makes sense. Plus there’s a possibility I also have v.mild Aspergers which isn’t surprising either.

Sometimes I hate the downsides of my mood. I’ll sit and think the world is black, come on here and delete everything and prepare myself for the worst. But as soon as the blackness lifts and the black dog comes away from the door, I open it up, look outside and the sun’s shining.

When my mood is better I wonder what I was depressed about. It always seems a bit strange. When you’re in a deep depression, it doesn’t matter if you won the lottery – you would still be down. I sit at work wondering why the hell I’m sat there. There’s a huge fog in your head and you just don’t feel like carrying on. If things get really bad – that is if I’m depressed and then other things happen to increase the negative mood, then it can get pretty serious. To the point where I prepare to shuttle off this mortal coil. I go to places I hang out on the internet and clean out my accounts. I stop visiting forums, don’t use Facebook or twitter, literally unplug myself from everything. I have no motivation for my interests – I don’t swim or cycle, I stop talking to dive buddies. I even stop talking to my wife and kids. I get splitting headaches and just want to sleep. I don’t want to go outside, and I have even been known to sell loads of possessions in readiness, and got myself ready mentally to do the inevitable.

I get a feeling that I’m trapped, like a caged bird. It gets worse because I cause worries in my immediate circle – people know I’m down but it’s a taboo. No-one talks to me either and the spiral starts going right down.

But the worst bit is when you come back out of it realising you’ve lost some more friends. I’ve probably only got one friend I speak to regularly from my school days. I see the odd other friend on Facebook, but my heart sinks when I hear on the news that the ‘Average amount of friends someone has on Facebook is 180′. I’ve got less than 80. But I do know every one of the people I’m friends with – even if they’re work colleagues or people I’ve met ‘in passing’.

The fact I’m writing this means I’m very positive at the moment. Not manic  - just positive. On a scale where 0 is suicidal and 10 is thinking I’m invincible, I’m probably a very comfortable 6. A month ago I’d have probably been a 2 or even a 1. I’ve realised that being active keeps me able to keep the black dog away somewhat. I’ve started eating more healthily again and surprise surprise, my motivation has come back. I’m swimming again and cycling when I can (although the icy weather and high winds are scuppering that somewhat).

I have no idea what causes the shifts though. I have ideas or thoughts about what cause it – there is usually a trigger for the depression – a situation where most people may shrug things off but with me I tend to sit and ponder and internalise an issue. This starts eating away at me inside and I’m unable to get it off my chest. And then it gets worse and then it all starts spiralling out of control. The trigger may even be something really simple. An issue at work, or an argument at home. I’m sure another part of it is diet. When I eat loads of bread, butter, sweets and so-forth, my body protests and not only does it make me lethargic and fat, but also depressed. I’m trying to avoid bread completely, for example.

The Cognitive Behavioural Therapy helps too – reading about picking up the early signs and stopping the downward spiral that occurs. Trying to short circuit things before they go too far. Stop trying to internalise stuff. But sometimes that’s impossible and it becomes all too much again.

It’s difficult for people who haven’t been in this situation to understand – alot of people just go ‘Harden the F**k up’ and cannot ever understand why people who on the surface should be happy could be quite so depressed – but my response is – If it were that easy, I would do it. I hate feeling depressed. It affects my kids and wife and other people, it affects me, and may do so in a fairly terminal way one day. I wished I didn’t have it. If I could have something that allowed it all to stop then I would be all for it.

Anyway – I’ve got it off my chest. If you got to the end – thanks for reading. And if you’re one of the people I’ve offended by being rude or disconnecting from – I’m really sorry.