Week 24: Sparkly & Pink

“You alright in there Mark? Nearly finished? Taking your time. Prostate playing you up?”

I’m standing in a cubicle in the Cross Keyes pub, somewhere in the East Pennines, having a well earned wee, firing comments at my mate Mark. Mark must be in the adjacent and engaged cubicle as he went for a wee just a few minutes before me and hasn’t returned to the dinner table. It‘s his age. Takes longer to go when you are an old fella.

I’ve been directed by a proficient member of staff to the toilet “through the door, the one at the end”. The loo door is wedged open because of The Covid, but nonetheless I am surprised by the precise nature of the instruction; how does she know that the second cubicle is empty? And for that matter, these Northern pubs are surprisingly soft on their male customers; cubicles and not urinals? I’m liking that, but somewhat taken aback by the sparkly, pink toilet seat. Hey ho, each to their own. Not what I expected from a pub serving a tough community of hill sheep farmers, but maybe they’ve softened it for the regular flow of cyclists, such as us, who are cycling Coast to Coast?

I press on, with a nagging feeling dulled by a day of climbing hundreds of bloody great hills and 4 pints of beer, that something is Not Quite Right.

As I finish my business and am squirrelling Little Al back into his nest, I hear Mark’s voice in the distance chatting to another chap from Around These Parts. Well that’s odd, I’ve not heard him leave his cubicle? I shall call him Houdini for the rest of the trip.

And then I spot it. The wedged open loo door has a sign on it .... “Powder Room”. Now I don’t know about you, but I am pretty sure Northern Hill Farmers don‘t use powder for their noses. Also pretty sure that hill farming doesn’t involve the need for explosions, although it could be a more effective way of making the sheep leg it towards the safety of a pen.

Northern Hill Farmer’s wives though might. Gulp.

I scarper rapidly, wondering who the poor woman in the other cubicle is that I’ve been chatting to about Mark’s prostate, half expecting to be marched out of the building by an enraged landlady.

I needn’t have worried. The regulars were all absolutely smashed. They’d been in the garden since Noon, singing along with Madeleine, a solo artist who belts out all the old favourites. For a slim lady, she has one hell of a voice. The power and gusto is something to behold. When not on singing duty, she is used to guide cyclists lost in the fog to the village. She hits all the right notes, but sadly for her and us, not necessarily in the right order. Dear God you’d have to be pissed as a newt to sit through an afternoon of that. And indeed her audience are. Utterly hammered. As night falls, and our Mads is on her twenty fifth “this is my last song”, the crowd are singing Bohemian Rhapsody. Which is a bit of a shame for her as she is singing Red, Red Wine.

The landlady decides that it’s time for the music to stop (the more sober of us have been waiting for it to start) and collects the portable disco-ball and speaker from the garden. Five minutes later, our new chum Stu, who has decided we are “alreet fah cyclists”, has nicked the speaker and taken it back into the garden. To much cheering, Mads takes the mic and fails to hold a single note for another thirty minutes.

We loved it there. It was like being immersed in Northumberland’s version of Eastenders, with Peggy barring unruly sheep-hands and keeping her regulars inline.

I was away cycling for five days, and fully expected Gin (so called because “a gin a day keeps the tremors at bay”) to avail herself of the contents of the wine cellar. We call it a “wine cellar”, but it’s actually an air-raid shelter that was dug under the house in World War II. The house and it survived, and being cool and dark, for those bottles that aren‘t “diverted” during the journey from the front door to the basement, it’s the perfect place to keep the booze. To my utter astonishment, I return to find Gin drinking “Nojitos” and alcohol-free beer. What? How? Why? The reason: because it has a negative effect on her running. Eh? Are my ears playing tricks on me? No, it’s true. And this is the woman that twelve months‘ ago scorned athletes and people that generally run about for fun. I have to pinch myself. We are one step away from eating Quinoa, washed down with Courgette, Dandelion Leaf and Turmeric Smoothies. Don‘t tell her, but I rather like this new taking-care-of-herself version of Gin. Not having any of that smoothie yack though.

Both BT (Boy Teenager) and GT (Girl Teenager) have been a tad pre-occupied this week. In the former case, the intense heat last week finished off his sleep (like us, he couldn’t) and he is now on his way around the clock once more. In GT’s case, the tension level is rising the closer we get to her GCSE results, and like the rest of the country, is watching the Government’s whack-a-mole approach to sorting out the basis for gradings with increasing frustration. All we can do is hope that Fate is having a good week.

Talking of Fate, good news! The out-of-action toilet has been fixed by a man that can (because this man couldn’t) and the failed-for-the-fourth-time shower mixer control replaced. Should be good for six months I reckon.

Not so good news.The day that I travelled to Newcastle to do Cycling the Heatwave broke in the South East in the form of massive storms. This in its own right was not a problem, but the muck that it washed into the drain in front of the garage was. It’s happened before, resulting in the garage making like a temporary paddling pool. This time, said paddling pool had an old, king-sized mattress leaning against the garage doors to help soak up some of the dirty water. Which is nice if you like the smell of musty mattress permeating the place.

And with that, we enter week 25 (or possibly 26? Might have lost a week this month). GT will get her results (please Fate, be kind to her and all of our friend’s with young people getting theirs) and I’ll be off for a short golfing trip with the boys somewhere Up North. Wonder if the hotel will have sparkly, pink seats in the men’s toilets?

Love & elbow-grease,

Mr H

x

PS A quick ”thank you” to G-boy for organising it, and Mark & Jack for making the Coast to Coast cycle one of the best things I’ve ever done. Also to Lizzie and Shaena who drove the Support Vehicle and looked after us so well. Also to commiserate with Marcos who should have been with us, but got Quarantined having been in Spain, despite the infection rate being lower there than at home.