Seven jealous fools playing by her rules

Who knows what sport Gimme hates the most in the whole wide world?

You, yes, you at the back with the painted on moustache, what's your answer? Rugby? Wrong. I can see why you might think that what with the almost infinite trauma and humiliation that this game inflicted upon my both fat and weedy person as a child. But no, Kellissa, rugby does not hold the top spot.

How about you, the tall lady with magnificent hair, jigging up and down in your seat, pumping your arm repeatedly in the air, making that keening 'I know the answer' noise? Go ahead. Hurling, you say. Hurling. I'm afraid not. Again, it's a reasonable guess, given my well known aversion to pointless pig-fucking savagery. But no dice, Fats.

Shush, now Common Law, we all know that you know the answer. And feel free to ease back on the uproarious laughter. As nobody else knows where this is going, you're just making yourself appear to be afternoon drunk again. And you've cut that out, right?

Yes, the not overly hairy headed recently unemployed looking gentleman. What's that you say? No, no. Speak up. Don't be shy. You have the look of a sports journalist abou you, sir. I think you might have hit Gimme gaming gold. Just one more time so that everyone can hear you...

That's it. Congratulations. Although I do prefer to use the term 'stupid fucking golf'.

Gimme hates golf. He hates the game. He hates the clothes. He hates the rich cunts who play it. He hates the rape of the land that it requires. He hates the fact that it's a fucking verb. We don't football. We don't go tabletennissing. He hates it all, and the rest of it too. And come 7.30am on the morning of July 4th, the morning of the opening of the Tour as it happens, hungover to fuck from the wedding rehearsal dinner, Gimme will, for the greater good, golf.

I asked a friend whose enjoyment of this 'sport' I have decided to temporarily overlook, for advice. It seems that along with 'dress pants' whatever the fuck they are, and a sense of appropriate sobriety, this wedding trip now also requires me to find a t-shirt with a penis on it. Someday my trials will be at an end, but it's not going to be any time soon.

I didn't call on the phone to say I'm alright

You'll be expecting some comment, no doubt, what with my sparkling reputation for slagging off the recently dead. Let's see, I've done Jesus (recently dead in relative terms), Wendy Richards, Bobby Fisher, Arthur C. Clarke, Katie French before she even kicked it, Paul Newman, Tom Murphy and most satisfyingly of all Jonathan Ryhs Meyer's ma.

But I've got fuck all on this one. A lot of good tunes, but it's not like he was going to be producing another Billie Jean or even another Dirty Diana so no loss there. First black crossover artist, he turns himself white. Not quite MLK. Possibly a paedo, probably a paedo, possibly not. I don't fucking know.

My big problem is that I can't remeber where I was when I heard the news. This is going to rule me out of many a dull discussion over the coming weeks.

Winds of my thoughts passing by

So the weirdest thing happened. Okay, maybe not the weirdest. Certainly not as weird as the time I cycled drunkenly around town going from Darragh Doyle haunt to Darragh Doyle haunt hoping to finally meet him in person so that I might tell him that I don't really think he's a tiresome tosser but am secretly and car crashingly in love with him. That was somewhat more weird.

So, a slightly weird thing happened. Some randomer landed on this good green gaia yesterday with a google search for 'Robert Eagar'. Robert Eagar was my grandfather. I clicked on the post in question which went by the name of 'Robert Eagar Notes'. Robert Eagar was my grandfather, he wrote Notes. As I clicked I tried to recall having written about this great man, but as it turned out the post was not about him. It was about me. Quelle fucking shocker. Clearly this was not the weird part. The weird part was that the post marked my first bleugh birthday. What was seriously freaky deaky is that totally unbeknownst to me yesterday marked the second. Same date. Like I say, not Darragh Doyle desperate drunken passion weird, but weird all the same.

It's meaningless, of course, particularly considering my many sulky sabbaticals over the last twelve months, but still, happy fucking belated bleugh birthday to me.

The sun is shining as it's always done

As a rule the folks I come across in my daily life are shit at their jobs. People in shops, for example. Rude. Telephone agents for just about any company you might care to name. Clueless. Everybody in my place of work, rude, clueless and ironically overweight. There are some almost exceptions. I have experienced the odd competent and even friendly bus driver. But I no longer take the bus, so they don't count. That chick at the toll bridge nearly always hands me my change in a satisfactory manner. But she too, could be a lot friendlier. At which point she'd be creepy. So in summary, everyone whose livelihood appropriation has some influence on the smooth running of my day to day existence could be doing a whole lot better. Get it together, fuckers.

And so we come to Michael. Michael has taught Data to swim. Michael has taught many a three and four year old to swim. And he does it with a patience, grace and humour even one of which I have to work hard to summon when faced with just a single traumatised post-toddler. But Michael does it every afternoon for hours and hours with up to ten of these occasionally hysterical children at a time. He charms, splashes, cajoles. He seems instinctively to know when to let them stand at the side of the pool howling and when to dispense unearned high fives. He's a fucking genius and has decisively wrested from the grasp of Paula Radcliffe the accolade of Gimme's all time hero.

Congratualtions, Michael.

Women and children first, and children first, and children

You know that bit in that Radiohead song off of Kid A where he goes "Ice age coming, ice age coming"? I can't remember what it's called so now I'm going have to go and look it up now. Stupid internet.

'Idioteque'. It's called 'Idioteque'. I quite like it. But I really like the 'ice age coming' part. Because he sings it with excitement as well as fear, like he can't fucking wait even though it'll mean he will die, because at least it will be different. Something different.

This is how I feel about my upcoming trip. Chances are that I won't actually die, I suppose. But you never know. Planes are always crashing after all, weddings are always being bombed. But either way, I've got the apprehension, the sweaty fear of speaking to and in front of many, many strangers. But I have the excitement too. Oh the excitement of being somewhere else, doing something else.

And I'll be wearing a tux. I am going to be so fucking sexy.

Have you ever kissed the sunshine, walked between the rain?

This guy is on my wheel.

We drop a lot of people, this fucking leecher and me. Up and up we climb, passing, dropping, passing, dropping, rider after rider. I have a magic rhythm in my head, and the puffed words one, two three four, one two three four on my lips. I have recently overheard a grunted 'Slieve Mann' and I know now that this is the big one, and that I have it in me to conquer it, to debase it, to fucking fly up the fucker. I am grinding out my lowest gear, but with some serious spright. Quick turnover. Light legs.

And this guy is on my wheel.

Fair enough, fine. I was dragged up the first third myself, by Chris the Courier. But now Chris is far, far below us. And I'm the one doing all the work. He's on my wheel, right on my wheel so I can't see him, judge him, judge his bike, his clothing, his leg hirsutitude, without a big fat turn around in my saddle. And doing this will cost me not just rhythm but also a modicum of the cool aloofness that I suddenly find myself aggressively cultivating. I make my one two three four a little quicker.

And this guy is on my wheel.

On and on. Up and up. There is beauty, I'm sure, spread out to my left. I can't see it. My eyes stay on the road just ahead, my focus on the rhythm and the avoidance of all these dangerously weaving slow coaches that I'm flying past. My lungs sear, but bearably. My quads sing, but tunefully. Now I see the yellow Powerbar tent in the middle distance and know that the end is nigh. I glance back one last time, yes, he's still fucking there and then I'm out of the saddle, one kick, two kicks, three. And I'm gone.

This guy is no longer on my wheel.

I look around at the summit, trying to identify this wheel sucker, this parasite, so that I might bask in his eternal praise and gratitude, but I don't know what he looks like so a thankless thankless task is what this search turns out to be. Did I imagine this pale or not so pale rider? Was he really there at all? He was, of course he fucking was, the ungrateful bastard.

The generals hate holidays, others shoot up to chase the sun blues away

What a stupid load of happy horseshit. You all feel better now? With your green backgrounds and your retweeting of videos and poxy proxy numbers? You do, don't you? Well, you fucking shouldn't. Here's what's happening, what's going to happen:

Khamanei says that Ahmadinejhad is president. So he's fucking president. You need almost total support and a wavering military to pull this kind of shit off and neither is in place for this particular revolutionary hue. The sooner these admittedly brave if somewhat naive people realise this, the sooner they're going to stop getting beaten and shot and then taken to hospital where they will be arrested so that they can be beaten and shot some more.

And the sooner the Western media and every asshat with a laptop stop reporting this forgone conclusion as if it were all about us, us wonderful cunts with our twitting machines, the sooner I can turn my attention to the Nevada City Classic and ultimately the upcoming Tour.

That's right Armstrong you scummy fucking doper, you're fucking next.