Such a dreary ‘end of my freedom’ day. I’m sitting at my office desk, staring blankly at a computer screen with the sum total of my morning’s work on it: in this instance a blinking cursor that appears to be laughing at me. A huge mug of coffee the colour of roofing tar with a kick like a skinhead’s boot to the skull sits next to me steaming quietly. How does this always happen? Every bloody Monday I haul my arse into the office tottering on legs that really want to sit, or preferably lie, down, fuzzy headed from lack of sleep and with arms covered in a bewildering array of cuts, scratches, welts, bites, wheals, grazes and few more random abrasions that my thesaurus doesn’t have enough words for. In fact my arms look as though I decided to go in for a bit of self-mutilation and just forgot where to stop. Remember the long-departed Manic’s guitarist Ritchie and his ’4REAL’ arm carving? Well it’s a bit like that only less coherent, although stare long enough at it and you can probably see one of those magic eye pictures. In this instance, it’s almost certainly a sailboat.
But, if I look closely enough in my Monday morning dream-state (so good it’s almost transcendental) and there is a pattern. Concentrate hard enough and I soon realize that you can picture where each wee scratch and blemish has come from. Witness: that set of three parallel lines running across by left bicep? Those little beauties are from the hawthorn bush at the top of Blacka, conveniently placed to snare struggling cyclists. The deep single line, almost four inches long ploughing a furrow across my forearm and still oozing stuff? This prize specimen came when I whipped past the brambles colonizing the line on ‘Son of Blip’. That gorgeous ‘speckled and scratched effect’? Almost certainly the irritating holly bush on ‘Through the Looking Glass’. And last but not least, those tiny specks of blackthorn dug deep into my hands that are going to take a week or so to worm themselves out. I suspect they got me when I ploughed hands-first through the shrubbery somewhere on Back Edge. I’d just let go, feeling the rush that always comes when you open up on tight singletrack. Then? Well, the usual pedal clipping the trail, a brief moment of stem surfing and then I was in a world of foliage. Mmmm scratchy. I can probably blame that moment for the purpling bruise on the inside of my thigh too. Marvelous. Memories of sun-drenched climbs and slinky woodland descents flit across my mind, dancing butterfly images in my brain, these can last me through the dark times. I run my hand gently down my corrugated forearm letting those memories flood over me, the best drug I ever tried.
Mondays? Man, I love Mondays.
Dom Perry
