Shortly before I fell in to a ditch

Blick-Breeze

I am currently on a break from work (ahem... unemployed) and am staying with my parents in the 'picturesque market town of Saffron Walden'.  Here in the rolling Essex countryside you can admire the 15th century church, buy a portrait of Victoria Beckham (in pastels) for £120 in the local library and then get drunk in Wetherspoons before starting a fight in the street with some squaddies. 

Having now exhausted the options above I am filling my time incrementally, with worthy pursuits, such as; reading, baking, ironing and today I can add to this litany; cycling. 

My dad kindly retrieved my bike from the shed and pumped up the cracked tyres as I dusted it down, screaming loudly whenever  a spider emerged from the mud guard and tried to eat me. The bike was a birthday present for my 14th birthday, and was received all those years ago after rather obsessive research on my part, it is a dusty purple and green Raleigh with twelve gears and a bit of rust. Apart from the ominous squeaking breaks and the cobwebs that had soldered themselves to the handlebars, it is in remarkably good condition given its recent lack of activity.

Having relinquished my membership to the gym and spent the last week eating curries and fry ups (not at the same time) I was long overdue some exercise. I heaved my bike round the side of the house and on to the not-very-mean-at-all streets. I cycled down the road in competition with a teenage boy with ill-advised bleach blond hair and headed out of town, past Audley End House and straight towards the middle of nowhere. 

The middle of nowhere is a nice place to be, bar the M11 that runs a scar across the countryside, the constant swoosh of speeding vehicles is rarely silenced. I rode around the country roads without any kind of map or direction, occasionally singing Beyonce, and thinking about and deciding against a gin and tonic stop. I cycled over the motorway bridge, got mild vertigo and then staggered up a rather steep hill. 

The sharp afternoon sunlight on the chalky soil of the fields made it look like a strange kind of sea, so I stopped to take a picture. I haphazardly left my bike at the side of the road at an odd angle (that prompted one driver to slow right down to check no one had been knocked off it) and jumped over a ditch to find the right angle for the shot. As I took the photo I was dive bombed by a wasp- from a distance I would have appeared to be dancing. The wasp wouldn't leave me alone so I did a strange,wobbly staccato run back to my bike. I leapt over the ditch and looked around for the wasp. I had outrun it. Ha I laugh in the face of you-wasp. I stood there for a second and there was a loud buzzing that hit me on the face, I screamed raised my arms into the air and fell backwards into the ditch. 

As luck would have it the ditch wasn't deep, the wasp did not succeed in stinging me and I had just managed to avoid a cluster of nettles. I jumped up quickly, the road was deserted so my dignity was in tact. As I lifted my bike up from the ground an old lady pulled up beside me. Strangely I was a bit unnerved. Maybe she was an old aged murderer. Instead of cycling away, I waited, just to see if she was. She took quite a long time to get out of the car and I stood there nervously- I just had to know.

"Hello" I said.

"He-low" She replied in an incredibly posh voice.

"Lovely day" I said-this is what people say to each other in the countryside.

"Yeasss, I am just going to see if there are any blick-breeze". That's blackberries to you and I.

She wasn't a murderer.

"Good luck" I said before mounting my bicycle, I looked out for Blick-Breeze, but its near the end of the season and they all looked a bit hopeless so i shouldn't think she was very successful. 

Oi...

Today I encountered a rubbish beggar.

She was sitting next to a row of cash points. Rather than meekly asking for money, or starting up a conversation she just shouted:

"Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?" 

She was a bit frightening and so I politely ignored her. Then she screeched once again

"Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?" I shrugged.

"Oi" She jumped up and I flinched. "Oi" She shouted again. I smiled at her trying not to look too middle class and scared. "Not you love" she pushed me out of the way and headed towards a long haired Frenchmen "Can I buy a fag off you?" She stood inches from his face and whilst she phrased it as a question it was  in fact a demand. 

The Frenchmen looked at her, shrugged and with cigarette stuck to his bottom lip mumbled nonchalantly  "Non, you can 'ave one". (This is a dead description because surely everything a French person mumbles is nonchalant)

"Cheers mate" She said before returning to her concrete sofa and shouting "Oi, YOU GOT ANY MONEY?"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cgq78FqrPXI&feature=player_embedded#t=41

Me: Please can I have an orange juice and lemonade.

Barman: Sure.

Gets bottle of orange juice and puts it into glass.

Barman: Ice?

Me: Yes please. Are you going to put any lemonade in that?

Barman: Excuse me?

Me: Lemonade?

Barman: Lemonade?

Me: Yes. I asked for an orange juice and lemonade?

Barman: An orangejuice WITH lemonade!?!

Me: Yes.

Barman looks confused.

Me: Orange juice and lemonade. In the same glass. I'm not sure what more I can tell you...

Barman: Ok.