The Diary of a Demented Man. Part 2. Bangor, Saturday, March 4th, 2006, 11:30 Mrs Tok has decided that I shall not run in old jeans and a hoody. Apparently I am lowering the tone of the neighbourhood. What a bunch of curtain twitchers there are around here – get a life!! So, it’s off to JJB to buy a pair of trackies. Help, it’s like going shopping with Mummy – next she’ll be spitting on the handkerchief and trying to rub the Guinness stains off my shirt. They are either too long, or too tight, or the wrong colour! Has everybody grown really long legs all of a sudden? I wonder does anyone wear bicycle clips to stop them dragging along the ground? “You weren’t that shape when I first met you”, she complains……”it’s all that Guinness you drink; you are hanging around with a bad bunch!” (Just as well I didn’t tell her about the six pints of bootleg stout with the Second Barrier Crew last night.) Much later……. I hear at first hand about a disabled guy who is training to run the London Marathon – he has Sally Gunnel and Steve Cram as personal trainers. All I have is the disrespectful Wee Kimble, who appears to be able to glide around as if he is on wheels.
On the road again – who says Guinness is good for you? Well, maybe in moderation! I’ll probably fall asleep in the middle of Sunday dinner. Death by Tarmac, Grumps calls it. Surprising – I didn’t think they had tarmac in Dirty Ards. Mind you, I’m sure I cut quite a dash in these new trackies.
On my own. The test pilot is too busy to accompany me tonight – something to do with EBay trading – perhaps he’s bidding for a pair of trendy trackies like mine? Attack the hill! Attack the hill! By imagining I am armed to the teeth and Mad Bad John is at the summit, I make short work of both the gradient and my persecutor. Die, fat man, die! It will henceforth be known as Hamburger Hill. On to glory!!
On my own….. again. The Space
Cadet clearly feels I am old enough to be out on my own now. Forgot to
have any lunch so I am literally running on empty. I want to stop, I’m
going to stop, I’ve nearly stopped….. mustn’t let that
old lady catch me up! Visions of MBJ on that hill again…strange,
I thought I dealt with him yesterday. Meet Deadball at Madison’s at the Ryan Constable evening. “You’ve lost weight”, he alleges, in that accusational Message Board Tone of his. “How do I know it’s really you?” he adds, disdainfully. “And I thought you were dead, I mean like really dead, like passed on to the great goal line in the sky, Touch Down in paradise…..” I reply. He just smiled and declined the offer of a drink – I think he was worried I might slip something in it. Now, what ever gave him that idea? Make a mental note to deal with him on Hamburger Hill as well. Much, much later…. I have planned
an extension to the Route of Death – it now stretches all the way
down to the Main Street and back around by the golf course. Very clever
though – no additional hills beyond the dreaded Hamburger (where
I suspect Mad Bad John has already been joined by Deadball). This could
get bloody! Bangor, Thursday, March 9th, 2006, 18:30 New route, no ghosts. The message board brigands are nowhere to be seen – not even the old lady is out walking her Zimmer on the hill tonight. I wonder if the police have found the bodies yet? This longer, gently sloping extension to the route is quite remarkable – down hill all the way back to the start. It’s a bit like that optical illusion where you climb round the battlements but never get any higher, only in reverse. Buck Rodgers, of course has yet again failed to break sweat. I wonder why he buys that expensive deodorant…I mean, he appears to have no need for it! He says it’s for the Lynx effect! (He hasn’t gone and bid for a helicopter, has he?)
|