Get ahead, get a bike!

MOST of Weymouth can now offer an expert opinion on what it is like to be stuck in a traffic jam, but it is not bad news for everyone.

I joined one recent queue at Wyke heading for Lanehouse at about the same time as a weary elderly cyclist.

What made him stand out was that despite narrow pavements, junctions and roads choked with vehicles he was still able to thread his way along leaving me hundreds of yards behind.

Nothing too unusual about a cyclist being able to do that in these troubled times round Weymouth you might say and I might agree with you but for two things.

This cyclist was still able to outstrip traffic despite having a hundredweight sack of potatoes balanced on his crossbar and the fact he was actually pushing his bike while doing so.

Things appear to have got a lot worse since that cyclist sighting with some members arriving late for one council meeting having taken nearly an hour and a half to get to the council offices from Preston.

One councillor even abandoned his car and walked the last bit while it took me 25 minutes to drive the final 200 yards to the offices from just the other side of Asda.

Still, only 11 more months of disruption to go.

What will be next under the microscope?

IT seems that the whole world wants a growing piece of Weymouth and Portland and the Jurassic Coast ahead of the 2012 Olympic Games.

Sailing teams want training slots, officials and organisers want to reserve beds to rest their weary heads after a hard day’s judging and judgement and a thousand commercial interests are scrabbling round to ensure they get as big a slice of the money pie as possible.

So I thought I’d share this snippet with you to show how far down through world society the Olympic circus has filtered.

An American was recently over on Portland and it wasn’t to scout hotels or to hoover up skippers’ advice on local sailing conditions.

Instead this person was over here to take photographs of obscure examples of chimney.

Chosen sites included ones where the chimney brickwork was displayed as an exposed highlight extended back down through the end wall of a house.

There was also a site where the chimney’s route down was highlighted by what seemed to be curling stone features, again on an end wall.

These sites clearly interested the American who ran them as an entry for what appeared to be an interior design company specialising in several areas including architectural features.

So the next time you are bombarded with Olympic chit-chat about schedules being on time or the potential boost to the local economy, remember that your home or garden could be next because this really is the greatest show on Earth and even the tiniest detail will be coming under some microscope somewhere.

Reaping the rewards from living the good life

SUNDAY lunch, you can’t beat it!

Get family round and the onus is on you as host to pull the stops out.

So how about lamb for main course backed up by new potatoes, two kinds of French beans, carrots, runner beans, mint sauce, raspberries, plums and apple and rhubarb crumble for dessert all washed down by blackberry wine?

Seems reasonable to me and the delight of the whole thing was that, with the exception of the lamb, I grew or made everything.

I was even spared the less than delightful task of having to do the washing up.

I think I must have garnered sympathy after a swarming ants’ nest took exception to my attempts to pick plums with hundreds of the little devils biting me all down my left leg.

Revenge is sweet and, as I basked in the glory of my home produce, I consoled myself with the knowledge that Nippon insecticide was at that moment thinning the ant ranks as dusk crept over my garden.

Like a movie scene

YOU don’t expect to see a famous scene from a classic film played out in front of you in the middle of Weymouth.

Remember Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine in The Poseidon Adventure, when they stumbled across a shuffling line of dull-eyed passengers who’d survived the liner’s capsize?

Well recently all those trudging zombies seemed to have surfaced in front of me through a grey cloak of drizzle in St Thomas Street.

They may have been holidaymakers sampling the best an English summer had to offer but the likeness between themselves and the doomed passengers was striking.

Despair etched faces slick with water, there was the same slump-shouldered slouch to their walk as if they clung to life by the same thread and the pavement procession of bodies looked neither to left nor right as it shambled forward.

Vacant children were beyond asking for anything, parents were beyond caring and I was beyond criticism.

They just needed help but the Weymouth weather ship was going down with all hands, so I left them to it and went home to try and cheer myself up with a heartwarming film. Ever seen Titanic?

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