(This journal entry isn't mirrored, because.... well it's a bit shit really)

You know how I normally like to write funny journals about pooh in swimming pools or spilling tuna salad on my jeans, well this one is less funny. On my way home from work yesterday I saw a guy face plant (badly) from his bike.

Part of my journey home from the office involves a walk up a really steep hill. If you're coming the other way on a bike it's possible to reach 30 to 40 miles per hour if you're feeling brave..... or stupid (yes, I've done it).

The road is always pretty busy, especially around the time I was walking up it. Office workers and South Africans are scurrying home to their ready-meals and biltong.

As I marched up the hill I happened to glance over the collection of passing cars and for a split second I snatched a glimpse of a cyclist's head. It was only the shortest of split-second glances before he was obscured by a passing red van, it was more like a freeze frame. He was wearing a helmet and looked fine for all intents and purposes, but as soon as the image flashed across my brain I instantly knew something was wrong about the snapshot, maybe it was his position or the angle his head was at, or maybe it was even his expression. I can't really remember because it all happened so quick.

But I did sense something was wrong and as soon as I passed the red van, the next thing I saw was people running towards the other side of the road covering their mouths and holding their heads in disbelief. Men, women, South Africans. I couldn't see the cyclist. Every time I looked around I saw another person approaching with a look of total concern and raw shock on their face. It's not every day you see people forget themselves like that and when you do it’s chilling. It's a bit like when a football player goes down seriously injured and straight away players from both teams just stop and forget their rivalry because they know something is up. Everyone was staring and goosebumps were starting to spread down my back. I decided to myself I wouldn't look because not only is it rude to stare but people were freaking out so badly I didn't necessarily want to see what was behind the cars.

Of course I looked.

By now the traffic was stationary and drivers were jumping out of their cars running towards the guy on the ground. On the opposite curb at least three people in the crowd were already on their mobile phones (presumably) calling the emergency services.

As my aggressively fast charge lost pace and turned into a tentative stride, the scene slowly revealed itself. The guy was face down on the road. His face was squashed against the tarmac. His body was concertinaed up behind his head. His limbs were contorted and his arms folder under him. His face was very red. He certainly wasn't moving. I couldn't see his bike for a few seconds. It turned out to be on my side of the road about seven or eight meters from him.

As I walked passed the scene gawping my heart rate shot up and my breathing became shallow. A couple of guys had stepped forward to take control of the situation. I had a lot of respect for them at that moment. No one was touching the cyclist of course. Over Mazy Star's dreamy voice on my headphones I could hear them shouting ‘CAN YOU HEAR ME?’ in the guy’s ear. There was no response.

I carried on walking so I don’t know what happened to him. I hope he is OK and he was just knocked out. It made me think how lucky I was to be able to go home and have my ready meal.




<sub>This week I recommend:
1. My new desk baby! (Journal to follow)
2. Plants
3. Tall buildings
This week I do not recommend:
1. Hip joints
2. Prawns</sub>

(This journal entry isn't mirrored, because.... well it's a bit shit really)

So I went for a swim this afternoon. No running for me just at the moment. I had a minor knee injury for the last couple of months that was stopping me from running frequently. That fixed itself and now it's my hip. As a result of a few epic 12 mile runs in the space of a few days it bloody hurts whenever I put pressure on my right leg. So I went to the swimming pool instead.

No prizes for guessing who was at the swimming pool when I got there. Yup, everyone's favourite weird and obsessed old age pensioner, Staring Dad. He was staring at me as usual. Non stop. Thing is though, I couldn't keep a straight face. Every time I turned at the end of the pool next to where he was standing I thought about my last journal entry and I just started cracking up, I did try and swim with my head facing the other way so he couldn't see me laughing but I think I may have offended Staring Dad. He left the pool early this week.

I do hate the pool as you'll know if you read my last journal. My hatred for it was compounded as I was rinsing off the rancid film of chlorine in the public shower after an hour's solid swimming and I heard what are possibly the most dreaded words one could hear at that precise moment, which are, and I quote:

'No, it's not OK to poo in the pool!'

As if in a horror film I turned my head in slow motion as the water bounced off my oh noes expression and saw a little girl getting berated by her mother. The little girl in question had clearly squeezed one out into the water while I was merrily avoiding Staring Dad, oblivious to the other obstacles lurking in the pool that I should have been avoiding. God I hate swimming pools.

I do like swimming though. Just not in pools. I recently returned from a wonderful week in Finland, otherwise known as the Motherland. I swam everyday in complete peace and tranquility, there's nothing like swimming in a Finnish lake, being the only person for miles, the water like glass stretching out before you under an epic sky, the golden midnight sun peaking over the trees........ and the only shit floating around in the water belongs to fish and not humans.

(This journal entry isn't mirrored, because.... well it's a bit shit really)

When I can't go running I go swimming. I don't like swimming as much as running because let's face it, swimming is a bit boring. All you do is go up and down, up and down, up and down. My stroke isn't great either. I do the breast stroke, but I don't do it particularly well and I don't go that quick. I hate not being good at something but in this case I've learnt to accept it, swallow my pride and stick with it. I am a determined swimmer though, what I lack in technique I make up for in stamina. When I go (1-3 times a week) I swim all-out for an hour, only briefly resting to stretch my neck (which really begins to hurt) after thirty minutes. Aside from that 45 seconds respite half way through, I don't stop. I often want to stop, but no matter how strong the urge is, I don't. As my arm muscles burn and I get a nostril full of water I think of anything I can to take my mind off the fact I want to stop. I focus unflinchingly on the clock, breaking the hour down into fractions and counting as the various milestones I've set tick by. I end up passionately hating the clock so then I focus on my technique and try and swim more efficiently. That rarely bears fruit so I study the water as it breaks and dances in front of my nose. Then I think of nothing for a bit. If none of that works I think to myself 'I could be in the office in a really shit meeting right now, and instead I'm getting fit in a pool and it's on my own terms' then ask myself where I'd rather be. That always works and I don't stop.

That I can get my teeth into it and beat a challenge is probably the part of swimming I enjoy most. The part of swimming I enjoy the least is definitely...... the pool. It's my local public pool. It's 30 metres long (take me about 45 seconds to do a length) and it's pretty grim. There's no windows and the artificial lighting makes it pretty dinghy. The room has a low ceiling and the walls are close; the acoustics are ear piercingly unpleasant. I also suffer what I've termed 'lane rage'. I like to swim in the middle of the pool, right by a roped off lane. I go straight back and forth and cover the same space over and over so it's pretty clear that's my space. I'm unassuming and don't ask for that much, just a space that's a metre or so wide and 30 meters long. If someone so much as looks at my little stretch of water I get angry. If they have the gall to rest at the end of the pool to where I AM CLEARLY SWIMMING, I end up wrestling with my lane rage and trying to remain calm. I channel that anger into my next length.

On top of the lane rage, the experience is made more unpleasant by the fact the pool is run by the local authority, so more often than not there's swimming lessons going on for local kids going on. This means the water is choppy and the air is full of a cacophony of children's shrieking competing with teachers shouting 'DON'T RUN'. Hardly conducive to a relaxing swimming experience.

Then you have the other swimmers that, like me, aren't learning (or rather - aren't being taught). The people that have, for whatever reason, decided to take time out of their day to swim up and down, up and down, up and down in a poorly lit, echoey room; sharing chemically water full of god knows what bodily discharge faintly masked by a thin but sharp layer of chlorine. You get some super fit people who swim like fish and cut through the piss and chlorine like a BMW in the inside lane of a motorway, leaving you in their wake trundling along in the slow lane. However, I've noticed most swimmers are of advancing years, say 40+, and don't go as quick. Now that I go regularly I've started to recognise a few faces. There's Hairy Back man. He's about 45 and of middle eastern descent. He's overweight with no hair on his head but A LOT on his back. It's like he's wearing a cashmere sweater in the pool. I feel a bit sorry for him but then I think he probably came to terms with his hairy back a long time ago. If he's married, maybe his wife doesn't mind, I think. Then there's Oriental Lady, she's probably about the same age as Hairy Back man, if not a bit older. She swims so slowly sometimes I think she's swimming backwards, but she is very delicate and graceful and has a distinctly demure air about her.

Then..... then there's Staring Dad. Staring Dad could also be known as Staring Granddad depending on your age. I'd say he's in his mid to late sixties, he looks pretty much like you'd expect: balding, grey, slightly gaunt face, sagging skin on his body; overall he cuts an unassuming figure. Whenever I turn up at the pool Staring Dad is there in the water, bobbing and resting at the end. He occasionally does a couple of lengths but most of the time he bobs and rests. But one thing he definitely does, the whole time, is stare. At me. Every time I look up Staring Dad is staring at me. And when I'm not looking at him, I can feel his stare boring into the side of my head. Sometimes at the end of one length and start of another I happen to turn just next to him, and there he is intently staring at me. Not blinking, just staring. His facial expression doesn't change: he always looks like he's about to ask a question but he never does, a bit like someone pressed pause on a video just as he was about to start speaking. Sometimes I call his bluff and stare back to see if it'll invoke a reaction. It never does and he just stares back. I've tried raising my eyebrows by way of blokey 'hello' but I'm met with the same fixed, slightly apologetic and perplexed stare. On one occasion I happened to be doing my turn next to him and I swear he said something, but I couldn't quite hear over the shrieking kids and yelling teachers. I met his stare and waited for him to say it again but he didn't, he just stared and I shook my head and swam off. I still haven't worked out why he is staring. At first I thought perhaps he is impressed by my unflinching determination and Olympic levels of stamina(!) but then as another swimmer cut passed me like a fish I realised I'm not that gifted. I wonder if perhaps I remind him of himself when he was younger, and he looks on fondly at my comparative youthfulness and virility. Who knows. I'm reluctant to say hello and commit to the inevitable doctrine of social etiquette that would result. I think I'll just let him stare.



<sub>This week I recommend:
1. French people
2. Marmite and Finn Crisp - it works!
3. Trainers
4. Raspberries

This week I do not recommend:
1. My knee</sub>

(This journal entry isn't mirrored, because.... well it's a bit shit really)

It's been a fair while since my last journal entry, about eight months in fact. When I think of this period it feels more like eight years. It's been an eventful and tiring time. I'm subsequently relieved to learn that one term of the human condition is buoyancy, accordingly I can report that I'm still bobbing along and I don't have any grey hair yet (save a couple on my chin).

It's not that I haven't been here. Far from it. I have been lurking around dA, occasionally commenting or ing some of the art and photography that has caught my eye. It's so great to see how deviantART grows.

At this point some annoying people would call me sad: but deviantART really is like my online home. Over the last seven years it has developed into my base camp at the foot of the internet mountain. When ever and where ever I happen to open a browser (a concerningly frequent habit) I inevitably gravitate back here, the opportunity to do so in more and more exotic locations has swollen in conjunction with the growing wave of technological advancement; I can be found browsing dA while waiting for the bus, sitting in an airport lounge or on the bog taking a dump (yes really, I've done that).

Safe to say then, whether I like it or not (and I side with NOT here) I'm very much a creature of habit. To my mind this is very bad. To counter this I have discovered my character does have a strong point after all (a-ha! found it!) - and that's an iron will. It was this iron will (more like an iron-incased-granite-and-covered-in-barbed-wire will) which helped me kick my smoking habit again (20 a day for about 15 years, gross). After that experience you might think I'd be done with habits, but oddly the success of kicking one habit has in turn opened the door to the recent acquisition of another to which my habit-forming brain has well and truly surrendered itself like a cheap tart on a first date. Coincidentally, it's a habit which feeds on and needs that strong will of mine to live and thrive. It's the habit of running.

I say habit, it's slowly turning into more of a dependence. As I was in the toilet earlier today (sorry for the second toilet reference here) I caught myself daydreaming and fearing the potential loss of my ability to run, in my imagination this happened through some terrible injury somewhere in the mists of my future and meant I would be deprived of the pleasure I now gain from propelling myself at pace by sticking one foot in front of the other (yes, worry is another habit of mine). For me, this was a sure sign that running really is now something that's very important in my life (I think I'll save the explanation as to why for another journal).

I've always enjoyed running. It's a bit weird when you think about it. What is it about running? It's one of the most simple things a human can do and currently accepted knowledge would suggest we've been doing it out of necessity or pleasure for about 200,000 years. Although I'm knocking on I haven't been doing it that long, but I used to win the cross-country, middle and long distance events at school. I enjoyed the running more than the winning (but my iron will dictated that I HAD to win). That all went out the window when I discovered the dubious pleasures offered by various socially acceptable (and some less so) drugs. So after a decade of not running, it's been over the last couple of years, specifically the last few months, that I've really stepped up my level of running.

This evening after a pretty crap day in the office I completed what nearly equates to a half marathon. I fucking flew, I passed countless runners, I even overtook people on bikes, I got quicker as I went.

It makes my knee sore but my mood and spirit soar - perhaps if you run you'll know what I mean - I hope so. Maybe habit isn't always bad after all, eh



Anyway, hi, I hope you're well.




<sub>This week I recommend:
1. 1980's Alan Partridge running shorts
2. Bats

This week I do not recommend:
1. Posh people
2. Going commando
3. Toasters</sub>

(This journal entry isn't mirrored, because.... well it's a bit shit really)

As Chuck's cousin Marvin once said in Back to the Future part I....



Like trance? Like epicness? Like songs that nearly crush my new 2.6 ghz quad core PC with 4 gig of RAM? I've spent the last 24 hours working on this baby. Here it is kids. Get comfy, it really kicks at 4 minutes in.

More to come!






<sub>This week I recommend:
1. Recovery
2. New PC + week off
3. Desktop person

This week I do not recommend:
1. Sleeping
2. Eating
3. Showering
4. Cleaning</sub>