Sorry, I’m on my cycle
Published: January 9, 2023
The town is getting overrun with cyclists. The Tour Down Under creates localised cycling fever that irritates many motorists and other touchy people.
It doesn’t bother me. I am over all that cycling lark and my indifference stems from a previous life in which I was a — no… not Pharaoh in Egypt or Marco Polio’s tour advisor or even the cabin boy on the Titanic (well, I was… but only for a while). No! It was a few reincarnations back when I was a crab louse.
I’d been a crab louse on a host for half a lifetime – about three days – and things were getting pretty boring listening to the other lice go on and on about their big-time blood-sucking successes, name-dropping about celebrity so-and-so who hosted them on a US tour, and the rich-bitch VIP who had a fresh blood transfusion every week to keep their blood tasty and bubbly. Too much talk, not enough walk, I thought.
So, in order to separate the talkers from the walkers I organised a real test of prowess and come up with the idea of a bicycle race around our host human.
It had a working title – The Tour De Pants – and was such a success that when I was later reborn as a French onion cycle-courier I remembered the event in my past-life and went on to re-create the race in real life but it died on the drawing board. The Onion Cyclist Race de France never took off.
However, back to the previous lifetime and “The Tour de Pants” which started with great eagerness under Dax on the Loins of L’amour, sweeping down over the Hummocks of Cellulite, negotiating the Dimples of Doom, then veering down the Butte Crakke into De’ath Valley, steering around De Fumel while skirting the treacherous mud flaps along the Basin d-Arces.
From there the course swung south under the vast gauche Jodhpur Breaches that cover the Omy Lourdres Louket De’m Thives down to the Pair-o-Knees mountains before turning back up the Plateau de Porcine d’à droite Jodhpur, round the back of the Domes de Puey then through the Toblerone Tunnel where we had to cross the T’ain’t Bridge.
The course then forced the participants to go single file past the Tou-Loose Les Rideaux de Chateaubriand, avoiding Arudy before tackling the Mons de Venus which overlooks la Quimper. From there we bashed through the Black and Silver Forest prior to making a dash across the dreaded Stretchmark Veldt to the site of Uttah Rouen, skirting the rutted Scar d’Appendix.
Toughest part was in the Brest region where we had to climb the colossal Massif Alps – this used to be the Lussac Region until a liquid silica deposit was discovered underneath — then a speedy free-wheel coast down through the Sillycone Valley across the Muffin-Top Ridge and winding up at the Navel Base.
I won the race, but when I jumped in the navel base for a victory swim I discovered the fukken thing was polluted with a pyrethrin-based product and it killed me. Then I came back as a…. no, I might save that one for another time.
This yarn about crab lice has given me itchy, twitchy nuts which is a fairly clumsy segue to the shameless promotion of The Nuts next gig at the Three Brothers Arms Macclesfield on Friday January 27. An evening of great music, some of it quirky/funny, most of it rocky and a bit wild, with great food and very nice beers.
Book now via this link: https://www.trybooking.com/CFDJI