you want miracles? i give you the g.b.p.

I'm sorry, readers. I've had tried, many times, to sit down and write yez something nice. Fact is I'm kind of bushed. I have to concentrate very hard to make sure I don't walk out of my room without my trousers--I'm that kind of tired. Also, there's not much news. Well let me see, last weekend I hired a bike and cycled along the coast for a bit. The first couple of hours went pretty smoothly, except for a near-death encounter with a disappearing pavement and a sewage services van. Then I stopped at Broad Stairs, a very cute town on a little bay, which was basically one big party. The beach was so jammed with happy bathers and candy-striped windbreaks you couldn't see the sand. I locked my bike up to the pier, called a colleague who had wisely headed straight there that morning, and we had an awesome fish and chip lunch. And a pint. Which was a very clever idea, considering I had a two-hour return ride ahead of me.

On the way back I actually tried to phone the bike shop guy a couple of times and get him to collect me, but the fairy of cardio-vascular exercise mysteriously removed all reception from my phone. I made it, anyway, and I may or may not have wheeled my bike up a hill or two, but that's my business. In the couple of days following I experienced pain in the fundament every time I sat down, stood up or otherwise moved, but it felt rather like the after-effects of a thorough spanking, so that was fun.

Anyway, it's been six weeks, and as I say my attention span extends as far as remembering to dress myself, just, and yet I've just accepted one last week of work at some school in Dorset. I want the cash, see. Every pound I earn will soon be blown a jaunt 'round the Continent, so it's well worth it. Nevertheless, I do feel rather like an ageing Bruce Willis schlepping myself onto the set of Die Hard 4.0. I rarely wish I were a bloke, but I do now just so I could scratch my stubble in a weary sort of way and do one of those 'bring it on' eyebrow-cocking gestures. Yippy-kay-ay.