Day: February 14, 2021

Who Won the Week (14 February 2021)

In response to Fandango’s Who Won the Week post, I have been looking at my own newsfeeds.

This week’s story just struck me as plain weird, although probably as much due to my own pre-conceptions and comfort zones.

For starters, I tend to think of outdoor sex as synonymous with dirty old men in flasher macs. Not so, because this story apparently involves two women. It is also useful to know that sex in public places is known as “dogging” in the UK. I use the term below, and the linked article uses it.

And then, I think, if I ever wanted to get steamy with someone, it would be someplace nice and cosy. Not so, for this couple at least.

Lastly, let’s just throw into the mix that the UK is currently locked-down. Journeys are supposed to be close to home, and for essential purposes only.

So, with all these in mind, this is a weird story, reported a couple of days ago. It contains two women, who are unnamed but who have separate addresses in the Devon town of Plymouth.

In the throes of passion, this couple decided to drive about 30 miles out to meet up in nearby Dartmoor, which apparently, was enjoying its coldest night for 26 years. The headline of the story seems to suggest that it was the thrill of “cold sex” that attracted them. Brrrrrr, no thank you. But there is presumably something in the story, because why else would they have travelled to this spot on a freezing night?

Anyway, they parked up in a car park on Dartmoor. The car park is apparently well-known locally for dogging, and the couple were discovered by a police patrol at 2 AM on Thursday, in the police’s words, “fornicating under the stars”. In what, I think, was quite a novel move, police booked them for breaching lockdown restrictions.

The story was rounded off after it reached social media, where it attracted comments suggesting that the couple had merely been taking their daily exercise! Devon and Cornwall Police later stressed that they did not consider this to be an essential journey!

Weird, huh?

Same-sex couple caught breaching lockdown to have outdoor sex at 2am on coldest night in 26 years

Life through the Lens (14 February 2021)

As my previous series came to an end, I had the idea to post some of my own photographs.

When my eyes were better, I used to enjoy photography. I had some decent kit and was around just as digital photography was taking off. Although it was strictly a hobby for me, two of my photos were published. One rural shot of hay bales ended up in a brochure made by the UK’s NFU (farming), another ended up in a coffee-table book about lighthouses. I wasn’t David Bailey but a couple of times, I was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time.

I thought I’d share some. All these photographs were taken by me, I own the copyright so if you’d like to use any, go for it. Just so long as you don’t use them to make any money.

My aim is to publish weekly again but this time, on Sunday afternoons. I’m just going to repeat this spiel each week, too, for the benefit of new readers, so you can safely skip to the camera graphic to save reading the blurb each time.

If you look at the category above (high on left, by the date), I’ll put every photo in that same category so you can find previously-published photos. If I feel a photo needs some explanation, I’ll maybe write a line or two to go with it. Like the last time, I’ll keep going until I run out of steam. Oh, and feel free to join in, if the fancy takes you.

I’ve linked to a higher-res umage under each photo.

My neighbour christened this guy Bruno. Where I am, they breed pheasants in order to shoot them (I believe they call it sport). I therefore welcome escapees, and Bruno very sensibly spent the winter living in my front garden. Isn’t he beautiful?

The Village Idiot

inspired by Fandango’s One Word Challenge (FOWC) of 14 February 2021, village.

Village idiot, easy to stump,
He was fun to wind up, what a chump,
When I claimed, like a flea,
Could jump higher than a tree,
He replied, “don’t be daft, trees can’t jump”

Fallen Star

US football. There’s a scene right at the very start of the movie, The Last Boy Scout, where the running back is rushing, he is about to be tackled, so he pulls out a gun and shoots his would-be tacklers. The point is that the stakes are so high, the guy has blurred the distinction between sport and real-life.

And so it was with the guy I want to talk about today.

When I got into cycling, I was more into doing than watching. I cycled in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Luxembourg, even in Spain. I took my bike with me, wherever I went. But I used to enjoy watching it, too. I watched several Tour of Britain stages, about a half-dozen stages of the world’s leading race, the Tour de France, and visited track cycling events in Belgium.

I was too old, by then, to have idols but one guy stood out above all the others, just for his charisma. You quite naturally wanted him to win.

And win he did! The only time I ever saw him race in the flesh coincided with my very first visit to Le Tour, to see Marco Pantani be crowned the overall race winner, in 1998. Known as Il Pirata, he had already won the Giro (Italy) and here he was, just two months later, winning in Paris too. It was also the first time I went away with Mrs Bump and we stood on the Champs Elysees and cheered. She had no clue about cycling, but was dragged along by the wonderful atmosphere. I had been following the three-week race avidly on TV.

In fact, it was on TV that I watched what I think was Pantani’s greatest win. In 2000, Pantani was forever surrounded in drugs controversy. He had been ejected from one race because of suspicious doping levels (science had not yet caught up with doping), and Pantani generally spent a large amount of time nowhere near his bike. He was considered to be washed-up, eclipsed by the new rising star, Lance Armstrong.

Mont Ventoux is weird. There’s nothing like it. Known just as “the giant”, it is an extinct volcano, down in Provence. It rises, pretty much from sea level, to just shy of 2,000m. Even the professionals, it takes the best part of an hour to climb it, at an average gradient of about 1:8. Very steep, especially considering the distance involved. It’s not the highest mountain, it’s just that it starts so low. It’s a favourite of the Tour. In 2000, ascending Ventoux had come down to a two-horse race, Armstrong versus Pantani. Pantani won, his last big victory. Armstrong, with his eye on the overall title, later said that he had allowed Pantani to win. Only Armstrong knows, but everybody who ever came second could say the same.

Sadly, this was Marco’s last hurrah, and although he raced sporadically until 2003, he never won again. The doping allegations took their toll, he was found guilty of doping by an Italian court – a conviction later quashed, for the simple reason that doping was not yet a crime! The pressure must have been immense, Pantani developed a cocaine habit, and at one point he was admitted to a hospital specialising in the treatment of addictions. In a downward spiral, he was subsequently found dead, from a cocaine overdose in Rimini, on 14 February 2004.

We can look back at Pantani and simply dismiss him as a “doping cheat”, and this was shown years later, in 2013, when the French senate retrospectively tested his samples as part of a larger inquiry into doping. Science, by that time, had caught up. But for me, that doesn’t really matter. All it says is that he was a cheat in an era of cheats. But Marco was the one with the big character, and that will always trump just winning a race. That he came to such a tragic end just adds to his story.

Marco Pantani, 1970-2004