The Blurt of Richard Davies

Chapter Three

June the 8th.

Bugger! Surfacing from the deep dreamless sleep of the exhausted the first sound I hear is the early morning rain pelting down. I don't want to get soaked again riding in this morning; I don't want to put on that cycling gear which has yet to fully dry from yesterday's homeward-bound downpour again; but someone has to set an example. A quick cup of nasty coffee (these days that's the only kind there is) with a couple of slices of toast for breakfast; then it's time to squirm into the cool clammy intimacy of lycra shorts and fleecy tights. I complete my outfit with a base layer and thick thermal top, covered with a rain cape, despite it being early June.

Outside I flick on the interactive world in my ear, unlock all three locks on the cycle vault and deactivate the alarm before releasing the shackle securing my bike to the ground anchor. Now I'm ready to ride. I'd love to have one of the new Raleigh mountain bikes which are being made in Nottingham once more, but they're expensive, and there's a waiting list for them. Production will be increased as the early teething problems are worked through we're told; but as ever it's always the promise of jam tomorrow.

It seems as if it hasn't stopped raining for the last week. Already there are warnings this may be the wettest year on record. Whatever the statistics, from the perspective of the rider getting soaked is just as unpleasant whether this particular wet spell is a record-breaker or not.

There are various theories doing the rounds to explain the recent changes in the weather. The conventional wisdom is the melting Arctic ice has cooled the northern Atlantic and the atmosphere above it, forcing the jet stream further south of its normal track, so steering the bad weather directly to us. Alternatively, it isn't the result of anthropogenic global warming but the earth's natural self-regulating mechanism in action, counteracting any human excess. Or our influence has sent the climate into an unstable oscillation between warming and cooling which will eventually result in a new ice age. Some even blame the Crises wars for polluting the atmosphere and affecting the weather.

My sneaking suspicion is what we are seeing now may be a repeat of the events of the 1340s when it is thought low solar activity led to a decade-long bitterly cold and wet spell. There were widespread famines due to the poor growing conditions and the resultant malnutrition weakened the populations' immunity, making it easier for the Black Death to spread. This isn't a time of famine and plague - for the moment - but I can understand how undernourishment can reduce your immunity to illnesses. Despite the Consensus' claims that our more vegetarian eating habits are healthier, there always seems to be some sort of minor bug going around with the constant background sounds of sniffing and sneezing. It can't all be just the weakened reassemblages of rhinoviruses dispersed when The Great Marshal's biological weapons labs were destroyed; there must be something more to it. I think it has to  be our austere diet, coupled with increased manual activity - be it muscle-powered commuting, or credding, or digging-in with your local growers' collective; and this on top of our Stankhovite working habits - which is wearing our immune systems down.

Getting regularly cold and wet doesn't help either. I'm hardly four kilometres along the crumbling cycle lane of the A3 and already those chill raindrops are seeking the intimate crevices of my body warmth; sneaking in through any way they can find. I suppose I could've taken the bus if I were really desperate, but there are already plenty of people huddling beneath the interactive bus stop canopies. They all look miserable as well; trying to hunch deeper into their waterproof ponchos, waiting for their bus to crawl along the real-time updated route to them. I wonder which of the latest low-level lurgies will find the crowded and damp interiors of the buses the ideal environment in which to spread?

There are head-down peds walking indomitably onwards under their umbrellas; and other cyclists flinching under the onslaught as they pedal, probably wondering as well why they are mad enough to ride in this weather. Maybe like me they have become resigned to getting wet; accepting there is no such thing as waterproof clothing; that the rain always finds a way in or through. Do they also take some perverse pride in toughing it out? Or is there some masochistic solace in the realization beyond a certain point you can't get any wetter or colder? Are they as used to feeling as if their pink, chilled, numb, wrinkled fingers and toes are only partially their own? Is the only thing keeping them going the thought of warm towels, dry clothes, and a drying closet at the end of their journey? At least on a bike you are generating your own heat, even if you lose a lot of it to the raw air.