Lungs

Everyone around me has had a cold this week, so I'm not sure which kindly soul gave me their particular virus, but I have erred on the side of caution and decided not to ride this weekend. It's my lungs you see, not great in the sensitivity to virus department.

The hours seem to stretch out before me, and with only the Annual tax returns left on my to-do list, I decided that blogging could be the ultimate displacement activity.

Here's a question for you. Why is the High street in Weston super Mare so full of litter, when it has more litter bins per capita than anywhere I have ever been. I can imagine someone in North Somerset District Council offices, saying, "let's try more litter bins, that will do it" over and over and over.....

Inventions you never knew you liked so much until you had to do without them:

1. Contact lenses. I went mountain biking in Peru in 2007, shortly after an eye infection, and had to do without the lenses. Amazingly I had contingency-planned, and had some sunglasses with those optical inserts, but all the same it was a bit of a pain. CLs are without any shadow of a doubt the best invention ever.

2. Remote control car-locking devices. The battery went in mine and it took three weeks before I could get to the garage for a new battery. In a perfect world you'd be able to put a normal battery in them, no actually in a perfect world they'd be solar-powered, but it was intensely irritating to actually have to use a key to lock the car door. How did we ever manage before they were invented?

3. Google streetview. To look down the Aubisque on Google streetview is second only to cycling down it. On a day like today, it serves as a handy replacement for all the places I can't actually cycle.

4. The chapstick. Apparently these are often found in intimate places in Casualty departments, but for me they are the third part of the trinity: Lemsip max strength, Ventolin inhale, chapstick.

5. Lemsip Max strength tablets, not lemon drink, that's vile. See above. Sod the herbal baloney, one of mankind's greatest inventions are pharmaceuticals, and they don't get more useful than this. Especially Boots own brand version which is cheaper.

6. Balm-impregnated tissues. Makes the nose just a little bit less like a clown's on a bad day.

7. Internet shopping. The perfect way to while away a day of enforced rest. Particularly useful for buying cycling kit, food shopping and books.

8. A hot bath. For relaxing those under-used muscles.

9. Powered lawn mowers, and indeed all powered garden equipment. For making vegetation control so much faster and freeing up even more time.

10. Do you really need to ask about number 10? Without bikes what would I have not been doing this weekend?

Ten things we could do without in the modern world: