A lot has been going on lately: enormous career stress, and the birth
of my daughter. Through this I have found myself slipping back to the
inwards view of last year, and the sense of desolation that brings.

Of course, Beatrice is a joyous, mesmerising little creature, and I
have found myself captivated by both the simplicity and fundamental
complexity of her life in my hands. I know this to be a sensation
impossible to recognise until the moment arrives and, irrespective of
the organisation and planning, I was quite unprepared to meet her.

Sadly, what should be a time of the simplest form of uyplifting,
light-soaked happiness has been somewhat drained by the career thing.
Just as I was getting comfortable in my own skin, the past has come
back to bite me heavily, and possibly fatally. There are moments of
blind panic, moments of resignation and acceptance, and other fleeting
glimpses of new directions and possibilities. None of this was
planned, but what use is planning for irrationality.

While the complex collision of emotion, the conflict of here and now
against the future, has landed on me with such force, I have had to
find a simpler resolve and seek help. It has come from many quarters,
and though it ought to be expected (and is given on such a basis, I am
sure), it has caught me off guard I have to say. But one area of help
was necessary. And it comes with a bitter pill.

The prospect of medium or long term medication cannot be right, and so
finding means of managing this is essential. And that need brings me
to my subject. Bikes and books. Wheels and words.

Time off work with G and B has resintroced me to the pleasure of
reading, and I am reminded of the many valuable assets of literature.
But the need to write is becoming stronger. Josiah has joined the
page, and I find myself here, blackberry in hand. The other, more
recently overt, pleasure has also returned: riding my bike. In many
ways, it represents my sole escape to victory. Not because it is the
answer the all my concerns, but in the way it creates a silencing of
the eternal rattle in my mind.

Paul Fournel writes of a need for the bike, and I know exactly what he
means. It is an inherent, instinctive desire to move, to glide, the
breathe hard and to live with such immediacy that the recent break
from riding has done nothing to diminish.

I must write and I must ride.