Chapter 10 Dangerously Healthy by Malcolm Birkenshaw

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Chapter 10.

`I think it's getting warmer,' I opened the kitchen door, the
prodigal sun having suddenly returned with its sky as blue as the
night had been black, in tow a southerly breeze collected whilst
away in distant lotus groves, the weather clock now swinging full
circle after a month of dishcloth grey. All too often Yorkshire
springs are like that within the lee of a North Sea into which the
Arctic thaws.

`Tha doesn't often see a sky like that, does tha'?' Stan
greeted me loudly as he passed in the lane by the end of our drive,
walking his cows back after milking, poking the nearest with a
broken off branch when it took into its mind to browse away from his
meandering herd, all doing their own thing, a chorus of discordant
udders. `Tha ought to get thyself away on thee bike `afore it rains
again.'

`Are you thinking of making a fool of yourself?' Lena spoke
from the kitchen, its door wide open to the weather, suspecting I
needed little excuse to go further afield without encouragement from
Stan.

`No. Just thought that I might call on Tom and Ola again.'

`Oh,' her brow relaxed, that would fit in nicely with her
arrangements since she always took Claire to ballet on Saturday.
`Lunch will be late. Maybe two o'clock. There's some shopping I
must do.

Must?...... it must be for herself. `Cheerio, then,' my voice
pursued her as she chivvied Claire to get ready and, whilst the
nagging grew louder, I collected a pullover in case the weather
forecasters were wrong, again.

Leaving them arguing upstairs I accelerated out of the drive,
front wheel wobble being a thing of the past, racing at the hill in
top gear, not easing the pace until out of the village. `Phew,' I
freewheeled beyond the church, talking to nature, `It's only a few
weeks since I used to fall off.'

The lane widened and merged with a wider road at the next
village, just by its war memorial, the dead corner where local
farming boys grew up before generals blew their bugles and reaped
their naked harvest, a cross of foreign marble a Somme amongst the
moonscaped corn, three faded wreaths their past summer.

And where the road wiggled, to the curve of a stream, a
courting couple from last night, or starting early, had parked
behind a hay stack which was leaning in precarious sympathy. All
right for some, I mused, and pedalled some more, waving to the local
garage man. He ignored me, no petrol sales this morning, my bicycle
running on bacon and eggs.

Again the highway squeezed, this time through another village
of dozing cottages. Bugger being run over, I steered onto the
footpath, safe by inches from cars and wagons which were jostling
for space. `Want a push, mister?' two kids had wound down a window,
earning a clip for disturbing dad's driving.

`Serves them right,' I wryly smiled, only to have my wry smile
swiftly un-smiled and bruised by my saddle for not watching the curb
ahead. `Pay attention, traffic lights coming up,' I winced,
checking my watch,... four miles in twenty minutes! Bubbling with
euphoria, now dangerously healthy, I changed my plan, turned left -
the ride to Ola and Tom could wait, for today was the chance to add
to my four mile record ride.

`Somewhere near here there's a short cut,' I turned through a
neglected yard, past the farm sign, juddering over its cobbles and
round a tractor laid to rust, scattering a quagmire of ducks amongst
chickens to emerge, on an unfamiliar lane, racing between hedges,
slightly downhill, my wry ever more bruised than before. `I bet I'm
doing twenty miles an hour, at least,' I gasped, raised up on the
pedals for comfort, biting the air, gripping the steering, leaning
into a bend, getting up speed for the gradient ahead. Down a gear,
down a gear, down a gear until, in the lowest gear of all, I ended
up standing, standing right up, standing up straining, wobbling to
avoid falling off, muscles at loggerheads with gravity into which
they had ground.

`Bloody hell,' I swore and the brown eyes of heifers,
glistening with unfathomable innocence, inquisitively looked on
beyond a three-barred fence, chewing their cud’s, my legs out of
control, spastic, but to them I could be a Martian. I lurched to
the verge, what had gone wrong? Things were like this after cycling

to Ouseby Hoff and that second climb of Simon's Seat,.... but now it was worse, and I did
not know why.

Even more confusing was, when after a rest, how everything
became fine, almost as good as before, but what if it ever happened
again? Heifers I could cope with, swear at, yet never did I want
people to see me making a fool of myself, locked in my mind this
disease remaining some sign of failure. `Better find out if I'm fit
enough to ride home,' I pushed my bike up the hill. This is
ridiculous, my walking had recovered, why not risk just another
mile?

One mile? - After two there was still no sign of me being tired
again. Ever a genius, I had overlooked that I had been riding
mainly downhill, concentrating on road signs which had bragged that
I was already half way to my parents'.

How about giving them a surprise, show them how well I am
doing? - forgetting about Isaac Newton and gravity and the gradient
ahead. In any case, even if he had poked a spoke into my wheel of
thoughts he never made mention of bicycles, preferring to bugger
around with apples. Besides, the road ahead ran, more or less, plus
or minus a hump or two, near what was once a horse drawn railway
line. It was now disused, the horses long dead, the lines smelted
down but, parallel with a gradient against which one horse could
pull heavy trucks surely I could at least push a bicycle?

True, the road followed the line, more or less, so far as the
map was concerned but, when it came to ups and downs, it had rather
more humps than less. I plodded away on the road, changing gear each
time my legs ached, the old track, overgrown, lost in the woods.
This is bloody ridiculous, being overtaken by a man walking his dog.

`Want a push?' he offered, genuinely, smiling. I shook my head.
Why do people always offer to push? Anyway, he would never
understand why I wanted to do it alone, nor why I was riding so
slowly despite being dolled up in a cyclist’s shorts. Better look
casual, as though not trying, and if he doesn't disappear I'll
pretend to have a puncture. Better not, someone else might offer to
help and want to know what's wrong with my legs.

Why not stop, admire the countryside, alternative solutions
occurring with each tortuous turn of my wheels? Damn! not here, the

village sewage plant is just over the fence. Hold your breath, try
harder. Hell, my legs are turning to jelly, but not much further to
go. Try taking turns, pedalling one leg at a time, resting the
other. Right - ugh, right - ugh, right - ugh; left - ugh, left -
ugh, left - ugh.......

At last, a place to fall off, clear of the village. Forty
minutes passed and still I was knackered. Yet I must get up, nature
calls. But where? That haystack over there, in a field, only a
road's width away. Damn! What do I do now, too weak to stand?
Robert the Bruce said try, try, and try again. Sod his spider, I'm
trying all right, clever-Dick Bruce, my legs trying to behave as
though they were eight, gyrating, overbalancing, all twenty at the
same time. Yet despite the uncalled-for insults I hurled at his
haggis his spider turned out to be right and, with mind over
bladder, I took aim for the field. Bloody gate, it's locked.....
Quick, muck or nettles, and I forced a gap in the hedge where no gap
had been - at least not by the look of my knees.

Time and tide wait for no man - so it is said, and I just beat
high water. Better return to my belongings, perhaps find a spare
bale where I could rest with the bike back in sight. `I say, you
there, this yours?' a man with a colonial moustache out for a walk
pointed his stick.

`Please don't let this be his straw,' I hoped, nodding with
flimsy commitment. But no,.. no, he was more bothered, as a good
citizen, about a wheel poking from behind the back of the haystack
and, with a cough, strode on with purpose deliberate.

I held my ear to my watch.... Still ticking, and yet only half
an hour gone, but the air had become colder. Better be off before he
returns with the militia, I creaked to the vertical, muscles not
fully relaxed, but at least ready to go, like a car about to rely
upon its reserve fuel supply. How on earth did the specialist's
"slow virus" work and, why this exhaustion?

Solving those problems can wait. For the moment I'm too far
from home, marooned, so where to go now? ...... I need more time to
recover, the intended road to my parents' now being too risky -
Leeds is bad enough for normal cyclists let alone one with limp
legs. How about to Molly's and Seth's? They're old friends, don't

live far away, and know of my M.S. From there I could telephone
Lena, tell her that all was safe and well, then recover at leisure
ready for the ride home.

`Take it easy this time,' I spoke sternly with my legs, riding
them close to the kerb once on the main road where traffic raced
whether it had somewhere to go or not, radiator grills whining past
in either direction. `First right to Molly and Seths'.... but how,
without wings against this flow? If I go now I'll be killed, but if
I wait until the tide turns Lena will be certain I've met with an
accident.' I shut my eyes and wished upon my mustard seed and, lo
and behold, like the Red Sea parting, an improbable gap appeared.
`Quick, somebody up there is telling you something,' I swerved with what,
a second sooner or a second later, would have been foolhardy timing
onto the quiet lane to Wake.

`Silly bugger,' blared a horn, its owner objecting to his road
having been fouled by a cyclist. I breathed a sigh of relief,
timing my pace, pedalling with care, hedgerows strolling past,
preparing myself ready for a dash at an incline where the lane cut
into a hillside. `Don't ask too many favours,' I changed my mind,
conserving my mustard seeds, intending to dismount where the cut
started.

But to balance the equation Saint Sod was perched on my left
shoulder, encouraging a car to rev its engine in the wake of my
mudguard - and it was an awful slow wake that I could do nothing
about. `Overtake,' I shouted, unable to give hand signals whilst
hanging onto the handlebars, pumping away. `Hurry, stamp on your
accelerator, there's nobody coming,' my legs were starting to ache
and we were long past the place where I had planned to start
walking. `Overtake, overtake.'

But all he did was race his engine, as though his irritation
would spur me to try harder. `Better do something,' I spoke to
myself, `Otherwise it looks like squashed Mytholmroyd is on today's
menu,'- in a few moments it might be too late to do anything.
`Better bale off, and hang onto the bike.... If that gets bent I'll
be stuck here for ever.'

My mustard seed had fallen upon shallow soil for, with fields
poisoned by pesticides to the left, and a lethal lane of asphalt to

their right, the last thing the animal inhabitants of a steep
hedgerow expected was for a human elbow to be dumped into their
front room. But whatever they were, rat, rabbit, or blackbird, they
certainly scuttled when I tippled onto it. `Why don't I invent a
parachute for cyclists?' split-second lunacy serving to plaster a
smile over my humiliation as the car angered by.

Remounting was pointless, the lane being so narrow that even a
protruding big toe would have been dangerous. `I can't remain here,
though, and I'm certainly not backtracking,' I righted the bike and
pushed with dragging feet to the top. `Was it? ... Is it? ... Am
I hallucinating?' Straight ahead, in the middle of nowhere, relaxed
into a grass verge, perching on the bend of a curve, was a park seat
painted green! So near, and yet so far, yet by pausing after each
pace I remained upright until almost there when I lunged, landing
half-cocked grasping hold of one of the seat's wrought iron arms.

Well, at least the spare mustard seeds had kept me safe, I
looked skywards, and as a result saw that a ceiling of clouds had
blocked out the blue, it looked as though it was going to rain.
`Lightning can strike for all I care,' I muttered, with nothing
better to say, for it was now becoming colder; and as a debilitated
spider might make a pig's ear of its web I struggled into my
pullover, each arm feeling down the wrong sleeve before working the
shrunken roll-neck over my head. When my eyes reappeared, looking
straight down the hill that I had nearly crawled up, there was a
cyclist, muscle-bound, with cap turned backwards and short white
socks, about to go racing past. Damn it, how did he do it, he was
still in top gear?.... What a waste of time, why did I bother?

Depression displaced the euphoria of recent weeks. What did I
care whether the cyclist looked twenty years younger? That was
irrelevant. Until now I had always made the specialist's prediction
look stupid, apart from the odd hiccup. Damn it, is today's distance
a measure of my recovery? Sod it, better make a move before being
moulded into the seat, it's slats were beginning to stick to my
chilled sweatless thighs, the sun had obviously gone for the day.
But must manage this last half a mile, somehow or other.

With heavy heart and leaden legs I leant against the bike,
unsure of how long it would take my feet to reach Molly and Seths'.

Yet once their house came into sight, guilt, vanity and
determination rumbled within me (some call it bloody-mindedness) for
their drive was downhill. I worked myself back on the saddle and
managed to freewheel, head held high, trying to look like a cyclist.

`Come in, what are you doing on that?' Molly flung open their
door.

`I cycled here,' I smiled, beaming with pride.

`Where from?' she laughed.

`Adderton.'

`I'm not that stupid.'

`Telephone Lena, if you don't believe me.'

She watched for signs of my face cracking whilst dialing the
number. `Hello Lena, I've got your husband here, he says he ......'
her expression changed.

She replaced the receiver, pushed their dogs aside to make way
for a chair, shoved a glass in my direction. `Seth, pour him a
sherry.'..... Lena arrived several drinks later, by then the world
was warm and rosy again.

Read the following chapters that tell of how Martin "cured" his M.S. and climbed mountains by the following year.

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