French Revolutions

at least one bar-tabac without some
sort of regional subsidy, but I’m very glad they do. Maybe the solution to the
decline of Britain’s rural pubs is to encourage more farmers to start drinking
at 8.30 a.m.
    Anyway, perhaps because bar-tabacs
are almost by definition the domain of lonely people looking for company, I
never failed to attract a circle of admirers. I suppose it was like being
chatted up. Conversations of the what’s-a-nice-boy-like-you variety were
instantly struck up, and I quickly established that (a) the Tour had last
passed through la Trimouille thirty-three years ago; (b) it was a pity Michel
from the garage wasn’t here, because he had a load of pictures from back then;
and (c) if you want to win the heart of a wet English cyclist, try combing the
breakfast remnants from your moustache and smelling slightly less of sick.
    Somebody made a joke about me
winning; somebody else delivered a series of hand signals that suggested the
road to Limoges was either very up-and-down or menaced by the Loch Ness
monster, and with the sun breaking through I left happy. Over the fields: hello
there, cows; top of the morning, Mr Magpie; shut the fuck up, dog... For the
first time, the problem was not fatigue or fear, but boredom. Presently I found
myself moronically transfixed by my knees as they cranked out the kilometres:
hairy red left knee, hairy red right knee, left knee, right knee, left, right,
left... Why do cyclists shave their legs?
    ...Aerodynamics, I suppose... Wonder
at what point in their career they decide to start doing it... Does someone
take you aside and say, look, son, you’ve got something special, but if you’re
going to be serious let’s get the Bic out on those calves... What if you shaved
them, and then realised you were actually rubbish after all?... Like Michael
Hardaker on that scout-troop cross-country run when his dad rubbed all that
Vaseline into his legs on the start line... In fact, what the naked arse was that all about?... Oh, there’s a leaf stuck in my spokes... there it is again...
there... there... there... gone now... And... drrr-thwick... what’s that drr-thwick noise?
    It was awful the way the brain
gradually homed in on the most inane and infuriating minutiae. At least it
wasn’t just me. Even proper cyclists find that when their minds start wandering
they’re too tired to reel them back in. Louison Bobet, Tour winner three times
on the trot from 1953, was prone to debilitating peripheral obsessions: a spot
of oil on his tyre, a spare tube wrapped in the wrong colour paper. And who
cannot sympathise with Paul Kimmage, his chances in a 1989 Tour time trial
destroyed by Paul McCartney’s My Brave Face, played over the Tannoy on
the start line and then spooled endlessly around his tortured brain for every
one of the following 73 kilometres?
    Drr-thwick... That noise — and I can hardly bear
to think about it even now — was eventually traced to a slight misalignment of
chain vis-à-vis front dérailleur, overlaid with a synthetic swish as my left
heel grazed against the pannier during each pedal revolution. Neither should
have been difficult to rectify, but fiddling randomly with hex keys and
screwdrivers always made both slightly worse, though not as seriously as the
wit’s-end kick that generally rounded off each roadside mechanical session.
    Drrr-thwick, drrr-thwick... I’m not sure exactly when I realised
that something more grandiose was going wrong inside my head, but it might have
been when I went through a village called La Grande Mothe and started scanning
the bracken for giant antennae. Feeling curiously hollow, I noticed everything
seemed to be happening in slow motion, most notably my progress. I stopped, and
for the first time since Kew Bridge I remembered too late to twist my foot out
of the cleats: the fall into the damp bracken was so gentle and painless it was
like watching it happen to someone else. Exhibiting a gormless confusion that
would have done Stan Laurel proud, I sat on my wet arse and wondered what was
going on. Stomach funny, head light, hands... two. One, two. Two hands. Must
be... must... oh yeah: the vitamins.
    Later, of course, I deduced that all
the talk of ‘vitamin shots’ was either a direct euphemism for illegal performance-enhancing
drugs, or a means of persuading reluctant riders to jab hypodermics into their
bottoms. The big leap isn’t what you stick in the syringe, it’s the act of
injecting yourself with it: