French Revolutions

tomorrow.
    I had a splendid photographic history
of the Tour, and of the many hotel-room après-cycle snaps only two depicted
what might be described as R and R (though each was a perfect cameo of national
traits: the Italian Felice Gimondi autographing a blonde’s thigh; Belgium’s
Eddy Merckx looking no less exhilarated as he turns over the four of clubs in a
game of patience). The rest were all either winding down — a pin-pupilled
Anquetil being forcefully massaged; Ottavio Bottecchia letting off a soda
siphon into his aviator-goggled face; two Frenchmen being interviewed in the
bath; Coppi with his feet in the bidet — or psyching up: Gino Bartali poring
over tomorrow’s maps; three Spaniards squinting myopically at the sports pages.
No time or energy for the sort of endlessly inventive after-hours horseplay
practised by Switzerland’s Oscar Plattner: had the 1955 world sprint champion
been a Tour rider, procycling might never have been able to reminisce on
an endowment so extravagant that ‘in the right circumstances he could
accommodate seven budgerigars, provided the last stood on one leg’.
    The only bed in town was within a
cardboard-walled chalet at a campsite, which was fine with me but less of a hit
with Birna. Apparently intrigued by our dual-format holiday transport, the
crisply-shirted Portuguese proprietor drove over in his little golf buggy for a
chat as we corralled the children up to our plywood veranda. I’d long since
given up on impressing a Frenchman with my endeavours, but because Portugal has no real cycling tradition, and also because his English was accomplished
enough to decode my feverish ramblings, he was soon engrossed. ‘You do the whole, en tire race?’ he asked, knitting his well-developed eyebrows in
justifiable concern. I nodded gauntly, then indicating my fetid kit asked where
I could get a laundrette token. ‘No, no,’ he said, and raising both hands by
way of reproach insisted on laundering it all in his own machine. On any day
this would have been a kindness, but I only appreciated its especial
selflessness on that particular day just after he hummed away in his buggy. I’m
so very sorry, sir.
    I’d hardly describe it as my
strongest suit in any circumstances, but in a campsite suffering in silence is
never an option for the unwell. Our wobbling walls offered minimal sonic
resistance to the traditional canvas lullaby of Teutonic snores, but I still
cringe at the catastrophic voidances I shared with my fellow campers throughout
that night. I could have suffered no greater shame if I’d strolled between the
tents in broad daylight asking for a hand with my seventh budgie.
    You may gather that I am not a good
patient. Half my childhood was spent crawling round my mother’s feet dismally
moaning ‘I think it’s my spleen’, and I made such a fuss about a teenage tummy
ache that they took my appendix out to shut me up. (Mind you, the investigatory
probings were by any standards rigorous. I’d like to meet the man who doesn’t
scream the glass out of the surgery windows when a greased-up doctor is in him
up to his elbow. Actually, perhaps I wouldn’t.) As dawn prodded at the curtains
I was still writhing and groaning like an ankle-tapped Italian footballer, and
with the roused children already holding a rowdy bedside vigil Birna blearily
yawned that holiday tummy didn’t normally last more than a day.
    ‘Holiday tummy?’ I creaked, trying to
muster up some shrillness. ‘This is a serious digestive disorder. I
think...’ and here I was momentarily drowned out by an extended fizzing wheeze
from somewhere within my knotted innards, ‘I think it might be dysentery.’
Kristjan looked at me with innocent concern; I placed a moist hand on his
shoulder and rasped, ‘Daddy has The Bloody Flux.’
    I went through the motions, so to
speak, tottering halfheartedly about with maps and gloves waiting for Birna to
stop me. It didn’t take her long. ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting on that bike
today.’
    ‘Oh, OK then,’ I said, slightly too
quickly, staring at my flaking, hollow features in the mirror above the little
kitchen sink. From Castellane the stage profile peaked and troughed like a
frightened rodent’s heartbeat, and there I was, French-fried, sun-dried, thin
’n’ crispy. Swilling my bidons out I noticed that even my ears looked ill.
    Birna watched this negligent
operation with interest. ‘Aren’t you going to wash them up properly?’
    ‘No