It is written in the most terrible of all the laws of sport: whoever you are, you will always lose in the end. There is nothing that champions win for themselves – by bravery, sacrifice, and pain – that will not, in a short space of time, be taken away. They are empty-handed conquerors. Scarcely have they reached their promised land, when they find themselves exiled once again…

Glory and fortune can be won and lost. After all, these are but worldly goods, just things. But the champion loses his title as champion. His farewell to arms is a farewell to himself.

(Alain Gerber)

A memorial to Paul de Vivie but he’s there each time you change gears

1. Stop rarely and briefly, so as not to lose your rhythm
2. Eat little and often and eat before you are hungry, drink before you’re thirsty
3. Never push yourself into such fatigue that you lose appetite and cannot fall asleep
4. Wrap up before you get cold, undo layers before you get hot and do not fear exposing the skin to the sun, air and water
5. Cross out, at least when riding, wine meat and tobacco from your diet
6. Never force the pace, ride within your means, especially during the first few hours when you’re tempted to ride hard because you feel full of energy
7. Never ride for show or vanity

For Olive

Pet was never mourned as you,

Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall –
Foot suspended in its fall –
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid her memory fade,
Better blot each mark she made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve her prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.

From the chair whereon she sat
Sweep her fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake her little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away her talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where she climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.

Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for her life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
Her existence ruled by ours,
Should–by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of her insignificance –
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.

As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by her forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from her little look,
By her faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of her.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.

(Apologies to Thomas Hardy)

Into my heart on air that kills
 From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
 What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
 I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
 And cannot come again.

(A.E.Houseman)