The Witches of Gatwick

Blog No. 9 of 17 (or thereabouts)

This time next week I’ll be hanging out in Milton Keynes with my mates Annie Absinthe, a top notch Warrington lass, and Fiona the Hamstermaster, a beezer bird from Brighton.  We'll be preparing to fall in line behind Steven the UniCyclist as we all cycle to London the following day.  I’ve been asked “Why Milton Keynes?”, but only by people who haven’t bothered to follow my counsel to read Steven’s cracking blogs at www.unicycle50.com.  The four of us are Open University graduates, and Milton Keynes is home to the OU.  Strangely, not one of us has ever physically visited our own university.

My training regime has consisted largely of Olympic-style whingeing about undertaking it too late, hampered by a body honed to imperfection through croissant abuse.  Virtuously, Annie has been on her exercise bike for weeks.  10 miles a day.  Or so she thought.  Turns out it’s been ten kilometres.  So for the last week she’s ramped up her distance to 17k.  At least I’ll have company, as 10 miles into the actual ride, Annie and I are abandoned crippled at the kerbside, while Steven, Fiona and the others pedal on.  Fiona has maintained her cycling fitness, she and her husband cycled to Paris last year … it would sound more impressive if I could remember their starting point, but I’m guessing it wasn’t just the outskirts … I seem to remember the mention of 300 miles.  Mind you, with fag breaks for Fi, maybe Annie and I do stand a chance.

It’s a curious existence as an OU student, with distance learning you can complete your entire degree without any student contact whatsoever.  In fact, for the first five years of my degree I scarcely saw another soul, bar attending the odd tutorial.  Then I discovered the cyber-mayhem of the OU student community online, where students support and fight each other in equal measure.  Annie, Fiona and I were on the same course and frequented some of the fightier forums.  Here we ‘met’ Steven (none of us has ever actually met him as he was mostly based in Southern Spain, lucky bastard) but our mutual fondness for erratic online banter by way of essay avoidance meant we all bumped into each other in cyberspace now and then.   Yet Steven remains a stranger, and will doubtless wish he still were one once he’s met our coven, although I suppose Annie’s really a Witch of Winwick, not being a southern softy.

You could join in this ride you know, we’re practically all strangers really, so you won’t be excluded … unless you go too fast and leave us all behind … and that’ll be your own fault ... go on, join us ...
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