Forest

We are all sharing a bed while we’re in the forest, because one of us is not well. His body is stripped of all but a nappy, his fever is furious and hard to keep on top of. The drugs aren’t working like they usually do. He looks so much smaller, as if the illness has diminished his physical presence. In a foetal ball, perched atop a pillow, he occasionally jerks and shudders before resettling.

I wonder what goes through his head to make his body do that. Fearful, feverish dreams? He seems scared, and it hurts me to know that I can do nothing about it.

His sleep is snatched, sporadic, restless, and so is ours. It’s quiet here, the birds and animals are asleep, there are no roads nearby. A baby’s cry is far more piercing when it’s the only sound.

A poorly boy taking a nap. Aww.

We get up early and look outside at the trees, the water, the rocks and the morning light. I wonder aloud why people have chosen to live anywhere but here. I feel more at ease and at home here than I ever do in the tarmac coated sprawl of a city or town. I suppose there just aren’t many jobs in the forest.

I'm not feeling well, can you tell?

The arrival of morning signals the departure of the fever. The rash remains, to remind us we’re not done with the whining just yet, and woe betide should you run out of Calpol. Suitably dosed, we head out on the bikes, weaving between the other assorte

d short term forest dwellers, most of whom look like they haven’t seen a bike before, let alone ridden one. Crashes are narrowly avoided and the swimming pool is reached.

Cool water laps at our skin and rinses away memories of the unpleasant night time, replaced by chlorine’s gift: desiccated skin. But he loves it. He thinks he can swim, we do not. He wants no aid to buoyancy apart from one of us, so we scoot around the pool, pushing him ahead of us. He remains utterly calm while we change him back into dry land clothing and, though a part of me feels foolish, we believe that the worst of the illness, a reaction to the MMR vaccination, is over.

Bedtime proves my foolish part correct. The fever is back. At 3:30am I meander through the haze of sleep to give him Calpol. He sleeps next to us again.

In the morning I discover I’ve left the lid off the Calpol. An ant crawls near to the bottle. An urgent trip to the shop to buy more occurs. We swim again. He loves it again. I continue to love the forest, continue to love the time I am having with my family, continue to hope it will somehow not come to an end on Friday, when they let the cars back in and we have to leave.

Forest at dusk. Pretty.

Our first holiday as three hasn’t been the easiest four days, but I will always remember it and cherish it.

Helmets

Firstly, a thank you to @SAHDandproud for blogging about this and tempting me to join in. I've wanted an excuse to post about cycling for ages, cos I loves it.

About six years ago I entered a race. It was a race down a hill on a bike. This particular hill was, at the time of the race, extremely muddy due to an overnight storm. It had lots of big, pointy rocks sticking out of the ground, it had tangled networks of slippery tree roots. It had twists and turns, jumps and drops.

My first attempt at riding down the hill wasn’t the best. I slid on a root, parted company with the bike, flew through the air and was brought to an abrupt halt when my head hit a tree. My chest, arms and legs also hit the tree. I slumped to the ground and thought “ouch”.

Because I was riding down a muddy, rocky, slippery, rooty hill I was wearing a helmet. I was also wearing knee and shin pads, elbow and forearm pads. Here’s a picture of me on that very day:



Me and my big shiny helmet (sorry)

I look a bit like a Power Ranger, no?

When I lost control of my bike that day I was extremely glad I was wearing a helmet. The rules of the race meant I had to be wearing one, but I would have been anyway. Call me crazy, but if I think there’s a chance I’ll be getting into a fight with a tree, I want to have as much protection on me as I can. Trees are hard as fuck. Headbutting them is not wise if you are a squishy-bonced human.

But here’s the thing. I don’t always wear a helmet.

When I go mountain biking (rocks, roots, trees, peril) I wear one. Always.

When I go out for a long spin on the road bike (hard tarmac, wet drain covers, high speed, lots of crazy drivers, peril) I wear one. Always.

When I hop on my silly little “going to the pub or shops” bike and make a journey of just a few minutes, on the quiet roads of the town I live in (hard tarmac, minimal speed, few drivers, somewhat less peril) I don’t always bother.

Pub bike, it's silly but I love it.

This position, I suspect, is not going to win me many friends, or glean positive comments.

I am pro-helmet wearing in most instances. I’d quite like my brain to remain inside my head, rather than leaking out through a hole. I’m quite partial to all the things which having an intact brain allows me to do. I’m just not wholly convinced that cycle helmets are necessarily all that effective in keeping it there.

Even if they are good at keeping it there, they’re not necessarily good at protecting its ability to function (which, I guess, is what most people actually care about). Brain injuries are complicated, they’re not as simple as just preserving the physical form of the organ.

You probably know this, but cycle helmets aren’t like motorbike helmets. They’re not designed to withstand the sort of forces you may encounter when hit by a car.

Nevertheless, I usually wear one.

But I don’t want it to be made compulsory.

I don’t want to have the choice taken away from me.

Maybe that seems silly to you. I dunno. Maybe it is silly. I think I’m broadly in the camp that would like to make sensible decisions based on perception of risk, rather than have a one size fits all policy.

Part of me thinks this is an indefensible position. Why wouldn’t I wear a helmet all the time? What possible reason is there? Certainly not helmet hair, I don’t have enough hair for that to be a concern. It’s not because I worry about looking cool, because I never do that (also, I quite like the look of my bike helmet, it’s certainly no worse than my hair).

Of course, like an epic hypocrite, I’ll definitely want Cam to wear a helmet. Can we make it compulsory for kids? I think I’ll always wear one once he’s old enough to notice.

So, in summary, I don’t always wear one, I don’t want someone to make it law that I have to, but I’m not really sure why. How wonderfully inconclusive.

Regardless of how I feel about bike helmets, there are other things I’d rather see happening to make cycling safer. Driver education to improve roadcraft and decision making, as well as promoting empathy with cyclists would be good. Cyclist education for all the same reasons.

Cycle safety is a far more than just convincing people to wear helmets.

What do you reckon? Am I an epic twat for not always wearing one? Do you think we should also wear helmets to cross roads?