Read Online How I Won the Yellow Jumper by Ned Boulting - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ned Boulting
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to help us navigate. Liam, iPod in ears, slumped against the door, eyes half closed, is praying to the French god of food, Michelin. He wonât say much until weâve arrived.
But, even though weâve only just started, itâs worth stopping here. A freeze-frame of our grey Renault Espace trundling up a charmless provincial industrial estate in search of human comfort. Following the Tour.
Let me begin with luggage.
Suitcases are such hateful things. They represent misery in bulging plastic form. Heaved with loathing from pillar to post, and left in the back of the car to melt in unreasonable temperatures, their glowering presence makes manifest your distance from home. The long expanse of their zips reminds you of the distance to be traversed before home is reached again.
Experienced Tourists can probably date suitcases to the exact stage. Like trees add a ring for each year, so our cases accrue the scurf of daily decay. One year, the strap on my big blue one finally broke. I laughed at it. I literally stood there on the damp pavement outside the gloomy Hotel de la Croix Blanche in Tarbes, laughing scornfully at a bag.
They are dictators: they impose their will; they determine your happiness.
Like a stiffening bovine corpse left out in the summerâs heat and allowed to rot, a suitcase will start to swell. By about day five, this becomes a problem. Inside it there is a burgeoning pressure, a building up of noxious gases: by-products of a rotthat has infected clothes left for dead. Generally speaking, it starts with the socks.
At first, itâs manageable. Prologue socks can be easily contained. But a day of pounding up and down the streets of some prestigious regional capital in pursuit of riders on carbon-fibre bikes will grind a pair of Gap ankle socks into a state of compacted and frayed filth. Some simple rules should be observed that will help contain the carnage if diligently followed. A little suitcase husbandry is critical.
So, listen up. Should you be lucky enough to sit down for dinner in the comforting surroundings of a brasserie, your socks will need changing before you head for the bar. Do this as soon as you get to the hotel room. Pair them up in their saline filth, roll them together and slip them inside the complimentary plastic sack that is meant for your laundry order. This can be found by sliding back the door to the left of the desk with the leatherette wallet containing information on how to dial internationally using the phone on your bedside table.
Should you find yourself in a hotel too modest for a laundry service, donât despair. Underneath the desk with the telephone on it, or just to the right of the door, you will find the waste bin. Take out the small white bin liner. This will do for a few days but wonât last longer than that, as it will tear. Or simply melt away.
Then unzip the inner lining at the top of the suitcase and slide the bagged-up socks in there. If the Tour starts in the temperate gloom of Belgium or Brittany or, indeed, Britain, you might get a few daysâ grace before the plastic starts to degrade, allowing them to infect the healthier tissue in the main body of the case, spreading their malignancy. But be warned: by week two, there will be nothing left that doesnât look, and smell, like itâs been stuffed down the back of a couch.
It is a kind of slow misery, watching the disorder begin, gain a foothold and then ride roughshod over all the best intentions.
Back at home there is a rhythm and a structure to the process of packing. Over the years, it has become a source of some pride to me. Packing has become a work of great finesse, very different from the wild overcomplication of my first year on the Tour. Shorts are in their rightful place. Shirts, too. Pants, adapters, and chargers; the multiplying mutant strands of twenty-first-century life. Everything neatly displayed and in pristine order.
Then there are the nonsense items;
But, even though weâve only just started, itâs worth stopping here. A freeze-frame of our grey Renault Espace trundling up a charmless provincial industrial estate in search of human comfort. Following the Tour.
Let me begin with luggage.
Suitcases are such hateful things. They represent misery in bulging plastic form. Heaved with loathing from pillar to post, and left in the back of the car to melt in unreasonable temperatures, their glowering presence makes manifest your distance from home. The long expanse of their zips reminds you of the distance to be traversed before home is reached again.
Experienced Tourists can probably date suitcases to the exact stage. Like trees add a ring for each year, so our cases accrue the scurf of daily decay. One year, the strap on my big blue one finally broke. I laughed at it. I literally stood there on the damp pavement outside the gloomy Hotel de la Croix Blanche in Tarbes, laughing scornfully at a bag.
They are dictators: they impose their will; they determine your happiness.
Like a stiffening bovine corpse left out in the summerâs heat and allowed to rot, a suitcase will start to swell. By about day five, this becomes a problem. Inside it there is a burgeoning pressure, a building up of noxious gases: by-products of a rotthat has infected clothes left for dead. Generally speaking, it starts with the socks.
At first, itâs manageable. Prologue socks can be easily contained. But a day of pounding up and down the streets of some prestigious regional capital in pursuit of riders on carbon-fibre bikes will grind a pair of Gap ankle socks into a state of compacted and frayed filth. Some simple rules should be observed that will help contain the carnage if diligently followed. A little suitcase husbandry is critical.
So, listen up. Should you be lucky enough to sit down for dinner in the comforting surroundings of a brasserie, your socks will need changing before you head for the bar. Do this as soon as you get to the hotel room. Pair them up in their saline filth, roll them together and slip them inside the complimentary plastic sack that is meant for your laundry order. This can be found by sliding back the door to the left of the desk with the leatherette wallet containing information on how to dial internationally using the phone on your bedside table.
Should you find yourself in a hotel too modest for a laundry service, donât despair. Underneath the desk with the telephone on it, or just to the right of the door, you will find the waste bin. Take out the small white bin liner. This will do for a few days but wonât last longer than that, as it will tear. Or simply melt away.
Then unzip the inner lining at the top of the suitcase and slide the bagged-up socks in there. If the Tour starts in the temperate gloom of Belgium or Brittany or, indeed, Britain, you might get a few daysâ grace before the plastic starts to degrade, allowing them to infect the healthier tissue in the main body of the case, spreading their malignancy. But be warned: by week two, there will be nothing left that doesnât look, and smell, like itâs been stuffed down the back of a couch.
It is a kind of slow misery, watching the disorder begin, gain a foothold and then ride roughshod over all the best intentions.
Back at home there is a rhythm and a structure to the process of packing. Over the years, it has become a source of some pride to me. Packing has become a work of great finesse, very different from the wild overcomplication of my first year on the Tour. Shorts are in their rightful place. Shirts, too. Pants, adapters, and chargers; the multiplying mutant strands of twenty-first-century life. Everything neatly displayed and in pristine order.
Then there are the nonsense items;
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