How the mighty have fallen, the once great former Captain of The Miggly Moos has now been reduced to a pathetic drivelling excuse of a man. I refer to of course Mr Gordon Bernard Scripps Thornton ECG, who, over the course of the New Year has made a number of mistakes, from occasionally wetting and accidentally soiling his cycling shorts (of which because of his age we can accept) to mysteriously having his riding skills desert him, but he has plumbed new depths this week, if you thought the fact that the Queen won’t be attending Charles and Camilla’s wedding was big news, well what Scrippsy has done is twice as bad, because our beloved old Moo failed to turn up to take his OWN ride (pity Tom didn’t do the same thing 2 weeks ago!!!!) citing the fact that he had a bad throat, this was a hard pill to swallow for the remaining 11 Moos that turned up on time, but what was even harder to swallow was the fact that when we returned to HQ, Scrippsy was brazenly stood by the bar decked out in his cream ribbed cardigan complete with size 10 bowling shoes swilling beer down his apparently ‘sore’ throat as if, like his cardigan it was going out of fashion!!!!

It was left to the likes of Singlespeed, Gaz and The Steam to salvage something from the evening and they passed with flying colours, although half way round Dickie managed to lose the main bunch, his excuse being that he made a wrong turn, but when we eventually found him, he could be seen hastily wiping onions and grease from his mouth, obviously the early season form of the elder Watkins’ brother has deserted him, as he has now resorted back to his old habits of sneaking a couple of burgers inside him while the boys are not looking!!!!!!!!!!

With the group back to its full compliment, we explored some newish single track which ended with a quick livener in the Hollybush. It was here that we thought a local regular was playing the obvious game, which is one of the Moos’ favourite pastimes, as he asked us, bearing in mind we were caked in mud - “Are you a road biking club?” Trying to keep a straight face myself and Chrissy explained that we were a mountain bike club, to which he replied “Oh I see, I used to own a Triumph Bonneville when I was younger!!!!” We quickly decided to leave the conversation there!!! It was also from the ‘Bush’ that Ryan The Steam departed us, apparently there has been trouble down at railway sheds, many of the Steam’s work colleagues have been mysteriously choking on tea leaves, so naturally the finger has been pointed at our very own tea boy, but upon further investigation it has been found that tea bags from the Steam’s own personal supply have been broken, thus while he has been unwittingly brewing up, the leaves have been escaping and inevitably causing chaos with the rest of his comrades, so the Steam was leaving early to set up a cunning trap to catch the infamous Yorkshire Tea Bag Ripper!!

After a couple more miles of single track it was back to HQ, where as I have already explained, we found Scrippsy unashamedly drinking with Jock, but sore throat or not he still managed to remove his dentures and fill his face with RIDERS food, after Lyn the Landlady had once again done us proud. As we were all getting stuck in, Jeff Singlespeed piped up “Excuse me Lyn, have you got any Tommy K to put on my chips” Tommy bloody K??, he of course meant good old fashioned red sauce or tomato ketchup, obviously he took a lot of ribbing for his feeble little comment, perhaps next week Singlespeed would like the boys to bring him some Matey so that he can have a nice bubble bath or perhaps we can knit him some mittens to keep his little handy pandys warm when we are out riding!!!!!

With the food finished, it was that time of the month where the Rider of the Month is selected, with the process being that the present incumbent chooses the next recipient. So up stepped Dickie to award the prize, it was at this point that he started waffling away and pretending to build up the attributes of other riders who had apparently been in the running to receive the award, but as we all fully knew it was absolute rubbish, because there was only one person who was going to be receiving the award and that was little brother Chrissie, who Dickie had lamely tried to build up and say how well he had ridden all month, but apart from one spectacular descent last week, Chrissie has been quite shambolic and carefree in his attitude towards his riding and has obviously only won this award due to the brotherly love shown to him by Dickie!! If this show of love toward a fellow man is going to be the main criteria for receiving the award, well the bookmakers have stopped taking bets that in a months time Chrissie will be presenting the award to Bernaard!!!

Crock was on form again last night, with one of the regulars affectionately christening him ‘Mouthy’ he said “Hey Mouthy you managed to ride on one wheel tonight did you?” referring to of course that Crock left last week with only one wheel, but mysteriously some time during the week someone left it outside his front door. But another story has come to light of how quickly Crock changed his tune last week after he noticed it had gone missing, because as you all know our Crock is generally a ‘laugh a minute’ larger than life character who likes to let his presence be felt wherever we go, although on the odd occasion that he gets himself into a spot of bother, he tends to quieten down and let the rest of us deal with it, but last week ‘laughing boy’ turned into ‘crying boy’ as he discovered that his front wheel had gone. With the rest of us riding off home, one Moo managed to secretly listen in to his conversation with ‘Lyn the Landlady by the front door of the Royal Oak, old Crock was overheard saying “Come on Lyn please tell me what they’ve done with it, who took it, please you must know, how am I going to ride home now. Has one of them put it behind the bar, oh please Lyn tell me!”

With this snippet of information the Moo, who will remain anonymous, sniggered as he left the pathetic sounding Crock to wallow in his own misfortune, what is that saying again WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND!!!!