New tattoo

I'd like to think I move to the beat of a different drum. Doesn't everyone? A tattooed beat all of our own making. We all have a different reality deep in our subconscious. It's back there where we were little, hairy, hunter-gatherer types. Our way of being is decided for us long before we ever became aware of it. So though I'd like to think my slightly incessant sense of humour, my love of the outdoors and an awful disrespect for authority is a personal project and journey that I alone forged... the truth says different.
I have no idea who I am in reality. If I write drunk and edit sober then I'm of Norman descent via Flanders, farmers, educators, emigrants and tradesmen. I don't feel as though I belong to any of that bar the Flandrian part. 800 years ago that's where my namesake hailed from. A small region that prides itself on directness, a stubborn streak, and a sarcasm unparalleled in western Europe. Plus an affinity with the hard outdoors.
Today I coughed and spluttered and sounded like an East German female weight lifter every time I spoke. I belted out to the Saturday time trial league only to find that there were no other competitors. I had a chat about soccer with timekeeper/photographer/organiser/bastion of cycling Sean, then we called it a day. But somewhere in my sub-sub-conscious a troglodyte Norman with the unibrow and B.O. started to suggest I race anyway. So I couldn't breathe properly (hey maybe it was lack of oxygen to my brain?), knew I was racing myself only, and said flip it, let's do it! Would you believe it if I said I got a shudder down my spine as I started the stopwatch? I know, I know, it was probably just the Veno's cough syrup, Sinutab and vitamin D coursing through my oxygen-depleted veins.... But I'd like to think it was that inkling of ancestry, a dot of soil from a North Sea buffeted field.
Off I set, a sorry sight hurtling down the inclines and struggling up the drags with a stubborness and angst that belonged in De Panne instead of a rural corner of Wexford. I could have taken a shortcut, or turned around on the road. After all its not as if there was a witness. Hell I could have called a taxi! I was pumping amoebic horrors from my nose, leaving a trail Hansel and Gretel would have been proud of. And all to race myself because some glitch in my DNA bade me keep going. My ego would like to think I was tough to finish but really I didn't want to admit I'm sicker than my wife thinks. And there was that feeling that a little bit of cycling here and there keeps my hopes of having a decent season alive. My personal image now stands at 'Tough Flandrian skin wrapped around a soft, chocolate-fondant body'.