Frustrating things, aren't they. Intermittent faults, that is. Be it with your car or, heaven forbid, your bike. There it is! That noise. Stop and it's gone. Start up again and it's still gone. Just what is it? Just what's triggering it? Dunno! Can't seem to find out either.
And so it is with my ticker. On odd occasions it shoots up to around 220 beats per minutes and then seconds later back down to where it was. Usually happens when on a bike, but even did it once on waking from sleep. Was advised that it was 'probably prudent' not to race or go too hard until it's sussed. So any thoughts of racing this season were out.
EGCs? Nothing. Bruce stress test? Nothing 24 hour Holter? Nothing. Told that I could revert to my usual regime of training and racing. Two days later, eight minutes into a race, 210bpm. Back to square one.
Cardiologist says that he can cope with regular arrhythmias (bit of an oxymoron there, I thought!) but this seemed a bit odd and so he referred me to mate who specializes in oddities. As a result I'm wired up for 48 hours and have been told to go out and try to 'provoke an event'. Being generally more mild-mannered than Clark Joseph Kent I'm not usually in the game of provocation and the only event I can think of is today's village beer festival and I don't want to provoke anyone there. So I've been out on the bike.
About three-quarters of the way round I passed this place in the crossroads hamlet of Longcliffe, near Brassington. For years I thought it was an old toll booth on the former Ashbourne to Bakewell Turnpike, being sited near the crossroads which is also the highest point, but Dodd & Dodd, in their 1980 edition of Peakland Roads and Trackways, only give them at Hipley and Grangemill. It was whilst looking at old Ordnance Survey maps that I found it named on the 1:2500 map of 1880. The Jug and Glass.
If you're prepared to believe an estate agent's blurb it is a former coaching inn dating back to the 1790s. The earliest record that I can find is in the 1849 Post Office directory when Simeon Webster had it, as he did through until at least 1881. The census a decade later gives James Bunting in residence but the Kelly's Directory of the same year says that Fras. Fearn is mine host. (The 1891census also shows a Francis Fearn as 'publican out of business'.) Four years later Francis shows up in the Wheatsheaf in Parwich. The last mention of it that I can find is that in the probate record of Samuel Bacon of the Jug & Glass, Longcliffe. Samuel had been there in 1941 but died in 1947. I'm just nipping out now for provocation attempt number three. I hope I don't end up like Samuel.
