I cannot lie. I'm confused, upset, screwed up, p1ssed off and bewildered. It's been a brilliant week and it's been a bloody awful week. Things have gone very badly wrong but in between I've had a f*cking great time. Right now, I feel like dodo (I’m trying hard to forgive myself for being a total twine). Twenty-four hours ago I felt like a million big ones.
Where do I start?
Well, not half an hour since, I was standing by the side of the road listening to myself saying
those words - the ones we all know so well: 'Sorry mate, I didn't see you.' I was saying them to a young guy in an old beat up Clio. I've never had to say them before. I don't think I have ever needed to - ever - and I still can't work out why I had to now.
I was coming out of a turning onto a dual carriageway and rode straight into the path of the Clio which was doing about 50 mph. He hit his horn and we both swerved (away from each other, fortunately!), but the corner of my can caught the side of his door and dented the panel. The bike wobbled but stayed upright. There is no damage to the bike apart from a very slight scuff on the can and a slight scratch to the fairing. These will polish out. I was
so lucky!
I'm still running on adrenalin and feeling just a little sick inside.
I'm trying hard not to beat myself up about it, too. I keep remindng myself that neither of us were hurt in the accident and the damage could have been a hell of a lot worse. But I feel lousy about it, for the other guy and for me. How could I have been such a f*ucking prat! Or so blind!
Ngggggghhh!
I think I need a drink!
On the principle that once bad things start happening they multiply like flies, it was almost inevitable that a something like this would come my way. It is sodding ridiculous. The only reason I was riding down that road was because I was trying to put right another disaster that had happened to me a week earlier. I was on my way to buy myself a new pair of soft panniers. And the reason I needed a new pair of panniers was that last Sunday I had set fire to one of the old ones.
I'd been up to the BMF motorcycle rally for the weekend and I was riding home on the eight-lane motorway south of Peterborough. It had been a great weekend and despite the crosswinds on the motorway I was thoroughly enjoying the ride. Until, that is I suddenly realised that there were two flashing blue lights running along beside me. There was also a copper gesticulating wildly for me to stop.
I didn't know what was going on, but I pulled over dutifully onto the hard shoulder and came to a halt with the police car drawing up in front of me. I kind of expected one of the coppers to get out and walk over to me calmly and appraisingly like they do in films. Instead, both car doors flew open, the guys in blue practically threw themselves out of the vehicle, ran to the back of my bike, tore off my luggage, chucked it onto the ground and started stomping on it shouting, 'It's on fire!'
I stood there like a complete lemon, partly because I hadn’t noticed that anything was wrong. (I have no sense of smell.) and partly because… Well, put it this way, one of the panniers was smouldering a bit, but nothing I personally would have got very panicked about – p1ssed off, yes; but not panicked. A wispy trail of smoke was rising from the melting material, but the two policmen kept stomping on it like they were trying to put out a forest fire.
The Daytona has few attachment points at the rear end, so I have developed a well-tested system of bungies which hold panniers onto it and make sure that the one on the right doesn’t drop down onto the high-level sports can. On this occasion, though, I'd packed up in a hurry and had forgotten one small vital bungee that makes sure everything stays in place. On the road, the luggage had started to settle and the pannier and end-can had connected. You can imagine the rest.
My camera survived, but I had about £550 quid's worth of other gear in that pannier and I lost almost all of it - windproof top, jeans, shoes, shades, fleece, and worst of all, an old motorcycle jacket I had bought in 1972. It was the first motorcycle jacket I had ever bought and it still fit me perfectly. I only found it last week lurking up in the attic while I was looking for something else and thought I'd wear it around the showground at the BMF motorcycle rally to give it an outing.
The jacket was worth a fair bit. There is a big market for '70s bike gear in the UK (and in Japan!!) and this particular style is now as rare as rocking-horse dodo. But that's not really what bothered me about losing it. I was very fond of that jacket (I'm a sentimentalist). It held some good memories for me. My parents hated the very idea of bikes and refused to let me have or ride one while I lived in the family home. But if I couldn’t have a bike, I thought, then, at least I was going to buy a bike jacket in preparation for the great day. I had to save hard for it since I was still at school, and when I brought it home for the first time, all hell broke loose. They were not happy, those parents of mine. I wasn’t allowed to wear it around the house. I wasn't allowed to wear it outside the house, either. I did of course. I sneaked it out when I went to meet my mates up the village and took pillion rides on their bikes..
Once I’d moved away from home and brought my first motorcycle then it became my constant companion. I wore it everywhere and did everything in it. Yes, everything. I had some great times. Sigh!
So, I enjoyed wearing it round the BMF showground, last week. It made me feel a like a teenager again. Funny, the way things can do that. I haven’t felt like a teenager since… well, since I was a teenager.
I’d decided in advance not to spend more than £100 at the show this year. It was inevitable, of course, that I would soon abandon this resolution and my card would get rinsed. I’ve been shy of working out exactly how much money I did spent that weekend, but I think, I came home over £300 poorer. The club know of my weakness in this area and play on it something rotten. The moment I suggested that I was considering buying a new pair of Alpinestar summer riding boots, everyone started telling me how good they were. OK. There was no escape. I bought the boots and a new pair of Alpinestar gloves too. It’s not cheap gear, but it’s the most comfortable I think I’ve ever had (and the boots look f*cking cool.)
There was a brilliant Meatloaf tribute band playing at the BMF this year called, ahem… Maetloaf. I went crazy the first time I heard Meatloaf back in my twenties and have loved them ever since. So, I feel shocked and disturbed when I say that, if anything, Maetloaf, the tribute band, is even better than the original. It was a stunning performance in every way. Ten minutes into the gig, I was enjoying myself so much that I decided there was nothing else to do but get totally, completely and utterly rat-arsed.
So I did.
I haven’t been this drunk since I was a kid. And that evening, I had the kind of time that only a stupidly oblivious kid can have. I was so p1ssed that when someone got head-butted right next to me and a whole crowd of people looked like they were about to start a fight, I just ignored them and had to be pulled away by someone else in the club. But I didn't pass out - not quite. And when I crawled out of the tent the next morning, I didn't even have a headache. How good is that!
It was just what I needed. I’ve been feeling stressed and agitated for the last three months without really knowing why… Well, partly I know why. The sixth of May was the third anniversary of Di’s death and I always get depressed around that time of year. But this year, although I felt low as usual, I also felt that, for the first time I’d really let her go. She’s still with me in my heart of course, and always will be, but I’m no longer trying to live my life as though she were still around. My head is beginning to feel fresh and clear again and I’m starting to open up
Thanks to a moment of alcoholic revelation in the marquee that evening, it suddenly came to me why I’ve been feeling so stressed and agitated recently. And having understood the reason why, I announced it loudly to everyone who was sitting or staggering around me. It’s very simple and, in hindsight, very obvious. I’d spent three years mourning Di and in that time hadn’t noticed that I had become increasingly frustrated and as horns as hell. No, straight up! I hadn't noticed.
Really! Once I'd made my announcement, the rest of the club (great guys that they are) put their heads together and started planning a trip to Amsterdam for me. LOL. All you need is your friends!
Which brings me to - ah, yes - Alice, 'the lovely lady'. Well, I feel a bit of a fraud introducing her in my last post and then leaving you hanging in mid-air about it. But unfortunately, blues and fg, you weren’t the only ones left hanging. I had hoped to get to talk to her after the conference, but as she lived in Cornwall (way out in the English West Country) she had to leave early to get home - even before the business was finished. That left me with nothing to do but ask a few discrete questions about her. She was, I noticed, wearing a wedding ring. I'm told she's divorced - but when a divorced woman continues to wear a ring it usually means she's playing this strictly according to her rules, or sometimes it just means 'back off. I'm not ready.'
Still, who knows?
We exchanged smiles whenever something funny happened round the conference table. I also got to speak to her briefly when we both 'happened' to take a tea break at the same time.
.
As I walked into the kitchen she was already deep in conversation with someone else about 'The Master and Margarita' by Mikhail Bulgakov. Now as it happens, 'The Master and Margarita' is one of my all-time favourite novels so that was a good opener. But we were rapidly joined by several others people and a few minutes later she was called back to the conference. Apart from learning a little about her reading habits and enthusiasms, I didn’t get to know much about her.
She is just a fraction under my height, (I’m six foot, exactly), slim with dark burgundy-tinted hair, which suits her slightly pale complexion very well. She has a soft accent which I can’t place. It’s not West Country or West Midlands; It’s certainly not Welsh or Irish but it’s definitely from the West of the UK somewhere.
It's not been easy to get her out of my head, so I think this must qualify as a case of 'thunderbolt love'. This diagnosis was confirmed to me later in the week, when I found myself starting to read 'The Master and Margarita' again - for the fourth time.
Mmmmmm.
So, since I cannot tell you about Alice I will tell you about The Master and Margarita. If you have never read this book, then you need to, seriously… There is nothing else like it in the whole of literature.
What would happen, Bulgakov asks, if the devil came to take up residence in Moscow? Of course, in one sense his Russian readership would already know the answer to this question. The devil had already taken up residence to Moscow in the form of comrade Stalin. But unlike Stalin, Bulgakov’s devil is a comedian.
The whole novel is an uproariously funny satire on the Soviet regime. But there is much, much more to it than this. The book is multi-layered and that makes it difficult to describe and interpret – if that’s what you want to do with it. Fortunately you don’t have to interpret it at all. It works brilliantly as a piece of fantastic, surreal fiction.
As bizarre as the whole thing is, it is only towards the end of the book that you realise Bulgakov has been holding back the full force of his extraordinary imagination. When he does finally let rip, all hell breaks loose and Moscow becomes a bubbling cauldron of witches and imps and vampires and weirdness of all sorts.
“Weirdness of all sorts” is how I’m feeling right now after my recent encounter with the guy in the Clio, but the adrenalin levels are gradually subsiding and the surreal angles of my emotional landscape are beginning to right themselves again. I still feel all f*cking messed up inside, though, like my innards had been through a meat slicer. But there is also an unmistakably cheesy grin of immense proportions playing around inside my head. Phew! What a rollercoaster. I’ve been numbed off for so long that I'd forgotten life could sometimes be like this.
OK, enough chat. Here's some pics
Nice way to attend a wedding. Hitchin, April 09
Some of the guys relaxing down near the river in Stratford-upon-Avon during a May club rideout
“Shakespeare’s birthplace” still seems to pull the crowds. It’s not a particularly interesting building in itself. Its sole value lies in its association with Will. What the Trust which owns it doesn’t tell the punters (at least not until they have paid their cash and entered the hallowed space) is that the building has been heavily ‘restored’. The outside of “Shakespeare’s birthplace” is a Victorian reconstruction. The interior is more authentic, but the question arises - authentic of what? No-one is sure when it was built. Experts have put various dates on it. One view is that it was built in 1597 (thirty-three years after Shakespeare was born. Hmmmmm!). Still, we need these myths to sustain us, or at least the British Heritage Foundation does, if the cash is to keep rolling in.
Some traditional Shakespearean entertainment on Stratford's streets
Took a solo ride out to Oxford on 8 May. Here is some of its glorious golden Cotswold stone.
The grounds of the fabulously wealthy, Trinity College - part of Oxford Univeristy
On a rideout to Lincolnshire with the club a couple of weeks ago we stopped off for breakfast at Red Lodge. When we came out we found this guy serenading Cliff's Hyabusa and several of the other bikes (!)
A very sexy-looking Daytona outside the Yamaha dealership at Eye (with some of the guys reflected in the window)
One for the chics (or do I mean the ducklings?)
When we got to Ely I wanted to visit the cathedral but was outvoted 8 to 1 in favour of going down to the riverside. I had to content myself with taking this distant photo. This is a fantastic building, older than many other European cathedrals. Its octagonal tower is unique in England.
Everyone loves ice cream
BMF motorcycle show 2009. Man in the kitchen. Inside the club's marquee
BMF 2009 Murray's Black puddin'
BMF 2009. Never let it be said that the club is not colourful
BMF 2009. Mantis. We saw this rolling off the transporter at the start of the show. I don't usually go for custom bikes but this was just something else. Or, at least I thought so. I talked to the owner/builder. It cost him £60,000 and a year's labour. He was entering it into the international competition for custom bikes. He didn't think he would even get it past the first round!
BMF 2009. Mantis. Close up of the engine
BMF 2009. Mantis. Close up of the transmission
BMF 2009. "The Purple Helmets" (work it out!) a slapstick stunt motorcycle team in the BMF arena. So funny!!!!
BMF 2009. More from the purple helmets
BMF 2009. And yet more
BMF 2009. The bros in the rain (the club jokers)
, so thanks for the opportunity to indulge myself once in a while, doing something I enjoy.
