Sunday 2nd April 2006
Dan came down for the day on Sunday, as usual, to look after Di. So soon after eight-thirty, I set off down to Hertford to meet ‘Drumwrecker’ on his SV650 and Keith (with the big KTM Adventurer). Our idea was to ride… 'somewhere interesting'. ‘Somewhere interesting' was as far as we had got in our plans when we spoke the previous night on the phone. 'Somewhere interesting in Essex' had been vaguely mentioned, but nothing was decided. The phone call ended inconclusively and unsatisfactorily. Over the last couple of years we’ve ridden so many of the local roads, and so often, especially those out Eastwards into Essex that a tone of ‘oh no, not again!?’ is beginning to creep into our discussions. We need to start exploring somewhere new. But you know, this is a small island and there are, in any case, a limited number of directions to go in, and only a limited number of destinations within reach.
When I got to the meeting place outside the bike shop in the centre of Hertford, I found Keith and Drumwrecker still talking vaguely about where we should go. Burnham on Crouch was one idea being chucked around. Burnham is a reasonably good ride from Hertford and an interesting town, but, you know… not again!
If Burnham was to be our destination, though, I wasn’t going to complain too loudly. It is one of those really atmospheric estuary towns in the Essex marshes and has a lot to recommend it. Burnham is also the place where, two years ago, I nearly got speared by a café umbrella. I was riding out of the town on the SV650 after a good day's motorcycling. A high wind had suddenly blown up out of the east and there was rain in the air. On the side of the road just ahead of me was a roadside cafe. As I approached, a great gust of wind caught hold of one of the big umbrellas used to shade the outdoor tables and whisked it into the sky. I was mesmerised.
I slowed down to about 10mph to watch. The umbrella must have reached a height of thirty feet before somersaulting over. It then began to descend, shaft first. I was so fascinated that it took a moment for me to register the fact that it was heading directly for me. At the last moment I yanked open the throttle and got out of the way. The shaft hit the ground about a yard behind me. It would have made an interesting epitaph.
The whole area round Burnham reeks of maritime history. The bigger coastal towns in this part of the world all bear traces of a romantic, commercial past. They were an integral part of the whole nineteenth century imperial adventure. Even little Burnham’s tiny harbour cajoles the imagination into visions of a wider and much more exotic world. When I look along the estuary in the direction of the open sea and watch the boats drifting down the channel, I feel as though I’m connected to all the world’s waterways, its ports and harbours, its great ships and wild, mid-ocean weather. I'm just an old romantic really. Or maybe I've just read too much nineteenth-century boy's adventure fiction.
When I get down to it, I think the whole imperial adventure was a grubby, violent, genocidal affair, fuelled by self-interest, and driven by the demand for profit. It destroyed cultures and damaged or destroyed millions of lives. It bled people dry, physically and spiritually. And when it was over it was callously content to leave a wake of destruction behind it. It's legacy is still rumbling on today in the form of Asian sweat shops and our corporate, multinational, globalised world.
Privately and romantically, however – I’m cringing here, to admit this - I get nostalgic for the sense of adventure and the sense of endless possibility the empire generated. Being English in those days gave you unlimited opportunities to explore what were still wild regions of the world, to discover cultures that were not yet bludgeoned into conformity by Western capitalist consumerism and ultimately, to find a larger sense of self. In the nineteenth century, England had no real boundaries; it was the jumping off place for the rest of the world: today, England is just one small overpopulated and caustrophobic island.
It’s all fantasy, of course. Most Englishmen of the period were tied to an unremitting round of meaningless labour in the fields and factories. Some people escaped to a new life in the colonies but for most, all they knew of the empire was what they were taught in school or read in newspapers. For most, that sense of boundlessness was largely confined to the imagination. Some working people experienced it directly though by emigrating. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Hertfordshire local papers ran weekly adverts, offering assisted passages to the labour-hungry colonies. There was a shop in Hitchin High Street that arranged for local labourers to ship out to Canada. During the long, long agricultural depression at the end of the nineteenth century, thousands of local farm labourers took up the challenge. Some of my own family were among them.
Ahem!... I think I was talking about bikes. I mentioned to Drumwrecker and Keith that I’d heard there was a bike meet at Heybridge Basin in Essex. Where Heybridge Basin was, I had only the vaguest notion. Was it somewhere near Burnham on Crouch? - or was it nearer to Maldon on the Blackwater? I didn't know. Keith found it on the map and declared an interest in going there, probably on the grounds that there wasn’t much enthusiasm for going anywhere else. I’ve been curious to have a look at the place for a couple of years. It lies at the end of a canal that empties into the estuary. Drumwrecker seemed happy to go along with any reasonable suggestion.
As it turned out, it wasn't a bad day. There were a couple of good roads on the way there, but most were ordinary and the decent ones were very busy. I enjoyed the ride more than the other two, I suspect, because, these days, I am just so glad to get out on the bike and I almost don’t care where I go. Any ride will throw up challenges and things of interest. At Heybridge Basin there were a couple of pubs, a couple of restaurants, a lot of mud, a lot more water and a few bikes. We briefly watched the tide flowing in fast up the muddy channel, had a moment's angst about whether the bikes were going to fall over without a puck on the muddy soil, and trudged up the muddy bank to find somewhere to eat. It was atmospheric - if a little muddy. What Heybridge didn't have was a cafe or pub that did all day breakfasts - much to the disgust of my two mates.
On the way back we said goodbye to Keith, who had to be home relatively early, while Drumwrecker and I headed out towards Thaxted where there are some brilliant B roads, twisty and unexpected, a real opportunity for testing your riding skills - and improving them. At the centre of this network of B roads is Finchingfield, a pretty little village with wide greens and a broad river flowing through the centre of it. Unsurprisingly, Finchingfield has become (much to its own surprise, I suspect) a large Sunday bike meet. Its tiny cafe and two small pubs do sterling work trying to keep up with the demands made by the hoards of invading bikers who pull up and spill out over the greens in the warmer months.
Monday 10th April 2006
I rely on Sundays. Sunday is usually club rideout day - but last Sunday there was no rideout to ride out on. The club had held its annual Easter Egg Run on the Saturday instead, and clearly exhausted itself for the week-end. Sunday was my only free day, so that left me with nowhere to go. Drumwrecker was away at the weekend, so any idea of riding with him was out too. I considered just going for a ride by myself but I fancied company. So that left… what…? Then I realised that it was the second Sunday of the month. That meant that the SV1000 mob from the UK SV1000 website would be meeting at Popham Airfield in Hampshire. The airfield is just off the A303, so it is a fairly easy, if uninspiring, run for me. It’s about eighty miles straight down the A1(M), round the M25 and out along the M3 to pick up the A303 just beyond Basingstoke.
The meet is a fairly quick and perfunctory affair. The regular SV1000ers come to Popham from all over the south of England, so they never have time to do much before they have to set off for home again. They come, they natter, they drink tea and then they leave.
This has caused me some problems. I’ve been down to meet them a couple of times over the last year or so, but I’ve only had a brief chance to get to know them. Despite the distances they travel, they are early morning types (and, if you have been reading this blog, you will know that I am not). They all manage to get to Popham by 10 or 11 in the morning, while I’m usually still banging round the house in a state of morning stupidity. They set off for home again by two in the afternoon.
On my first trek down to meet them about eighteen months ago, I arrived just after 2 o’clock, so the only contact I made was with ‘TracyPillion’ (as I discovered later) who gave me a wave as she and her partner rode away from the airfield on the last SV of the afternoon.
I did manage to make a couple of contacts, that day though. I talked to a group of mad balloonists who were waiting for the wind to change. I also got to talk to the Ducati crew. They meet at Popham every month on the same day as the SV1000s but keep more reasonable hours. The conversation was ‘interesting’, because personally, I am seriously allergic to Ducatis. I like the look of some of the faired models, but that’s as far as it goes. I think trellis frames look like they have escaped from a garden centre and ought to be sent back there. And I cannot abide the noise of a dry Ducati clutch. On the other hand these generally unattractive bikes are V twins, so I can't completely dismiss them. Actually, with the Beowulf cans, my SV thou sounds just like a Ducati – but without the clutch rattle. Brmmm! Brmmmm! (Oh, shut up Dick. Well, you know… a man's gotta do... and all that crap)
While I’m on the subject of noise, the only bike that sounds worse than a Ducati, IMHO is a Triumph Trophy. It has a horrible industrial whine: more like a small turbine than a motorcycle engine. A Stevenage club member rides one. Sorry David. Just get yourself a new bike, eh?
I’m full of opinions this morning!
I was out of the house by 10.45 am (not bad for me when I don't have any pre-arranged deadlines) and it was a fast run down to the meet. The morning was unexpectedly warm and bright, and for a few hours it seemed that this long old winter was beginning to get fed up and about to go somewhere else. As the morning wore on, the sun even began to feel like it had a bit of voltage in it. Saturated in all this welcome sunlight, I felt surprisingly relaxed and at ease with myself. I quickly forgot about all the trials and tribulations of my home life and started to enjoy the ride - even the endless motorway miles seemed pleasant enough.
The only stressful bit was on the new eight-lane section of the M25 near Heathrow. It's a nice easy road and should have been a breeze, but having to check my speed every few hundred yards for nearly twenty miles to avoid getting flashed by speed cameras is not my idea of fun. But here’s a question: are there any speed cameras mounted on this section? There are dozens of speed camera signs - one on every bridge (there are a hell of a lot of bridges) and there are also sets of distance marker lines on the road beyond them. But this means diddly squat. The country is covered in far more speed camera signs than there are speed cameras. Most of the traffic on this stretch of the M25 seems to believe cameras do exist - because it is always very well behaved along here. Actually, I doubt whether there are any. But… Do I want to risk points on my licence and a fine?
A very good friend of mine is a tireless environmental campaigner. She makes me feel very guilty on the issue of speed. She comes from Norwich and has therefore a streak of East Anglian Puritanism in her. We disagree strongly about the significance of speed in causing traffic accidents. As far as I can see, the Police Partnerships are promoting the idea that speed is uniquely significant in causing accidents because their speed cameras make them a lot of money. That seems to be a fairly universal belief. All the evidence I've seen suggests that cameras make more money than they save lives. Even on the Government’s own statistics, speed comes well down the list of causes of accidents. Nowadays I hardly ever see a traffic patrol police car on the roads. I just see a lot of cameras.
As I rode along, checking the speedo every time I passed under a bridge, I started to think of a crappy but annoyingly un-put-downable novel I’ve just been reading called The Traveller. (I’m a total sucker, there was a picture of a motorbike on the cover). It really is a very crappy novel IMHO, but crappy novels are all I can manage at the moment. The main theme is that a super high-tech Big Brother organisation is watching you through all kinds of monitoring systems: credit cards, mobile phones, security cameras, facial scanners, etc, etc, and controlling your every movement. (Sound familiar?) If you live in this country which has CCTV cameras everywhere, this idea can sometimes feel very close to home. One of the characters in the novel makes the point that Big Brother doesn’t have to be able to monitor your activities everwhere. To make you compliant, it just has to make you think it has. This makes me think of all the speed camera signs.
In the novel, all this analysing and tracking is carried out by a secret organisation which hacks into government and commercial monitoring systems and links them up to its own mega computer. The only unrealistic thing about that the author thinks he needs to invent a secret non-governmental organisation to perform this function. He doesn't see that Governments have been doing this sort of thing for centuries. There have always been secret police and now there is CCTV. It was recently enacted in Parliament here that we will all soon have to carry smart identity cards. And the pretext this time? Well, terrorism of course.
It seems self-evident to me that governments and their puppy dogs, the media, are always talking up threats to frighten their populations into compliance. Twenty years ago it was the ‘cold war’ and the evil Soviet empire. But now the threat is 'international terrorism', so we all have to hold up our hands and let our trousers fall down while the state hacks away ruthlessly at civil liberties - in exchange for its ability to 'protect us' through its so-called 'war on terror' (Oh please! do they think we are idiots?) Thanks Mr Blair! I'd rather take my chances. I know whom I trust, and it ain't you lot up in Westminster (or Washington, or Paris or...).
Despite what I have just said about never seeing traffic cops, the M3 was swarming with them as I trekked down to Popham on Sunday. I think I saw more police patrol cars in the space of twenty minutes than I have seen in the last couple of years. Every few miles I saw a cop car pulled up at the side of the road next to another vehicle whose driver looked as though he were being booked. The M3 is usually a fast road. This morning, it was a tad slower than usual!
The airfield café was packed when I got there and the SVers were standing around outside. I spent most of the time talking to a Yorkshire SV rider who had moved down South and was now living on Portland Bill. Now that’s a crazy place to set up home. The Bill itself is seriously spooky. It has a very strange, rocky landscape. The whole place looks like an abandoned quarry, and in parts, that's exactly what it is. There are a few scattered settlements on the Bill and a large prison population. It has a long military history (the place is riddled with tunnels). The most depressing feature of all is that long, long drive across the causeway to and from mainland civilisation (if you can call Weymouth civilised).
Having said that, I’ve always fancied retiring to that part of the world – not the Bill itself but somewhere nearby, on the coast. (Yep! I’ve started to think about things like retirement – but these are only idle thoughts. Growing old is not actually part of my life plan. I'll cross my bridges when I come to them.)
What I didn’t know was that they also have crazy weather down on that part of the coast: this guy was telling me they have regular waterspouts, high winds and flying missiles. The missiles come in the form of stones which the wind picks up from Chesil Beach before flinging them miles inland. Everyone has triple-reinforced windows.
Having exhausted both that conversation and the other one - the one bikers regularly have where they moan endlessly about the incompetence of dealers these days - we said our goodbyes and set off, Steve back down to Portland and his crazy weather systems and me just down the road to Andover. Andover draws me like a magnet. I spent a disgustingly privileged childhood as a boarder in an all-boys public school just outside the town. I was a scholarship student (I've blogged in detail about this before) and turned my back on the place for nearly thirty years, enraged by the elitism I discovered there. But having turned fifty, I started to do what all fifty-year-olds seem to be doing these days: I began to ferret around, trying to discover my roots.
I turned up at the old place one afternoon a couple of years back during the school holidays and wandered round the grounds (54 acres of prime English parkland surrounding a Georgian country house) - stunningly beautiful and incredibly expensive. For nearly an hour I stood by the rose gardens at the back of the house and shook like a leaf. Fear, anger, nostalgia, longing, humiliation, resentment, happiness, confinement, security, stress, the remnants of a long lost teenage angst, you name it - it all came flooding back up into my head and up through my nervous system. When it was all over, I made the discovery that there was a totally different, me I'd been sitting on for thirty years. It was a great unravelling.
As I left Popham and rode down to Andover on Sunday, I knew I wouldn’t have time to stop off at the school, but somehow I felt the need to go back that way anyway. But there was another, very good reason to go back home that way. Riding in Hampshire is sheer, unadulterated pleasure. Hampshire roads are well made and well kept; Hampshire landscapes are broad and powerful with roots that go deep; Hampshire hedgerows are tall and majestic; Hampshire greenery is somehow greener than in other counties. There's something special about this part of England. Cross over the county border into neighbouring Wiltshire and everything changes - not dramatically at first, but enough to make you feel you are in another world. The landscape, even the sunshine feel different. In Hampshire, the spring sun is shiny and bathes the green green grass in a warm and lazy glow. It makes everything you do seem relaxed and easy. It allows thoughts to expand safely to the horizon.
Towns and villages I knew from my schooldays passed by, all with quintessentially Hampshire names like Chute Causeway, Mickeldever, Hurstbourne Tarrant, Ludgershall. Because they are names from my childhood, they are also names of power. They have a magical ability to conjure up all kinds of vivid memories, impressions and feelings. Those childhood Hampshire days were sweet. Not because they were always happy - often the contrary - but because they were so rich in experience. Everything I touched, tasted, saw, heard as a child was fat with some kind of meaning and significance. Life back then was lived in the details and there were few real distinctions between this and that. I guess those childhood qualities are the same for most of us. Hampshire is special for me because that's where my early teenage experiences were located and nurtured.
As we get older our throughts just unravel more, we get more aware of them (if we are lucky) which gives us more insight. Death of course is the final unravelling, and naturally, I can’t get my mind off it these days. Di's death means the unravelling of twenty year's worth of experience. At first, I thought that was going to be hard, but I've subsequently realised that when things unravel properly, when we reach a moment of acceptance and the truth is spoken at last, there is a great release of energy and the result is a kind of contentment. I do feel strangely content. My personal loss makes it a bittersweet kind of contentment, but it is contentment nonetheless. There is even happiness in there somewhere - happiness of a kind that comes with a letting go of struggle, and the acknowledgement of a deep human reality. Death.
I found my way back home from Andover by a roundabout route, mostly on B roads and smaller A roads. It was a great ride despite the fact that by two-thirty in the afternoon the sky had clouded over and it had started to bucket down again. (Is this winter ever going to end?) I came back through High Wycombe and Leighton Buzzard, skimmed the corner of Houghton Regis and took a windy, twisty, lovely little unlined road back home through Harlington, Sundon and the Clappers. You can't let your concentration flag for a second on a road like this, even though you are sorely tempted to.
The Hertfordshire deer on the county sign made its appearance on the Barton Road as I crossed the border, out of Bedfordshire and back onto my own home turf. The deer is depicted as a stag on the county crest and on the road signs, but that is historically incorrect. It should be female deer, a ‘hart,’ ‘cos it’s the ‘hart’ that puts the 'hert' in ‘Hertfordshire’. (‘Hertfordshire’ is spelt with an ‘e’ but pronounced with an ‘a’).
In a funny way, the Hertfordshire stag has become an exact barometer of my feelings at the end of a long day’s ride. It's always there standing by the side of roads big and small, as you cross the county border. I always check out with myself how I feel when I pass the sign. In simple terms, if I feel glad to see it, it generally means I’ve had a less than wonderful day out and am pleased to be home again. If I feel sad, then it means I’ve had a brilliant time and wish I could just go on riding.
But the stag doesn’t just register the superficial or obvious. It tells me what is going on at a deeper level. If you’d asked me what I was thinking or feeling as I rode back home along the Barton Road I’d say I was just wanting to get indoors out of the rain and freezing cold. Somewhere, just underneath that, was a feeling of disappointment that the cold weather was preventing me from enjoying this last superb bit of the ride. (The Barton Road is a stunning biking road. It has amazing switchback curves – ‘S’ bends that simultaneously rise and fall in a dramatic fashion. Most of the best bends on this road are lined with tall hedges or pass through scraps of woodland which make the ride seem faster.)
Those were the surface thoughts. When I checked in with the stag at the county boundary, I was aware of a whole gamut of other feelings. Many of them were, of course, connected with my wife. There was sadness and distress at returning home to where she lay dying at home. There was some resentment also at the huge constraints her constant needs were putting on my own life. There was regret that the time left to us was now very short. And there were the ever-present longings for past happy times with her. There were other feelings also: a nostalgia for my childhood and for the intensity of experience that went with it. There was a real feeling of relationship with the bike. There was an exhilarating sense of freedom, the remains of a high adrenalin buzz and the pleasure of discovering some great new roads and some very dramatic landscapes.
Despite the surface misery, the cold and wetness, that were occupying the upper storeys of my mind, the stag was giving the day a strong thumbs up.
Thursday 13th April 2006
As Easter weekend coming up I will have a good chance to get away, so I need my bike badly. Trouble is, I’m still having problems with the electrics. The battery hasn’t died on me in recent weeks, but I’ve had a couple of mornings when the SV needed to be coaxed into life. Even when she does fire up easily, within two minutes of setting off and until the she warms up the engine is liable to cut out. She’s also beginning to vibe badly again - just when I’d begun to think she had calmed down all by herself.
I took her into my local dealer this morning to get someone to look at her. I also asked for the front brake pads to be changed. The pads are getting a bit thin. I feel a bit of a wimp shelling out and not doing them myself, but I really can’t be arsed to make the effort – any effort! – right now. So, bye! bye! SV for a couple of days. Tomorrow, Good Friday, is a Bank (Public) Holiday and the dealers will be closed, so I probably won’t get her back until Saturday afternoon. That will leave me sorted for a long ride on Sunday, and maybe some short rides on Monday. I’d love to have Monday off as everyone in the South-East of England is going on the Ace Café Southend run. It’s a great day out. Thousands of bikes.
Whether the guy with the spanner will be able to track down and fix the electrical problem is anybody’s guess. I’m not very hopeful, but you never know. No, I'm not going to waste my breath ranting on the subject of dealers…!
After putting my keys into the hands of the guy behind the counter (my hand trembled a little as I handed them over) I had a few minutes to spare, so wandered round the showroom. One of the sales staff saw me ogling the Aprilias and, without my having to ask, offered to let me take a Tuono out for a test ride. Oooooooh! He must have seen that ‘new bike’ look in my eyes. He must have also seen my knees buckle at his suggestion, because instantly a predatory kind of smile came over his face. Well, too bad!
Unfortunately for him (and perhaps for me) I don’t have time for a test ride right now. I don't even have enough active brain cells to think about it. Nevertheless, I think he'll push hard. Apart from working for the local dealer, he’s also a biker and a member of the Stevenage club and so he heard me in the pub last Monday night moaning about the problems I’m having with the SV. He’s a good salesman, doesn’t miss a trick. He knows his lines as well: “I think the Aprilia would suit you, Richard.” Well, you know, it’s a sales pitch, I’m not taken in but I'm a sucker for what I want anyway and I’m seriously tempted. Yes, seriously. I couldn’t really afford an Aprilia right now, but later in the year I might just be able to scrape enough pennies together…
Trouble is, what’s going to happen to Aprilia in the future. Their future looks just a bit rocky. Would I have trouble getting spares? It’s difficult enough now. As far as I can work out, the engine and electrics are Japanese, so there’s no problem there, but the bodywork??? That’s Italian A friend has a Tuono and he says the bodywork is hard to get hold of and costs an arm and a leg. That means that if I do ever buy of one of these beauties, I’d better not drop it, had I?
Apart from that, am I ready for a new bike? The SV still has a lot it can teach me and I wouldn’t be thinking of exchanging it if it weren’t so riddled with problems. If I’m being practical about this, the new Tuono is great eye candy but it wouldn’t meet my needs. I need a faired sports tourer. I need a faired sports tourer because I do a lot of riding in all weathers and I can see myself doing some real distances in the coming year. Thinking about it, what I really need is two bikes: a sports tourer AND a Tuono. Or actually, three: a sports tourer, a Tuono and something solid for major long distance work, like a middleweight BMW. Oh buggery! there I go fantasising again. (Herewith the RESPONSE OF THE IRRATIONAL DEMONS): To hell with it! If I hadn’t allowed myself to indulge in some pretty radical fantasies two and a half years ago I would never have got back into biking.
OK, since I’m in this mood let’s come out of the closet. What I’d really love to own (Herewith THE VOICE OF UNADULTERATED DESIRE) is a Mille. I get one hell of a buzz out of the look and feel of those bikes. They must be among the sexiest bits of metal ever conceived by the mind of man. But (herewith THE VOICE OF REASON) they are pigs to ride in traffic. They are big. They are just too highly bred for the kind of riding I want to do. They are v. expensive. Out of my league.
(Mind you, I’m told, if you gear it down…)
Back in the real world - for the long distance stuff I will need something solid and reliable, something that I can pick up if I drop it in the middle of nowhere. Something that I can get spare parts for almost anywhere. Once I've picked myself up after Di dies I want to do some serious riding. I’m still booked to do the India Enduro in Feb 2007. I have no idea if I am going to be ready in time. It’s a charity affair (I have to raise £3,500 sponsorship money by November this year).
After that I’ve nothing definite planned, but I’ve got a lot of ideas floating around in my head – ideas that sound like ‘a trip round the Baltic’, ‘South America’, ‘getting into dirt riding’. I’ve also had this idea growing in my head in recent months - I think I might give up my job, take a TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) course, look for a contract, rent out the house and gull darnit to Chile or Japan for a year or two – or somewhere like that. And when I come back there are enough non-English speaking people now living in London to keep me occupied teaching for as long as I want. TEFL sounds like fun. You teach in English to non-English speakers and so you have to rely on performance skills to make yourself understood. Time to let my closet extrovert out for a bit.
Alternatively, I might go into training – personal development type stuff, something unbusiness related. I started a course to train in Drama Therapy some years ago. I’m sick to the stomach with the mainstream business world. Corporate and government jobs just don't do it for me. For years, I worked in the ‘alternative’ economy doing badly paid work for community projects and for complementary health centres until the need to keep a roof over my head became increasingly pressing and I started to get used to having spare cash around. I’m beginning to regret that now. Di’s illness has made me re-assess things radically.
More than anything else, it is the language of business that nauseates me. It just covers so many evils. It is depersonalised to the point of idiocy and has only one function - to deceive. It has emigrated from the business world into government and the medical profession. Working in a government department is akin to living the Orwellian nightmare of doublespeak. The language develops every year and becomes more and more rarified all the time.
Professionals love this stuff because it makes them sound more... professional, more intelligent and self-important. The language casts an air of complexity around simple ideas and operates at such a level of generality and evasiveness that you can cover up the most immoral and manipulative crap with it. If this language belongs anywhere, it belongs on planet Zarg (not here on Earth). Wait a minute!!!! That’s not a planet, that’s a Deathstar!!!!
Well, nothing feels very real at the moment, I suppose. Di started her fast before Easter. She was going to start after her daughter came over to visit her on Easter weekend but thought that would put pressure on her, so started early. When she makes a decision, she usually sticks to it.
So this is it, then! Here I am, counting down the days to her death. She has had difficulty eating for months now, so she is already very thin, just skin and bone in some places. Now that she has stopped eating, she is losing weight fast. I keep thinking of TV images of people in famine areas or of the inmates of party concentration camps. I keep thinking of hunger strikes. It’s funny now to look back and realise that no matter how shocking these images were when I saw them and how much they upset me, I’d never let them touch me fully. I kept them at a distance. Somewhere in my head there was always a little voice, hardly noticed, smugly congratulating me on the fact that these things were not happening here, or now, and not to me. I never imagined I would have to face anything like that in my own life.
Just before Di’s condition became apparent I found and contacted a couple of friends I had not seen for nearly thirty years. Steve told me that his wife, Jane, was suffering from Multiple Sclerosis (very similar in some ways to MND). I was really upset for them. They were very good to me years ago when I was going through a bad time. But yes, when Steve told me of Jane's condition, there was that little voice again. ‘Thank goodness it’s not Di’. Hah! Well, it is Di. And that’s the truth of it. But where that lies on the reality scale – one to ten – I have no idea. I’m not sure what reality is any more. This severance of a twenty-year-old relationship is complicated. It is like falling in love, but in reverse - your brain goes all mushy but it’s not nearly as nice. I’m losing her and losing a part of me. I can feel the fibres ripping away already. And it’s just going to get worse.
Sunday 16th April 2006
Brilliant ride today! There’s no other term for it. I took a ride up to Hunstanton where there is a huge bike meet every Sunday. I went by myself because like last week there was no Sunday rideout. Being Easter week the club is going out on the Bank Holiday Monday instead.
The ride up there made a change. Being East Anglia, the roads are all pretty rural. I planned a route and then departed from it, turning down any road that took my fancy and which looked as though it was going in vaguely the right direction. Some of the roads were very good. (Being East Anglia there are also a number of military bases around here, so the roads are kept in prime condition.) Much of the way was nice easy chilled-out riding – just what I wanted.
Getting into Hunstanton proved a bit of a nightmare. The whole word and its dog seemed to be heading for the North Norfolk coast. For about ten miles outside the town, the narrow roads were chock full of slow moving cars with a faster line of bikes running up the white line beside them. Well, Sod it! I do like overtaking.
On the way home I began to ride very aggressively. All the pent up frustration of the last few months started to come through and began to express itself in the way I handled the bike. The demons were really out. As a result my riding took another quantum leap forward, and my enjoyment of the bike rocketed. I’m OK on most corners but I get scared on very tight ones and slow down much more than I need to. These are bends that I know I could enter a lot faster. I know that because, once in them, I accelerate through them safely and happily. But somehow this knowledge doesn’t translate itself into the confidence to take them at a reasonable speed. I think there is an element of target fixation. In tight corners you can’t see much of a bend at all. There’s hardly anything to look into. All you can see is the hedge in front of you – a rapidly approaching one at that. So, on go the brakes, down I go through the gears until the poor old bike is almost going backwards. I’ve trained myself out of direct target fixation, but I sometimes catch my eyes glancing sneakily at the hedge or kerb or whatever. Its so quick I hardly know I’m, doing it. It’s just for an instant, but it’s an instant that makes all the difference.
Today though, coming home from Hunstanton I was wound up tight and feeling uninhibited. The hormones were humming and the aggro was booming. The inhibitions were partying somewhere else. I really enjoyed that ride. It’s great when you suddenly feel yourself riding better.
Tuesday 18th April
If I were a visiting anthropologist from Alpha Centuri, I might just be a little confused at the rather strange lifestyle of Earth bikers. Actually, if I were to rely solely on my observations I would probably have to agree with him/her/it. Judging solely by what I have seen, I would conclude the following: that bikers are allowed to do four things. They are allowed to ride their bikes. They are allowed to sit in pubs and drink beer. They are allowed to sit in cafes and drink tea and consume English Breakfasts (Sausage, egg, bacon, chips, tomatoes, bread – all fried). They are also allowed to go to rock concerts. When they rideout together (usually on a Sunday) their destination (if they have one) is a bike related site (a bike meet, a bikers café, a dealership, a bike show, a bike museum etc) or a seaside town. (Nowhere in the UK is more than sixty miles from the sea)
Certain groups of bikers on entering a seaside town are additionally allowed to visit an amusement park and entertain themselves on some of the rides. The rides they are allowed to go on are restricted. As far as Stevenage and District Motorcycle club is concerned, acceptable rides consist of: the Dodgems, the Water Flume, and the go carts. The water flume seems to be a Stevenage speciality. When enjoying these rides bikers are required to participate vigorously and energetically but also good humouredly, if possible breaking the rules and mildly upsetting the management, but making it up with them afterwards.
I got soaked to the skin on the log flume at Southend on Easter Monday thanks to Squeaky rocking the boat like a madman. Squeaky (Mr CBR600) likes to rock the boat any time, anywhere. It’s his speciality. So there I was down in Saaaarfend on a Sunny Easter Monday afternoon.
I’d managed to get the day free. It had looked so unlikely that I wasn’t even going to try but Dan persuaded me that it might be possible. It took me almost all of Saturday to arrange cover to make sure Di had all the help she needed, but I did it. I had no carer, though, for Sunday night, got very little sleep and was dog tired setting off. I’d decided to go on a club run. This, unfortunately, started at 8.00am in the morning (The torments I endure for my bike!). This did not help my sleep debt or my humour. But the club were going down to Southend on the day of the Ace Café ‘Southend Shakedown.’ a high point in the biking calendar when upwards of sixteen thousand bikes descend on this cheerful ‘kiss me quick’ seaside town in the Thames estuary. The club goes early to avoid the huge bottleneck on the main road into town when the big Ace Café ride arrives.
We did some interesting things. We parked the bikes along the front, had tea and an English Breakfast in a promenade café, some beers in a bar, got wet on the log flume, went round and round on the go carts and caused havoc on the dodgems. We then went home, losing half of the ride on the way, and only managed to meet up at a service station café again about twenty-five miles from home - just outside Harlow. The waitresses had been advised in advance to expect a lot of bikers and by that time had got themselves into the ‘spirit of things’.
Sunday 23rd April 2006 (St Georges Day)
And where would a patriotic Englishman like myself (Ahem!) want to go on St George’s day but to pay my respects to the queen at Windsor. That’s where the club decided to go, with an option to go on to Uffington later. Uffington is the place where, traditionally, St George slew the Dragon. As the real St George was Turkish, I suspect that notable event took place a little further to the east. Dragons are a bit unEnglish anyway. We set off for Windsor from the usual place at the usual time etc etc. The day was drab and gloomy after the sunny spring day we had yesterday (Saturday), and it got drabber and gloomier as the morning wore on. It tried to rain several times but didn’t quite manage to get up the energy.
Dave (‘The Reverend’) led to rideout on the way out. (the nickname is wholly undeserved). He’d chosen a very roundabout route to get there. Getting to Dunstable (about fourteen miles from home) took about three quarters of an hour on fairly fast roads. If the route was supposed to be anything like direct, then the crow which flew it must have had a damaged wing. But it took us through some pleasant countryside, if nothing else. We stopped off at the Aylesbury Tescos for breakfast, and then carried on through a lot of urban sprawl down to our royal destination.
When we got to Windsor, the Queen was too tied up with some tiresome business involving foreign diplomats to see us. That was disappointing because I had quite a lot of advice I wanted to give her about the war in Iraq. She might have benefited considerably from it. Sadly, it was not to be. But we did have the excitement of seeing a bakery delivery van driver being frisked on his way into the castle.
The English have never been very hot on celebrating their Englishness. Where the Scots whoop it up on St Andrew’s Day, the Welsh party on St David’s, and of course, as we all know, the Irish go nuts on St Paddy’s, the English choose to celebrate their national saint’s day largely by ignoring it. I saw just three buildings flying the St George Cross (The English flag) on the way to Windsor. All three were pubs and they were festooned with the things. They all looked a bit hysterical. Members of the club were muttering about how dreadful this all this lack of interest was. They are a patriotic lot in the main – mostly by reflex I suspect. I’m not. So, I just shut up and didn’t say anything. I have a complex relationship to my own Englishness. There is a great deal I love about England. I love its landscapes, its villages, many of its folk traditions, its writers, many of its buildings, its history even. But as for the British state and its politics… Just thinking about it makes me go cold in my belly. That reflex patriotism that we learn as kids sticks too. Sometimes, I can’t help feeling proud of things that I actually despise.
The day was too grey and overcast to make riding out to Uffington very appealing. I regretted that in some ways as I like Uffington. It’s a small village. It sits in a valley under the chalk hillsides. Carved into the chalk just above the village is by far the best of the area’s huge white horses. You can see the one at Uffington from miles away. No-one is entirely sure how old these hillside carvings are, but the ‘Ridgeway’ which runs past them along the top of the chalk ridge is at least 3,000 years old and has been in constant use all that time. Di and I walked the Ridgeway down to Avebury in 1995, starting from our front door (Hitchin lies on the path). We camped out most nights. It took us about ten days and we had one of the best times in our life together. Only last week, I found the journal Di kept on the way and read it to her. Nostalgia is in the air at the moment.
Instead of going to Uffington we just hung around Windsor, looked at the sights, and had tea in a proper tea room before coming home. As I’d been down that way the week before and had found a good and reasonably fast route home, mostly avoiding motorways, I led the rideout back. Even in this heavily built-up part of the world there are some good roads, good biking roads at that.
Mike 
