Thursday 25 May 2006
Got the grumps. It’s another miserable day: inside and out. I’m drifting into a gloomy, navel gazing mood, and it’s not helped by the weather. I don’t have many days when I can’t be arsed to get out on the bike, but today is one of them. I’m OK, though. So long as I don't start to slide into depression. Sometimes you need to feel low before things can get moving again. I’ve always put a lot of faith in letting things be and watching what happens. (I used to drive Di up the wall - she always wanted things planned in detail and well ahead of time.) But it's a strategy that has served me well over the years. It untangles the knots. And I certainly feel like I’m tied up in knots right now.
So, here I am, sitting at home staring at a growing pile of dirty washing up. It will probably grow a bit more before I can't stand it any longer and have to do something about it. It is now getting on for a month since Di died. Like almost everything else, I can’t get my head round that fact right now. My world has turned upside-down in the last few weeks. The house is quiet, not full of carers and social workers and friends and... (who the hell was that?). No-one is hassling me. No-one is demanding that I do two million things before breakfast. I'm no longer emotionally wrung out minute by minute by the sheer horror of Di's condition or by her incessant whimpering (she hated that whimper but she'd lost control of her voice and, try as she might, was unable to stop doing it.). The telephone has finally stopped ringing every five minutes, and the post is now down to the usual bills, charity gimmicks, advertising bumf, and the odd letter or two.
Back to normal, then - Sort of! My GP ( National Health Service doctor) has signed me off work till next Monday. My sick note reads 'recently bereaved'. Just two little words. What would you find if you unpacked them? I still haven't begun to try. People tell me what a vile and terrible disease MND is, and how awful it must have been for me looking after Di day after day like that, without any rest, watching her choking, seeing her body shrinking down to skin and bone. But somehow, that's not it. They don't understand. You just do what you have to do; nothing more, nothing less. You haven't got time to think about how awful it all is. Di understood that more than anyone.
You deal with it afterwards, when there is time to reflect. I'm only just begnning on that journey. But after nearly a year of heartbreaking, backbreaking struggle, I’m still confused and finding it difficult to cope with all this free time and emptiness. My mind and body are thinning out into the ether. Somehow, nothing seems very significant and nothing feels very real. Things are happening around me and I'm just a bemused bystander wondering what happened to his life.
Today, I decide to content myself by cosying up in the dining room armchair with a couple of good books and a cup of tea. I finish reading Karl Bushby’s diaries, ‘Giant Steps’ (great reading for anyone who likes adventure travel – a twelve year journey, in this case). I then pick up ‘The Perfect Machine,’ a bike book by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. Drumwrecker leant it to me last week. I skim a few chapters. She writes well. The content is intelligent and interesting. I reckon I will enjoy reading it – maybe tomorrow - but, right now, I’m getting too restless. A little later, I suddenly realise that I've been pacing about the room for at least quarter of an hour lost in thought but have no recollection of what I was thinking.
The door rattles, and something flops through my letterbox. A package. Hmmm. What could that be? I tear off the brown paper wrapping. A gift! Oh, no! It's a copy of 'The Long Way Round' from Dave, a non-biker friend. There's a note attached which says he hopes it will take my mind of things. Thanks, Dave. It's a nice thought, but you see... I trundle upstairs and put it on the shelves alongside my other three copies of 'The Long Way Round', all gifts from non-biker friends who hoped it would take my mind off things.
After putting it off for months, I tried to watch the DVD last week (two copies) but got bored quickly. I just can't get interested in two well-known blokes arsing around on bikes in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I should just take the books and DVDs and have a car boot sale. [Edit - Whoops! For those who may be confused by this reference. In the UK cars don't have 'trunks', they have 'boots.' When you want to get rid of a lot of junk, you stick it into the boot (trunk) of your car, go along to an organised car boot sale - usually a muddy field - open up your boot (trunk) and try to flog (sell) what you can out of it. Got it!]
In the late afternoon, I stick Meatloaf, then Deep Purple on the CD player to try and blast myself out of this tense/dozy mood and when that doesn’t work I put on Jan Sandstrom’s Motorbike Concerto. This is a crazy piece of music, a modern trombone concerto by a whacky Icelandic composer who, if the CD sleeve notes are to be believed, does most of his composing while floating around in a hot spring. The concerto has a programme of sorts: a modern-day Odysseus lays out maps of the word and then goes travelling round it on his bike: first to the Florida Everglades, then to a mountain in Provence (where a biker gang meets a religious procession with interesting consequences) and then on to the Australian bush where he meets some aborigines deep in trance and playing their didgeridoos.
The trombone reproduces the sound of the bike (that’s fun), the animal noises in the Everglades (including an extremely unlikely ‘crocodile chorus’) and the didgeridoo. It also depicts the activity of termites. Aborigines believe, apparently, that mankind only exists in the dreams of termites (Listen, I can believe that, right now!) I love this music. It’s fun and approachable but also deep. It cheers me up, and shakes me out of my mood. Job done!
I start to think back to my twenties when I used to play the trombone. I loved it, but gave it up when I realised my ear was just not good enough, and I wasn’t going to go anywhere with it. People often don’t realise what a versatile instrument it is. It has such a simple design (basically, it is just a long tube) and yet it can create the most incredibly rich and evocative sounds. Around the world, it has traditionally been used to suggest the numinous – ‘the voice of God’, the spirit world, the ‘beyond’ etc. When it is played well it can shake you from the foundations up. It's an ancient instrument and stirrs something ancient in the mind.
There is a picture of the trombonist (Christian Lindberg) on the CD cover holding his trombone and wearing bike leathers. He is a fantastic trombonist, with a truly awesome technique - but he makes an extremely camp looking biker.
I guess I’d better go and do some washing up!
Monday 29 May 2006
Hell! Rides don’t often come as good as this! What a day. Wooooohooooo! I haven’t had such a brilliant ride since puck knows when. (Excuse the French but I’m in a chipper mood.) And to think I almost didn’t go. OK. Truth is, I almost decided to stay in bed for the morning.
Almost! But by applying a very large mental crowbar and plenty of foul tempered leverage, I inched myself out from under a tangled duvet at seven forty-five and got my tootsies onto the floor. Seven bloody forty-five!!! The things I do for my bike.
And before you start laughing at my wussy attitude to getting out of bed, consider that I’d been up till three o’clock the previous night, and the birdies were singing before I got off to sleep. Yeah, I know that was my choice… But actually, thinking about it, it wasn’t a choice at all. I just didn’t feel sleepy. I’m still over-tired, over-stressed - all of that stuff. My muscles are all in spasm and I keep getting stomach cramps. Until Sunday, I’d been sleeping in till almost mid-day, every day, catching up on the long hours of kip I’d lost during the previous year.
In point of fact, getting out of bed was the easy bit. You see, I had this teensy little problem with the bike. My friggin’ chain was still loose. And I wasn’t going on a long ride with it rattling like that. I may be lazy, but I’m not mad. And there was yet a further complication. I still hadn’t found any decent spanners that would fit the wheel nut (that’s s-p-a-n-n-e-r-s Jonathan…. not weirdo American things called ‘wrenches’ – good ‘ol spanners
).
I have this noddy toolkit, though. You know the one – it comes with the bike...
Let’s see. What’s inside? – Ah, a wheel nut spanner. It's a wheel nut spanner with a three-inch-long shaft. Hmmmm!
OK. Here’s a flattened tubular thing that fits over the end of the shaft. That extends it to six inches and gives it a bit of welly. Hang on! The join is pretty wobbly. Next to bloody useless, in fact. Sod it! Mr Suzuki-san - you’re having a laugh, aren’t you?
Oh, concentrate, Hud. One way or another, you’ve got to get this done, man.
Spanner, hammer, WD40 One thing, though - I’m scared of missing the spanner and hitting the friggin’ can instead. (Just my flippin’ luck, if I did). Here goes!
KLANNNNNNGGGG… NGGGG… NGGGG!
Sugar!!!!!!
Hmmmmmmm!
……………………………………thirty minutes later……………………………
On the phone
“Hi Wayne. Look mate, I’m having trouble adjusting my chain. Where are you all stopping for breakfast?
….
“Where? March?”
….
“Yeah, but I’m not going to make it by nine. I’ll have to try and catch up with you at March later. What?
….
“No, don’t ask everyone to wait. This could take ages - I might not get he sodding thing done at all. Cheers.”
KLANNNNNNNGGGG!
Who tightened up this piece of dodo, anyway? It wasn’t me. It was… bloody ‘Bob’s Tyres’ - when I had the new Bridgestones put on. I remember now. The guy who did it was built like a brick shithouse. Don’t they use torque wrenches at that place? (‘Wrenches!’ Aaaargh!!! Linguistic colonisation. There’s no stopping it.)
KLANNNNNNNGGGGG!
“Oh arse! I give up. I’m going to have breakfast.”
And so it was, as I sat on my kitchen stool, forlornly eating my eggs and bacon, feeling defeated and wondering what I was going to do with the rest of the day, that the peace of the street outside was suddenly shattered by the reverberating roar of fourteen large motorcycle engines, and the shouts of bikers looking for somewhere to park. (What the…!!!) All down the street startled faces appeared at windows - my neighbours. You could see what they were thinking: it was an invasion – turn out the dogs! But then, several of them grinned; two directly opposite gave me a hesitant smile, then a wave. You could tell the ex-bikers among them. What a noise!! What a turn on!!!
The club rideout had arrived and was massing outside my front door. Between them, there were seventeen pairs of willing hands, determined to get my chain sorted and me on the road.
What value do you put on your friends? What can you say? God, I felt chuffed!
It took the guys about ten minutes using brute force and determination to get my chain sorted. All I could do was stand by and watch in a state of mounting horror as the hammer kept missing my beautiful titanium can by less than a millimetre. When the wheel nut was free and they got down to adjusting the chain, one of them discovered that ‘Bob’s friggin’ Tyres’ had not put the wheel back on true. I hadn’t noticed (
). It was only slightly out of line, but together with the loose chain, it was enough to get the old girl vibrating, like she had been over the last month. Result!
And what a day’s riding it turned out to be! - despite the weather. The moment we set off, it turned from hot and sunny, to overcast and very wet. (It’s the end of May, for god’s sake! Where the hell is the summer?) And it stayed wet for the next two hours – until well after we hit Tesco’s on the outskirts of March for breakfast. (Second breakfast is an old tradition from the days when labourers were out in the fields from five-thirty in the morning. It’s a good tradition and needs reviving, in my opinion. The five-thirty start is anachronistic, though, and I would be happy to dispense with it.)
The roads up to Hunstanton are the dog’s bollocks. For long miles they follow the Ermine Way. This is one of the old Roman military roads that criss-cross the country. Unlike the Anglo-Saxons and Danes and Normans that followed them, the Romans liked to build their roads in straight lines (Boring lot! A race of administrators!! Don’t you just hate them?) As a result, this is one of the straightest roads in the country. Of course, the British psyche couldn’t cope with roads that slavishly followed a Roman ruler, mile after mile. So, the tarmac does an unnecessary wiggle here and there, just to shake loose. And the highway planners have thrown in a few roundabouts here and there for good measure. What a relief! These roads are supremely fast and fun to ride even in the pouring rain. I was already on a high from the morning’s show of solidarity. The great riding now had me going like a mad thing (
). What a day it was turning out to be!
And it didn’t stop there. Two bikes left us at March to go back home. Their riders had to get back early. That was a shame for them as they missed out on a really satisfying afternoon's riding. The sun eventually came out, warmed everyone up, and together with the blustery wind dried off all the wet leathers very nicely, thank you. We had a good ride up to Hunstanton. Even the usually busy A149 which runs the last few miles into the town was moving reasonably fast this morning.
Hunstanton is a big bike meet, but not much of a town. There’s not a lot to do unless you want to paddle in the sea, ride all day on the dodgems, buy a stick of seaside rock or get an elaborate American Indian tattoo. It is (as Dave assured us) the only east coast, seaside town that faces West - into the huge estuary of The Wash. (I thought you might just like to know that.) We sat down on the prom and discussed what to do – at least, most of us did. Wayne, as usual, provided the entertainment. This guy never stops. He has the dirtiest mind of anyone I have ever known. Wayne is diminutive, warm-hearted and very, very funny.
The day was still before us so we decided to continue along the A149. the coast road which curves round to Wells-Next-The-Sea. I haven’t been to Wells in years. The road is a hoot. It calls itself an 'A' road, but it is extremely narrow and twisty. It is also very busy and we rarely got above fifty miles an hour. But we did do a lot of car hopping. (I love car hopping.) It winds its way lazily along the North Norfolk coast through some great countryside. Not that you have time to enjoy much of it. You have to keep very focused. In the warm summer weather it was a relaxing ride. Most of the guys enjoyed it, even the speed freaks among them.
At Wells we stop for another drink at a wayside café and, judging by the customer’s faces, manage to terrorise everyone in sight. It must have been the way we parked up: we rolled into the parking area directly in front of the outdoor tables, then lined up side by side, one at a time. It must have looked very choreographed. Then Wayne took his helmet off, cracked an off colour joke and everyone relaxed. The aggressive image of bikers dies hard.
From Wells we continued along the coast road for about ten miles and then turned off inland towards Fakenham, past signs for somewhere named 'Great Snoring', I noticed. At Fakenham we took the A1065. This has to be one of the best A roads I’ve yet ridden in this country. The road is well surfaced and full of big sweeping bends and fast corners. It snakes about from left to right for miles at a time. It runs between magnificent hedgerows and some deep deciduous woodland. At this time of year the leaf foliage is still fresh and very green, young and lush looking - just beautiful. The 1065 runs from Fakenham in North Norfolk down through Suffolk and on into to Cambridgeshire. Near Mildenhall where it ends, we made another stop at Walker’s Café. The tea drinkers were getting agitated and several riders were beginning to get cold. With my skinny build, I'm usually the first to feel the cold, but today, I was enjoying myself far too much to notice. Few people seemed to want to call it a day, so the vote was to carry on down to Duxford and make yet another stop; this time at the Comfort Café (Or 'The World Famous Comfort Cafe', to give it its full name). On the way to Duxford we lost Wayne. Well, one at the end of a very long day is not bad for the Stevenage and District.
Mike 
