Don’t laugh but it’s face-achingly cold and I’m out on the Black Bullet. It's the the end of the year and the gloves I bought back in the summer aren't warm enough for this. The forty quid lid starts to lift off at fifty and my plastic site glasses must have belonged to Eric Morecombe the way they’re flapping in the breeze.
Cloud has descended on the Berkshire Downs so no money shot as I hit the crest of Chain Hill today, just freezing damp and cold. The mist closes in by Lockinge Kiln and all I can see through my comedy eyewear is 25 metres of the road ahead and the spiky boles of pine trees slipping by either side.
The bike hits a hole in the tarmac which jars my spine. “Ugh, pibneeth,” I grunt, spitting involuntarily. “Um, kidneyth,” I repeat more deliberately, trying out my newly discovered face of rubber.
Icy cold and hits to the kidneys are not fun in the traditional sense of the word but I am relieved to be out all the same. The puncture seems slow enough to hold out for a seasonal lunchtime pint, with Poz in nursery and Jane studying at home it’s a rare treat grasped with both hands.
Despite the conditions and the iffy outfitting, I give it full throttle down one of the bigger hills. The needle trembles between 55 and 60mph but advances no further. There’s going to be a lot of thinking time involved in doing any kind of trip on this bike. The right mental attitude will be key to the enjoyment of it. If the focus is on arriving, the lack of power and handling will become frustrating.
The problem is the faster you go the less you notice, even 55mph is too fast to notice much more than the tarmac and the trees zipping by. I’m wary of going much slower on this road in the fog, however, and I react to this thought by leaning over to flick the lights on. I begin to feel that there’s an unholy clash about to happen between my outlook on this anachronism and the attitude of the next modern car driver to come steaming through the mist. I'm a little spooked by this, having not really thought about it before. I'm always going to be a bit of a sitting duck on this old thing.
Then all at once the odometer shows 100 miles covered and I'm smiling again. At least I think I am.
Thursday, 30 December 2010
Wednesday, 29 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.7 - Miles Covered 81.0
Jane dreams most nights, of which I am envious. Her brain would light up a brain-o-scope like an electric storm, lobes crackling with inner lightning. The night before last she fidgeted until she woke me up, panting and murmuring like a medium. A face like molten metal was shrieking at her in tongues, apparently. An evil face, of an old man with long hair.
It doesn’t do to draw too much literal meaning from dreams [I pause to scrape the long hair back from my lined face] as they’re often confused and quite random in their depiction. It’s not quite the same thing but sometimes I wake up with a phrase or even a melody looping over and over as I surface. This morning I rolled over and it was, greed begets government, greed begets government, greed begets government...
A little later now, and increasingly irritated by this rotating riddle, news filters through to the bathroom that the government wants charitable giving to be enabled at cash machines, to promote its concept of the ‘Big Society’. My first reaction to this is if the institution of government wasn’t historically so self-serving, I might believe. The way things are, it smacks of further abrogation of responsibility.
It got me thinking, though, and then I experienced a Eureka moment. We could reform the tax system to include compulsory individual giving, direct to the government department of choice, with each cash withdrawal. Pull out fifty quid and give five to defence, the police, the health service, arts or education. No contribution, no cash. Let the people vote according to their proclivities.
Security of critical funding might be provided by, say, half the tax currently deducted at source. If it’s Big Society they really want, then they have to give it up. It would be interesting to see a chart of this kind of giving overlaid on a graph of current spending commitments. What better way to close any discrepancy between the will of government and that of the people? It's taxation and voting rolled into one.
On the other hand, if tax revenue dropped significantly, as people found other ways of getting hold of their money, we could conclude that society doesn’t want to be big after all, right? And that we pay our taxes precisely to avoid having to think about society at large. Sadly this seems like the most likely outcome but happily it also provides an answer to this morning’s riddle. We need government to keep us from the asocial effects of the relentless pursuit of self interest.
Jane pops her head round the door as I’m drying off. “My tonsils are up again,” she says.
“Mine too, I’ll make an appointment for both of us when the surgery opens,” I reply, scrubbing my head with the towel.
We’ve already blitzed the bacteria with a course of antibiotics each but it hasn’t worked, some things just aren’t that easy to eradicate.
It doesn’t do to draw too much literal meaning from dreams [I pause to scrape the long hair back from my lined face] as they’re often confused and quite random in their depiction. It’s not quite the same thing but sometimes I wake up with a phrase or even a melody looping over and over as I surface. This morning I rolled over and it was, greed begets government, greed begets government, greed begets government...
A little later now, and increasingly irritated by this rotating riddle, news filters through to the bathroom that the government wants charitable giving to be enabled at cash machines, to promote its concept of the ‘Big Society’. My first reaction to this is if the institution of government wasn’t historically so self-serving, I might believe. The way things are, it smacks of further abrogation of responsibility.
It got me thinking, though, and then I experienced a Eureka moment. We could reform the tax system to include compulsory individual giving, direct to the government department of choice, with each cash withdrawal. Pull out fifty quid and give five to defence, the police, the health service, arts or education. No contribution, no cash. Let the people vote according to their proclivities.
Security of critical funding might be provided by, say, half the tax currently deducted at source. If it’s Big Society they really want, then they have to give it up. It would be interesting to see a chart of this kind of giving overlaid on a graph of current spending commitments. What better way to close any discrepancy between the will of government and that of the people? It's taxation and voting rolled into one.
On the other hand, if tax revenue dropped significantly, as people found other ways of getting hold of their money, we could conclude that society doesn’t want to be big after all, right? And that we pay our taxes precisely to avoid having to think about society at large. Sadly this seems like the most likely outcome but happily it also provides an answer to this morning’s riddle. We need government to keep us from the asocial effects of the relentless pursuit of self interest.
Jane pops her head round the door as I’m drying off. “My tonsils are up again,” she says.
“Mine too, I’ll make an appointment for both of us when the surgery opens,” I reply, scrubbing my head with the towel.
We’ve already blitzed the bacteria with a course of antibiotics each but it hasn’t worked, some things just aren’t that easy to eradicate.
Monday, 20 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.6 - Miles Covered 81.0
The lid of the ‘everything bin’ is frosted shut and it nearly rocks over when I give it a good heave. I sling the bag in and drop it shut, pushing the bin back square to the paving I laid for it. Again, I’m momentarily startled by another dad-ism – my father had a thing about bins, as well as thermometers. He was obsessed with getting the right things in the right bins at the right time, and all the bins in the right place, and I think, God, please don’t let this be me.
And yet, I’m a lover of detail. I like living a considered life. Noticing things seems to slow down the passage of time to a manageable speed. The Black Bullet is a good focus for this. It reminds me of the string in a child’s crystal growing kit, a starter, but for growing your thoughts on. Unfortunately for me the Black Bullet is holed up with a flat in the shed and my fickle thoughts are wandering all over the place.
As I turn to crunch down the snowy path, spade in hand, I see the fig I planted against the wall in the spring. The glossy black buds with little snow caps on. Shit, perhaps I should’ve put a sack over it, it was minus eleven last night! I remonstrate with myself, briefly. Wherever I look there seems to be evidence of things I haven’t thought of, and done, rather than things I have.
Momentarily deflated I heft the spade up, shifting my grip down the shaft so it hangs without banging against my leg. I’m supposed to be digging my car out, not a hole for self esteem. Come on, move on.
Poz is waiting for me round the front, in a ridiculous get-up of afterthoughts. His mum has pulled a huge chunky-knit cardigan over his jacket, think ‘boho-eskimo’ and you won’t be far off. There’s no doubt he’ll be warm enough on his way to nursery, he won't be able to touch his hands together but who cares about the way he looks, right.
This thing about detail, though, it can become such filigree that the slightest disturbance pulls it apart and you've got to wonder how useful that is in the long run. It's like the character in that Dostoyevsky novel who cogitates endlessley on what it's like to be a 'man of action'. I need to sort out that puncture and get back on the bike soon.
And yet, I’m a lover of detail. I like living a considered life. Noticing things seems to slow down the passage of time to a manageable speed. The Black Bullet is a good focus for this. It reminds me of the string in a child’s crystal growing kit, a starter, but for growing your thoughts on. Unfortunately for me the Black Bullet is holed up with a flat in the shed and my fickle thoughts are wandering all over the place.
As I turn to crunch down the snowy path, spade in hand, I see the fig I planted against the wall in the spring. The glossy black buds with little snow caps on. Shit, perhaps I should’ve put a sack over it, it was minus eleven last night! I remonstrate with myself, briefly. Wherever I look there seems to be evidence of things I haven’t thought of, and done, rather than things I have.
Momentarily deflated I heft the spade up, shifting my grip down the shaft so it hangs without banging against my leg. I’m supposed to be digging my car out, not a hole for self esteem. Come on, move on.
Poz is waiting for me round the front, in a ridiculous get-up of afterthoughts. His mum has pulled a huge chunky-knit cardigan over his jacket, think ‘boho-eskimo’ and you won’t be far off. There’s no doubt he’ll be warm enough on his way to nursery, he won't be able to touch his hands together but who cares about the way he looks, right.
This thing about detail, though, it can become such filigree that the slightest disturbance pulls it apart and you've got to wonder how useful that is in the long run. It's like the character in that Dostoyevsky novel who cogitates endlessley on what it's like to be a 'man of action'. I need to sort out that puncture and get back on the bike soon.
Saturday, 18 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.5 - Miles Covered 81.0
It’s been so cold for so long now our normally self-reliant cat has taken to meowing in the bath for someone to turn on the tap for a drink. All the water in the natural world has seemingly turned to ice. When he was a kitten the tap had a chronic drip and he remembers this. We do put water out for him but he still leaves occasional footprints in the bath, and I’ve never seen him drink from a bowl.
Freezing temperatures are not anything you’d bother mentioning to a Russian, or a Canadian. In fact, I’m told in some parts you have to start your car inside, drive out and keep it running until you get home, in case you can’t get it started again. A battery loses so much power in severe cold, as I found out when we got back from Holland. I wonder if it affects a magneto system in any way.
I was amazed when one of the old boys in the village first told me the Black Bullet would start without a battery. This didn’t make sense to me back then but kicking it over is enough to produce the electricity needed for sparks. Once it’s running it’s a self-stoking cycle, like lighting a fire, the small battery on the bike just powers the lights. That’s the beauty of the magneto system.
It’s getting late and I’m filling a glass with water in the kitchen, staring out at a moonlit snowscape. The apex of the shed roof casts a long shadow like a giant witch's hat, the tip folded up by the hedge.
I should be excited - it might be a white Christmas, the first one in years - but it looks less and less likely that the Black Bullet is going to see much action until the spring. There is a trials version of the Bullet which would be fun with the right tyres in the snow, now there's a thought.
Tuesday, 14 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.4 - Miles Covered 81.0
It’s like I ate a poisoned apple and fell asleep for three hundred years, and I've now been rudely awoken. The world is still the world but the familiar details that gave me my locus have changed beyond recognition. I just can’t make sense of it anymore.
I stutter and stammer as the man on the phone tells me my fully comprehensive car insurance policy premium renewal (try saying it) is likely to become even more expensive if I opt for Third Party, Fire and Theft!
“How on earth do you explain that?” I ask, slightly tremulous.
“Oh it’s the same most places now,” offers Welsh Kieran confidently.
“But it makes no sense...” I say. “It’s a lower level of cover.”
“Ah well you see it’s the excess, there are no excesses to pay Third Party.”
“Right, so, but how can it be more expensive?”
“There’s no discount available without a voluntary level of excess, see? It’s quite straightforward really.”
“Hang on, I don't see. How can there be no discount, when, what I mean is I can’t offer to pay any excess for something you’re not insuring me for, so how can it be more expensive?”
There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “Look, sir, you asked me if I could tell you how to get it cheaper and I’ve done what I can. If you don’t understand, well, I can’t help you if you won’t understand.”
Immovable though Kieran is I’m pretty sure he’s not allowed to hang up on me, it wouldn’t look good during a call that might be recorded for training purposes, and it’s the only power I have in this relationship. I can’t ask him his policy number, the first line of his address, his mother’s maiden name, marital status, or if he’s made any other patently ridiculous claims in the last five years. I want some satisfaction out of this interaction, I want to at least feel like I’m getting a good deal.
“Okay, okay, let’s just keep it Comprehensive. Now can I make my partner the main driver?”
There’s a pause, and then a reluctant “Yes.”
“You have her details on file as she’s been a named driver on this policy for two years.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take them again, we don’t have that facility. Now, if you’ll bear with me for a moment, does she have any No Claims Discount?”
“I believe she does. It’s one of your selling points, isn’t it? That named drivers can accrue NCD entitlement...”
“Ah, well, Named Driver Discount is not the same thing as No Claims Discount.”
“Really? Sorry, forgive me, but I’m now struggling to see the benefit of this discount, which is frankly one of the reasons we signed up with you...”
This is an entirely one-sided struggle and Kieran appears to be waiting for the penny to drop, unassisted. The benefit is to the insurer, of course, as a means of coercing loyalty.
I reckon that Kieran and his colleagues will have been briefed on how to talk customers through the traumatic realisation that they’ve been well and truly played. And if he’s any good at it he’ll have me like a hostage by the end, blessing my captors as the money changes hands. But for now I’m just feeling cornered and more than a little fed up. In that slightly soiled way that only a brush with Customer Services can make you feel.
“So, you’re telling me that this Named Driver Discount isn’t a discount at all?” I persist.
“Oh no Sir, it’s not like that, it’s just not the same as No Claims. You have two years NCD with us which you can give it to her if you like. That’ll bring the cost down.”
I wasn’t aware this was possible, and it doesn't answer my question, but as it seems at last to play into my hands I let it go, to see where it goes.
“Alright then, so this time next year I take it that she will have accrued her own NCD, will that include the two years I’m giving her?”
I’m pretty sure Kieran stifles a laugh at this point. “Erm, no sir, that’s yours.” Adding with increased seriousness, “Look, sir, you’ve asked me to tell you how...”
“Yes, I know." I bite back. "I have a budget and I’m trying to stick to it.”
“Look, sir, if it’s all about price, we may not be the cheapest on the market but we like to think we offer a good quality product. You are a building consultant, you know that a building can be built for less but a few years later things might start falling off. You can expect to pay a bit more for a better product.”
“Yes but what you’re offering me is an abstract construct, it's not a real thing at all," I insist, really motoring now. "I can walk around a building, look at it and enjoy it. There are a lot of compelling reasons why people choose to spend more money on buildings, which don't apply to insurance polices. Also, I have to buy this, it's a legal requirement, it's not a lifestyle choice."
“You may not think like that if you have an accident...sir.”
There’s no getting round such intransigence - so high you cannot get over it, so low you cannot get under it, so wide you cannot get round it. We are being had by legal highwaymen and sold down the river in the small print. If you do have an accident and don’t perform the correct ritual in the right sequence, if one detail is out of whack, you’ll have to pay anyway. It’s more than frustrating, it’s like some kind of slow death, and, like poor old Auntie Truus in Goes, there’s no one to help you on your way.
I stutter and stammer as the man on the phone tells me my fully comprehensive car insurance policy premium renewal (try saying it) is likely to become even more expensive if I opt for Third Party, Fire and Theft!
“How on earth do you explain that?” I ask, slightly tremulous.
“Oh it’s the same most places now,” offers Welsh Kieran confidently.
“But it makes no sense...” I say. “It’s a lower level of cover.”
“Ah well you see it’s the excess, there are no excesses to pay Third Party.”
“Right, so, but how can it be more expensive?”
“There’s no discount available without a voluntary level of excess, see? It’s quite straightforward really.”
“Hang on, I don't see. How can there be no discount, when, what I mean is I can’t offer to pay any excess for something you’re not insuring me for, so how can it be more expensive?”
There’s a sigh on the other end of the line. “Look, sir, you asked me if I could tell you how to get it cheaper and I’ve done what I can. If you don’t understand, well, I can’t help you if you won’t understand.”
Immovable though Kieran is I’m pretty sure he’s not allowed to hang up on me, it wouldn’t look good during a call that might be recorded for training purposes, and it’s the only power I have in this relationship. I can’t ask him his policy number, the first line of his address, his mother’s maiden name, marital status, or if he’s made any other patently ridiculous claims in the last five years. I want some satisfaction out of this interaction, I want to at least feel like I’m getting a good deal.
“Okay, okay, let’s just keep it Comprehensive. Now can I make my partner the main driver?”
There’s a pause, and then a reluctant “Yes.”
“You have her details on file as she’s been a named driver on this policy for two years.”
“I’m afraid I’ll have to take them again, we don’t have that facility. Now, if you’ll bear with me for a moment, does she have any No Claims Discount?”
“I believe she does. It’s one of your selling points, isn’t it? That named drivers can accrue NCD entitlement...”
“Ah, well, Named Driver Discount is not the same thing as No Claims Discount.”
“Really? Sorry, forgive me, but I’m now struggling to see the benefit of this discount, which is frankly one of the reasons we signed up with you...”
This is an entirely one-sided struggle and Kieran appears to be waiting for the penny to drop, unassisted. The benefit is to the insurer, of course, as a means of coercing loyalty.
I reckon that Kieran and his colleagues will have been briefed on how to talk customers through the traumatic realisation that they’ve been well and truly played. And if he’s any good at it he’ll have me like a hostage by the end, blessing my captors as the money changes hands. But for now I’m just feeling cornered and more than a little fed up. In that slightly soiled way that only a brush with Customer Services can make you feel.
“So, you’re telling me that this Named Driver Discount isn’t a discount at all?” I persist.
“Oh no Sir, it’s not like that, it’s just not the same as No Claims. You have two years NCD with us which you can give it to her if you like. That’ll bring the cost down.”
I wasn’t aware this was possible, and it doesn't answer my question, but as it seems at last to play into my hands I let it go, to see where it goes.
“Alright then, so this time next year I take it that she will have accrued her own NCD, will that include the two years I’m giving her?”
I’m pretty sure Kieran stifles a laugh at this point. “Erm, no sir, that’s yours.” Adding with increased seriousness, “Look, sir, you’ve asked me to tell you how...”
“Yes, I know." I bite back. "I have a budget and I’m trying to stick to it.”
“Look, sir, if it’s all about price, we may not be the cheapest on the market but we like to think we offer a good quality product. You are a building consultant, you know that a building can be built for less but a few years later things might start falling off. You can expect to pay a bit more for a better product.”
“Yes but what you’re offering me is an abstract construct, it's not a real thing at all," I insist, really motoring now. "I can walk around a building, look at it and enjoy it. There are a lot of compelling reasons why people choose to spend more money on buildings, which don't apply to insurance polices. Also, I have to buy this, it's a legal requirement, it's not a lifestyle choice."
“You may not think like that if you have an accident...sir.”
There’s no getting round such intransigence - so high you cannot get over it, so low you cannot get under it, so wide you cannot get round it. We are being had by legal highwaymen and sold down the river in the small print. If you do have an accident and don’t perform the correct ritual in the right sequence, if one detail is out of whack, you’ll have to pay anyway. It’s more than frustrating, it’s like some kind of slow death, and, like poor old Auntie Truus in Goes, there’s no one to help you on your way.
Saturday, 11 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.3 - Miles Covered 81.0
The powerful Mercedes taxi shudders and grinds through the frozen streets of Goes in southern Holland. The warning lights flicker on and off on Dolph's dash - injecting some timely Christmas spirit into an otherwise somber affair.
It is unrecogniseable from the last time I came to visit Truus and this trip feels more gruelling even than the time I shot up through Belgium, non-stop from Paris, on my Kawasaki GT750. That was a much longer trip, actually. I've got pictures of my bike on a canal bridge in Amsterdam, another three hours north, but I was a lot younger then with no one in tow and less on my mind.
Now I'm getting on and my Auntie Truus more so. She's at the end of the road and she knows it. She told me so as I sat by her bedside staring out at the blizzard raging in the woods behind her residence. It was hard to see this typically fastidious, well-dressed, straight-talking Dutch woman reduced to a skinny waistrel with a fluffy crown of white hair. But if I can manage half the dignity on my deathbed, i'll be more than satisfied. Death is after all, a bit of a performance.
"I can't find anyone to help me." says Truus. "I lie awake by night and by day thinking about it but what can I do? I am dying, I know it, but dying takes such a long time."
Her expression is without self-pity and my eyes well up as I tell her we love her, even though we hardly ever came to visit.
"Do not cry. Edgar and I never came to the UK either." She says in absolution. "Now it would be best for you to go as I am tired."
I lean over to kiss her goodbye, an opportunity for human warmth not missed by her. Perhaps I'm being unkind, I don't mean to be, but she really seemed to need a hug and a kiss and I'm only too pleased to be able to deliver this.
"How old are you now?" She asks out of the blue, holding onto my arms.
"Er, forty-seven," I stammer.
"Ha, ha, ha," she laughs with unexpected gusto, before trailing off into coughing.
"Go now and thank you for coming all this way to see me."
We stand silently in the lift, call Dolph from reception and wait for him to bring up his taxi. As we wait and the only sounds are the howling of the wind outside and the gentle admonishment of Poz who is scattering clay beads from the lobby planters.
It's another juddery, traction-controlled ride back to the Terminus Hotel.
Photo: Frozen Holland
It is unrecogniseable from the last time I came to visit Truus and this trip feels more gruelling even than the time I shot up through Belgium, non-stop from Paris, on my Kawasaki GT750. That was a much longer trip, actually. I've got pictures of my bike on a canal bridge in Amsterdam, another three hours north, but I was a lot younger then with no one in tow and less on my mind.
Now I'm getting on and my Auntie Truus more so. She's at the end of the road and she knows it. She told me so as I sat by her bedside staring out at the blizzard raging in the woods behind her residence. It was hard to see this typically fastidious, well-dressed, straight-talking Dutch woman reduced to a skinny waistrel with a fluffy crown of white hair. But if I can manage half the dignity on my deathbed, i'll be more than satisfied. Death is after all, a bit of a performance.
"I can't find anyone to help me." says Truus. "I lie awake by night and by day thinking about it but what can I do? I am dying, I know it, but dying takes such a long time."
Her expression is without self-pity and my eyes well up as I tell her we love her, even though we hardly ever came to visit.
"Do not cry. Edgar and I never came to the UK either." She says in absolution. "Now it would be best for you to go as I am tired."
I lean over to kiss her goodbye, an opportunity for human warmth not missed by her. Perhaps I'm being unkind, I don't mean to be, but she really seemed to need a hug and a kiss and I'm only too pleased to be able to deliver this.
"How old are you now?" She asks out of the blue, holding onto my arms.
"Er, forty-seven," I stammer.
"Ha, ha, ha," she laughs with unexpected gusto, before trailing off into coughing.
"Go now and thank you for coming all this way to see me."
We stand silently in the lift, call Dolph from reception and wait for him to bring up his taxi. As we wait and the only sounds are the howling of the wind outside and the gentle admonishment of Poz who is scattering clay beads from the lobby planters.
It's another juddery, traction-controlled ride back to the Terminus Hotel.
Photo: Frozen Holland
The Black Bullet 4.2 – Miles Covered 81.0
Back home my car battery had gone flat in the cold. Flat as a first day back at work. Flat as the front tyre on the Black Bullet and both tyres on my mountain bike.
This first day back at work had me moving from one transport option to the other like the Bruce Willis character in Pulp Fiction looking for a weapon. Late and without an immediate ride, I paused to wonder how my relatively considered and ordered lifestyle could have come to this. It’s not fair, went the frank conceit of my wondering but I knew that I’d have to ditch the bitching and get to a workable solution, fast.
This involved a struggle to remember if I was due anywhere but the office in the next couple of days, a decision about fixing the car and a fretful last minute switch of childcare responsibilities. Jane was still a bit miffed about something that happened in Holland and I had to tread carefully, but there was no time. I stopped her at the door, blurted out the facts and pressed the baby into her arms. She would have to drop him off at nursery while I pumped up my bicycle tyres.
Fortunately Jane is one of the good guys and she doesn’t tend to make things harder than they already are. This is, quite frankly, a keystone in the arch of happiness. Without this tacit support you’re always kind of vulnerable. It was also fortunate for me that it was the day of my work’s Christmas lunch, so I would have been cycling locally anyway.
The following day I moved into the doghouse next door, thanks to my brilliant performance at lunch and into the evening. Using Rock'n'Roll Power, I challenged my colleagues to a post-lunch drink in every pub in town, which numbered 12 or 14 depending on who you believe. It was a lot of drinking and I won, making the last two on the list with only a non-drinking acoustician for company. The rest fell by the wayside as I knew they would when they forgetfully started ordering pints to my halves. Nonetheless, it was an important win which will be brought out, brushed off and buffed up every time one these young guys tries it on in the office, until the day the record is broken.
This first day back at work had me moving from one transport option to the other like the Bruce Willis character in Pulp Fiction looking for a weapon. Late and without an immediate ride, I paused to wonder how my relatively considered and ordered lifestyle could have come to this. It’s not fair, went the frank conceit of my wondering but I knew that I’d have to ditch the bitching and get to a workable solution, fast.
This involved a struggle to remember if I was due anywhere but the office in the next couple of days, a decision about fixing the car and a fretful last minute switch of childcare responsibilities. Jane was still a bit miffed about something that happened in Holland and I had to tread carefully, but there was no time. I stopped her at the door, blurted out the facts and pressed the baby into her arms. She would have to drop him off at nursery while I pumped up my bicycle tyres.
Fortunately Jane is one of the good guys and she doesn’t tend to make things harder than they already are. This is, quite frankly, a keystone in the arch of happiness. Without this tacit support you’re always kind of vulnerable. It was also fortunate for me that it was the day of my work’s Christmas lunch, so I would have been cycling locally anyway.
The following day I moved into the doghouse next door, thanks to my brilliant performance at lunch and into the evening. Using Rock'n'Roll Power, I challenged my colleagues to a post-lunch drink in every pub in town, which numbered 12 or 14 depending on who you believe. It was a lot of drinking and I won, making the last two on the list with only a non-drinking acoustician for company. The rest fell by the wayside as I knew they would when they forgetfully started ordering pints to my halves. Nonetheless, it was an important win which will be brought out, brushed off and buffed up every time one these young guys tries it on in the office, until the day the record is broken.
Thursday, 9 December 2010
The Black Bullet 4.1 – Miles Covered 81.0
Caught out by the icy weather, we very nearly missed our flight over to Holland last weekend. The ponderous rush hour traffic was even more donkey-like than usual in the country roads around Luton but I didn’t want to play motorway roulette, not with the M25. It was tense, Poz was reaching the end of his car-tolerance and my mental arithmetic had us too late for the Easy Jet check-in.
“I’ll drop you two off at departures with the bags and go and find the car park,” I told Jane, trying to stay calm. “Get your foot in the door and if they won’t check us in because I’m not there, hold Poz up and start crying, OK? I won’t be far behind.”
In the event Jane had had the foresight to print off the boarding passes so it was just a bag drop at the desk and we were in. Unfortunately the plane was then delayed on the tarmac and we were the ones left feeling frustrated. I hate flying, I’ve been doing it all my life and I look back on the old days with rose-tinted specs.
I was packed off to boarding school from Malawi to Zimbabwe on an old Vickers Viscount. I remember walking out of the single storey blockhouse comprising Blantyre International Airport, turning and looking up at my mum and dad who were standing on the roof terrace waving goodbye. Ahead of me was a patchy lawn with faded Martini umbrellas casting shade over decrepit sets of tables and chairs. There was a chain link fence, a garden gate and the tarmac across which we walked to the plane, waving all the way. I was never searched, or delayed, and although I wasn’t particularly happy about being shipped off on my own at the age of seven, the flight wasn’t otherwise such an ordeal.
Another thing that seems crazy these days, but we probably collectively won’t miss, was the in-flight smoking. The only concession given to non-smokers was that they were seated up front. As soon as the seat belt light went out there was a scraping and clicking of matches and lighters and a pall of fag smoke would gradually roll up the aisle. I liked the smell in those days, particularly of the matches.
“I’ll drop you two off at departures with the bags and go and find the car park,” I told Jane, trying to stay calm. “Get your foot in the door and if they won’t check us in because I’m not there, hold Poz up and start crying, OK? I won’t be far behind.”
In the event Jane had had the foresight to print off the boarding passes so it was just a bag drop at the desk and we were in. Unfortunately the plane was then delayed on the tarmac and we were the ones left feeling frustrated. I hate flying, I’ve been doing it all my life and I look back on the old days with rose-tinted specs.
I was packed off to boarding school from Malawi to Zimbabwe on an old Vickers Viscount. I remember walking out of the single storey blockhouse comprising Blantyre International Airport, turning and looking up at my mum and dad who were standing on the roof terrace waving goodbye. Ahead of me was a patchy lawn with faded Martini umbrellas casting shade over decrepit sets of tables and chairs. There was a chain link fence, a garden gate and the tarmac across which we walked to the plane, waving all the way. I was never searched, or delayed, and although I wasn’t particularly happy about being shipped off on my own at the age of seven, the flight wasn’t otherwise such an ordeal.
Another thing that seems crazy these days, but we probably collectively won’t miss, was the in-flight smoking. The only concession given to non-smokers was that they were seated up front. As soon as the seat belt light went out there was a scraping and clicking of matches and lighters and a pall of fag smoke would gradually roll up the aisle. I liked the smell in those days, particularly of the matches.
Monday, 29 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.17 – Miles Covered 81.0
It’s minus more than usual for this time of year and the Black Bullet is asleep in the shed. My dad, bless him, had a thing about thermometers and I appear to have caught it. I have one that remembers highs and lows and it’s telling me there’s been a minus nine-and-a-half recently. On the roof of the kitchen where the probe resides, deep winter has come early.
Back in the summer, when I rather cleverly bought mountain bike gloves for all the clever reasons given, I’d forgotten what minus anything felt like. Even my gauntlets don’t look up to the job anymore. These temperatures are not in the book of Motorcycling for Pleasure.
It hasn’t helped that I’ve picked up a cold and when the freezing air hits my lungs they jump out of my mouth. The retching that follows dampens any appetite I may have had for a crisp frosty ride to work. That and the strange smell my balaclava seems to have absorbed from the under the stairs cupboard.
With nothing to report Bullet-wise, I’m filling in time. It’s going to be a long slow haul through winter but with the threat of eviction put off until the sun comes back around there's time to get under the covers with a good book, cuddle the baby (avoiding the inevitable elbow to the throat and heel to the balls), cwtch the girlfriend and neck some decent spirits by the fire. Life isn't so bad then.
Back in the summer, when I rather cleverly bought mountain bike gloves for all the clever reasons given, I’d forgotten what minus anything felt like. Even my gauntlets don’t look up to the job anymore. These temperatures are not in the book of Motorcycling for Pleasure.
It hasn’t helped that I’ve picked up a cold and when the freezing air hits my lungs they jump out of my mouth. The retching that follows dampens any appetite I may have had for a crisp frosty ride to work. That and the strange smell my balaclava seems to have absorbed from the under the stairs cupboard.
With nothing to report Bullet-wise, I’m filling in time. It’s going to be a long slow haul through winter but with the threat of eviction put off until the sun comes back around there's time to get under the covers with a good book, cuddle the baby (avoiding the inevitable elbow to the throat and heel to the balls), cwtch the girlfriend and neck some decent spirits by the fire. Life isn't so bad then.
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.16 - Miles Covered 81.0
After living in Japan for a year and a half the plan was to take the music we’d made in my apartment in Katsutadai and make a go of it in the wider world. We’d had some studio time in Tokyo with Miki’s uncle who was some kind of producer with NHK but we dismissed this opportunity as another example of gaijin value and set our sights on London. In some ways it would have been better to go to New York or Seattle, or something, and continue to exploit the edge of difference but I remember being adamant that only making it in London would do for me.
Like so many before and after us we arrived in London full of hopes and aspirations. The capital soon washed over us, robbed us of our mojo and all our gear which we waited weeks for to be shipped back from the east. In the meantime, I bought a bike on a credit card, cut the corners off a pocket streetmap so it would slip in and out of the fairing easily enough when I stopped at the lights, and set off to pay the bills. The daily grind of life as a motorcycle courier meant I’d only see Jim on the weekends, which interrupted our previously intense songwriting and recording partnership.
It isn’t necessary to dissect our failure to make a living as musicians in London, it is a tough life and only a few people ever make a decent living at it. And most of these are well connected or indecently talented, we weren’t either. We had fun and we loved making music but we were hopeless at the promotion side and never made a bean out of it. I listen to some of the old recordings from time to time and think we made a good fist of it, artistically, but the zeitgeist was always just around the corner. It was always this way with us.
Even when living in bohemian Brixton I recall somehow missing all the seminal gigs and the exclusive parties that everyone spoke of in the days afterwards. I'd listen to these party autopsies with a fixed smile, quietly seething, thinking, 'hang on, I wasn't busy that night, where was my invite?' The problem with that word 'exclusive' is, of course, the 'exclude' bit. But you know what? I’m happy with that now, it suits me well enough. I love the stories but I’m glad it wasn’t me who did half the things in them. I was cursed but also saved by not being in with the in-crowd.
I think of Renny, completely blotto, allegedly, seen waving a can of Brasso under people's noses at an Alabama 3 gig; Hugh, looking for a late beer and giving some lip to a couple of wiry Arab shopkeepers, losing a tooth and getting a fat lip for it. I remember the defunct kids nursery they squatted where all the door handles were knee-high and the toilets were tiny and the dealing (and therefore the partying) never stopped. Steve and the strange shrine he built, and the French girl he kept in his room who never spoke a word. And there was a guy who clearly lived in my car one summer, although I never actually caught him at it.
Heck, it was so hot that year we moved the entire contents of the lounge onto the roof, carpet and all, and sat up there every night. And then it was so cold that winter that my GT750 became stuck, frozen to the ground by a huge cascade of ice from a broken rainwater pipe. There was no central heating or insulation in those flats so everyone used to keep their cookers on for warmth, turn their gas meters round and run them backwards to manage the bills.
One year an old Irish guy called Adrian, who played with Van Morrison once, went too far and had to keep his cooker on for two weeks through the bombastic heat of summer to make up the difference. He'd put the gas on in the morning, open the windows and head off to work. when he came home he spent the evening in the pub over the road, out of the way. The goths upstairs sat through it all, you never saw them out of their black garb those guys, no matter how hot it got. Beauty knows no pain.
I came out of that craziness pretty well unscathed, all in all, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I do miss the dynamism of it all though, the urbane attitudes, the polyglot street culture and the cool, cool people. There’s nothing quite like strolling down Coldharbour Lane of a Friday evening with that palpable sense that a weekend of wild partying is about to kick off. Brilliant, even if you’re short of an invite. But it was loose and it got looser, and when crack hit the streets and began to filter into our stairwell, it was time to move on.
Like so many before and after us we arrived in London full of hopes and aspirations. The capital soon washed over us, robbed us of our mojo and all our gear which we waited weeks for to be shipped back from the east. In the meantime, I bought a bike on a credit card, cut the corners off a pocket streetmap so it would slip in and out of the fairing easily enough when I stopped at the lights, and set off to pay the bills. The daily grind of life as a motorcycle courier meant I’d only see Jim on the weekends, which interrupted our previously intense songwriting and recording partnership.
It isn’t necessary to dissect our failure to make a living as musicians in London, it is a tough life and only a few people ever make a decent living at it. And most of these are well connected or indecently talented, we weren’t either. We had fun and we loved making music but we were hopeless at the promotion side and never made a bean out of it. I listen to some of the old recordings from time to time and think we made a good fist of it, artistically, but the zeitgeist was always just around the corner. It was always this way with us.
Even when living in bohemian Brixton I recall somehow missing all the seminal gigs and the exclusive parties that everyone spoke of in the days afterwards. I'd listen to these party autopsies with a fixed smile, quietly seething, thinking, 'hang on, I wasn't busy that night, where was my invite?' The problem with that word 'exclusive' is, of course, the 'exclude' bit. But you know what? I’m happy with that now, it suits me well enough. I love the stories but I’m glad it wasn’t me who did half the things in them. I was cursed but also saved by not being in with the in-crowd.
I think of Renny, completely blotto, allegedly, seen waving a can of Brasso under people's noses at an Alabama 3 gig; Hugh, looking for a late beer and giving some lip to a couple of wiry Arab shopkeepers, losing a tooth and getting a fat lip for it. I remember the defunct kids nursery they squatted where all the door handles were knee-high and the toilets were tiny and the dealing (and therefore the partying) never stopped. Steve and the strange shrine he built, and the French girl he kept in his room who never spoke a word. And there was a guy who clearly lived in my car one summer, although I never actually caught him at it.
Heck, it was so hot that year we moved the entire contents of the lounge onto the roof, carpet and all, and sat up there every night. And then it was so cold that winter that my GT750 became stuck, frozen to the ground by a huge cascade of ice from a broken rainwater pipe. There was no central heating or insulation in those flats so everyone used to keep their cookers on for warmth, turn their gas meters round and run them backwards to manage the bills.
One year an old Irish guy called Adrian, who played with Van Morrison once, went too far and had to keep his cooker on for two weeks through the bombastic heat of summer to make up the difference. He'd put the gas on in the morning, open the windows and head off to work. when he came home he spent the evening in the pub over the road, out of the way. The goths upstairs sat through it all, you never saw them out of their black garb those guys, no matter how hot it got. Beauty knows no pain.
I came out of that craziness pretty well unscathed, all in all, from the ridiculous to the sublime. I do miss the dynamism of it all though, the urbane attitudes, the polyglot street culture and the cool, cool people. There’s nothing quite like strolling down Coldharbour Lane of a Friday evening with that palpable sense that a weekend of wild partying is about to kick off. Brilliant, even if you’re short of an invite. But it was loose and it got looser, and when crack hit the streets and began to filter into our stairwell, it was time to move on.
Me (left) and neighbour Mario jamming on the roof (with a lobster)
Sunday, 21 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.15 – Miles Covered 81.0
The problem of the clutch lever mounting mechanism is nearly solved, unfortunately it’s different in my mind’s eye to the physical manifestation, which is always the important bit.
Getting down to final reassembly I see that the original bolts have an unthreaded collar, designed to clear the shoulder of the half shell mounting. The new 6mm bolt I purchased this morning is a standard hex threaded along its length. As I tighten it up the head runs into the shoulder of the half shell and stops dead, with a little way left to go. I can do up the other side and it all stays in place under tension but I have visions of the whole thing vibrating loose and falling off as I ride.
This is frustrating, to say the least. What I need is a bolt of similar design, or a sleeve of just the right size to imitate the unthreaded bit. This way I can tighten the bolt so it is less likely to vibrate loose. I go hunting for something to do the job. To an onlooker, this part of the problem solving ritual looks like aimless bimbling. In fact, the problem solver is so focused it’s a bit frightening. In this state of fixation it’s not unknown to start dismantling otherwise perfectly functioning everyday items and leaving a mini trail of destruction as you go. Anything that looks the part is fair game, it’s a reckless state of play.
On this occasion, a stiff plastic straw from one of the child’s drinking cups presents itself as at least an interim solution. He, and more importantly the mum, will never miss a few millimetres neatly hacksawed off the end. The bore of the straw is a perfect match for the bolt and the pliability interests me from a vibration damping point of view. The only suspect property of this repair is how robust it will be over time. If the collar splits and falls off the lever is likely to go loose again but I’m prepared to take that chance, for now, until I get round to sourcing a sleeved bolt. The arrangement can be noted in the accompanying photograph.
The nice thing, if it works, is that I’m building a relationship with this bike, in a very real sense. Not only am I becoming increasingly aware of its foibles but I’m introducing a few of my own.
I can imagine a time when the lever becomes loose again and perhaps I’m giving someone a ride. While they deal with doubting the wisdom of accepting a lift on this bucket of bolts I will know exactly what’s going on and be able to review the strengths and weaknesses of my design decisions, moving swiftly on to a more permanent solution.
There won't be any panic, or anxiety, and I want to extend this to other aspects in my custody of the Black Bullet. Taking this to its logical conclusion, I suppose the best thing I can do is take it to bits and put it back together again. But I'm not a mechanic of any experience and who knows what bugs i'd build back into it.
At least on this occasion the underlying problem has been solved. If I had bunged up the stripped hole with epoxy and shoved the old bolt back in, and I needed to get the piece off at a later date, I would have an even bigger problem on my hands. So I’m happy to see whichever outcome this repair presents, as I now understand the problem, even though my current solution is a bit flaky.
Getting down to final reassembly I see that the original bolts have an unthreaded collar, designed to clear the shoulder of the half shell mounting. The new 6mm bolt I purchased this morning is a standard hex threaded along its length. As I tighten it up the head runs into the shoulder of the half shell and stops dead, with a little way left to go. I can do up the other side and it all stays in place under tension but I have visions of the whole thing vibrating loose and falling off as I ride.
This is frustrating, to say the least. What I need is a bolt of similar design, or a sleeve of just the right size to imitate the unthreaded bit. This way I can tighten the bolt so it is less likely to vibrate loose. I go hunting for something to do the job. To an onlooker, this part of the problem solving ritual looks like aimless bimbling. In fact, the problem solver is so focused it’s a bit frightening. In this state of fixation it’s not unknown to start dismantling otherwise perfectly functioning everyday items and leaving a mini trail of destruction as you go. Anything that looks the part is fair game, it’s a reckless state of play.
On this occasion, a stiff plastic straw from one of the child’s drinking cups presents itself as at least an interim solution. He, and more importantly the mum, will never miss a few millimetres neatly hacksawed off the end. The bore of the straw is a perfect match for the bolt and the pliability interests me from a vibration damping point of view. The only suspect property of this repair is how robust it will be over time. If the collar splits and falls off the lever is likely to go loose again but I’m prepared to take that chance, for now, until I get round to sourcing a sleeved bolt. The arrangement can be noted in the accompanying photograph.
The nice thing, if it works, is that I’m building a relationship with this bike, in a very real sense. Not only am I becoming increasingly aware of its foibles but I’m introducing a few of my own.
I can imagine a time when the lever becomes loose again and perhaps I’m giving someone a ride. While they deal with doubting the wisdom of accepting a lift on this bucket of bolts I will know exactly what’s going on and be able to review the strengths and weaknesses of my design decisions, moving swiftly on to a more permanent solution.
There won't be any panic, or anxiety, and I want to extend this to other aspects in my custody of the Black Bullet. Taking this to its logical conclusion, I suppose the best thing I can do is take it to bits and put it back together again. But I'm not a mechanic of any experience and who knows what bugs i'd build back into it.
At least on this occasion the underlying problem has been solved. If I had bunged up the stripped hole with epoxy and shoved the old bolt back in, and I needed to get the piece off at a later date, I would have an even bigger problem on my hands. So I’m happy to see whichever outcome this repair presents, as I now understand the problem, even though my current solution is a bit flaky.
Saturday, 20 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.14 - Miles Covered 81.0
One down to Sheldon Brown. Thanks Sheldon, your pain is my gain. You've saved me twenty quid today, if it all works out OK.
I picked up a single 6mm tap at an old fashioned hardware store in nearby Abingdon, ensuring the right fit by taking the offending bike part in with me. The tap was £4 the handle £12. I'd seen handles on eBay for a fiver so I passed on that and when I got home a pair of locking pliers seemed to do the trick.
This is not best practice but a ghostly presence, let's call it 'Old Pete', took hold and before I knew it I was half way in, making reverse turns every so often to break up the swarf and clean the cutting faces of the tool, just like Sheldon said. The photo speaks for itself, a nice shiny new thread clearly visible where earlier there was just a stripped out hole. Happy with this.
I was so concentrating on making the right decisions in the shop that I forgot to ask for a 6mm bolt to go with, so I'm not quite finished. There something else though; a thread will strip out when a bolt is overtightened but the clutch lever has always been a bit loose, which is a bit of a mystery. I've tried to tighten it and it sort of worked but then it didn't.
Getting down to the tapping process, I noticed the shell of the lever mounting was overly concave, by this I mean that the threaded faces would not sit flat on the workbench if I turned the piece over. So the assembly really needs to be shimmed out before it's tightened down. Tightening the shell with the ends already meeting would strip the thread and not sort out the slippage. I think this is the root of the problem.
And, although I'd made up my mind not to mention this, of course, as anyone who has read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance knows, the best shims are made out of old soft drink cans - a pliable, sticky metal. There, I've said it, now if we can all just forget about Pirsig, it's my blog and it's all about me, OK.
Friday, 19 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.13 - Miles Covered 81.0
It doesn’t seem to matter where I stand on the platform, I always seem to be one of the last on the train. Fortunately I got lucky yesterday, choosing the right hand turn once I was in the carriage vestibule. I plopped down on the first available seat, said an unwelcome good morning to the guy by the window and watched the idiots who went left filter back down the train looking for scraps.
The tap and die sets, which I need to refit the clutch lever, are described on the net up in a language I don’t understand. I don’t know how the sizes work, or if I need to drill the hole smooth before I start out. In the old days I would pocket the bolt and run down to my local everything you’d ever need store and ask a guy with 30 years experience, marvel (hopefully) at his tidy mind and efficient data retrieval system and come back with a plan.
Unfortunately, it’s too specialised a tool for the likes of a generic hardware chain (the type that sells batteries in threes or sixes when you only ever want twos or fours) or the one, small, just about surviving hardware store in town.
On top of it all, Pete is in Cape Town, so I’m temporarily stuck without expert advice. Bugger. But then as much as I love old Pete, he'd probably go at it with rusty nail and inscribe a thread that will just about do. Call me ungrateful but I'd quite like a lesson in cutting threads to suit - teach a man to fish and all that.
All I've currently got to go on is the experience of a wrinkled nut called Sheldon Brown, with a forked beard and a plastic angel glued to his bicycle helmet. This lunatic has written a piece on tapping threads which originally appeared in a 1983 edition of Bicycling magazine and it's internet gold. It's comprehensive and most importantly, comprehensible, which is surprising considering his outlandish appearence. I've printed it off in anticipation of securing the necessary tools this weekend.
The tap and die sets, which I need to refit the clutch lever, are described on the net up in a language I don’t understand. I don’t know how the sizes work, or if I need to drill the hole smooth before I start out. In the old days I would pocket the bolt and run down to my local everything you’d ever need store and ask a guy with 30 years experience, marvel (hopefully) at his tidy mind and efficient data retrieval system and come back with a plan.
Unfortunately, it’s too specialised a tool for the likes of a generic hardware chain (the type that sells batteries in threes or sixes when you only ever want twos or fours) or the one, small, just about surviving hardware store in town.
On top of it all, Pete is in Cape Town, so I’m temporarily stuck without expert advice. Bugger. But then as much as I love old Pete, he'd probably go at it with rusty nail and inscribe a thread that will just about do. Call me ungrateful but I'd quite like a lesson in cutting threads to suit - teach a man to fish and all that.
All I've currently got to go on is the experience of a wrinkled nut called Sheldon Brown, with a forked beard and a plastic angel glued to his bicycle helmet. This lunatic has written a piece on tapping threads which originally appeared in a 1983 edition of Bicycling magazine and it's internet gold. It's comprehensive and most importantly, comprehensible, which is surprising considering his outlandish appearence. I've printed it off in anticipation of securing the necessary tools this weekend.
Wednesday, 17 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.12 - Miles Covered 81.0
It almost happened again; cheerless commuters pushing me to the back of the queue with their savvy ways. I got a seat this time, though, next to an eagle-eyed city spiv with a pink shirt on. His overzealous personal grooming is giving me the creeps. Nobody goes to a proper job of work looking like that. He must be surfing the wave of everybody else’s labours, a city banker or lawyer. 
In contrast, a troubled reflection of my lined face stares back at me in the carriage window, I look worn out. The chipped ends of my forgotten fingernails tap gently on the keys of my laptop. The guy over the way is banging out an email at a furious pace; it’s almost as irritating as the drum solo leaking out of some headphones nearby. I’m feeling old and just a bit threadbare this morning.
Today I’m working through a condition survey in the ex Arab Consulate building in London’s Belgrave Square, which was once the residence of the Duke of Bedfordshire. It is going to be partially restored to its former glory. The remainder will be finished in a modernist style, let us hope the two don’t clash. The new owner has also bought one of the OTT apartments at the job I’ve just finished, One Hyde Park, allegedly the most expensive residential development in Europe.
There’s another, altogether stranger connection between the two jobs. The owner (possibly a Quatari royal) has had a mock up of the master bedroom at OHP built in one of the gutted rooms at Belgrave Square. Get this, to R&D the aircon! He wants to get it right before it’s installed so he doesn’t have to endure any draughts when flicking through Yachting World in bed on a lazy Monday morning. Shit, that’s some kind of crazy lifestyle Mr Oil-rich dude.
Waving away luminous visions of a complete set of Ducatis lined up in my shed, I have to report that the clutch lever assembly fell off the Black Bullet the other day. I’m pleased to have found this fault before my trip to Redditch (which is taking on a Waiting for Godot-like air). The lever assembly is clamped to the bars by two bolts, one of which has stripped its thread. I’m going to have to buy a tap and die and rethread the clamp to make a proper job of the repair.
Prince William has followed my lead and proposed to Kate Middleton, yes, that’s right, and she said yes. William got lucky too, so everybody’s happy.
In contrast, a troubled reflection of my lined face stares back at me in the carriage window, I look worn out. The chipped ends of my forgotten fingernails tap gently on the keys of my laptop. The guy over the way is banging out an email at a furious pace; it’s almost as irritating as the drum solo leaking out of some headphones nearby. I’m feeling old and just a bit threadbare this morning.
Today I’m working through a condition survey in the ex Arab Consulate building in London’s Belgrave Square, which was once the residence of the Duke of Bedfordshire. It is going to be partially restored to its former glory. The remainder will be finished in a modernist style, let us hope the two don’t clash. The new owner has also bought one of the OTT apartments at the job I’ve just finished, One Hyde Park, allegedly the most expensive residential development in Europe.
There’s another, altogether stranger connection between the two jobs. The owner (possibly a Quatari royal) has had a mock up of the master bedroom at OHP built in one of the gutted rooms at Belgrave Square. Get this, to R&D the aircon! He wants to get it right before it’s installed so he doesn’t have to endure any draughts when flicking through Yachting World in bed on a lazy Monday morning. Shit, that’s some kind of crazy lifestyle Mr Oil-rich dude.
Waving away luminous visions of a complete set of Ducatis lined up in my shed, I have to report that the clutch lever assembly fell off the Black Bullet the other day. I’m pleased to have found this fault before my trip to Redditch (which is taking on a Waiting for Godot-like air). The lever assembly is clamped to the bars by two bolts, one of which has stripped its thread. I’m going to have to buy a tap and die and rethread the clamp to make a proper job of the repair.
Prince William has followed my lead and proposed to Kate Middleton, yes, that’s right, and she said yes. William got lucky too, so everybody’s happy.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.11 – 81.0 Miles Covered
Last night I became ill, so my trip is on hold. We’d assembled a pub quiz team and I was looking forward to a couple of pints of bitter and some banter but by Round 7 I was stumbling home across the fields in the dark, feeling awful. The worst of it seems to have passed but it’s not the day I had planned.
Thank god the weather is pretty terrible, or I would be kicking myself. The rain is light but the winds are heavy, working up to gale force tonight. I’m going to have to sit this one out.
I was talking to one of Pete’s scientist friends last night, before the trembling kicked in. Like Pete, Gary has worked on the nearby Harwell Science and Innovation Campus and with the Black Bullet in the back of my mind I asked him what he thought of British manufacturing (I know, I bet he was really pleased to see me). It may be a bit unfair but sometimes a very open question is like a lucky dice roll, he could have laughed it off, I was ready for that, instead he wanted to talk about the Parsons Generator.
“A great piece of kit,” he said, which Charles Parsons struggled to get into production. His coup was to reduce the forces acting on single blade turbines by developing a multi stage system and one of the applications for this was as a marine steam turbine. Anyway, to get noticed he gatecrashed the 1897 Spithead review in his prototype craft, the Turbinia, immediately after the inspection of the fleet by Queen Victoria. The story has it that he and his daring crew suddenly appeared weaving in and out of the Royal warships at a speed of 30 knots, they were uncatchable.
After this exploit he founded the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, no doubt with the tacit support of the admiralty. His company went on to revolutionise (no pun intended) battleship propulsion. Of course I’ve just found this out on the net, which is why it reads like a potted history. It’s a good story though and if it’s a reliable example of how the innovative and talented make way over here, it speaks about the conditions faced thereabouts, or soon after, by the British bike industry.
I haven’t really dealt with this properly, but it’s an important ingredient in my enjoyment of the bike. I know from browsing the net that a lot of Enfield owners live in the USA and Canada, that’s a long way from home in terms of British Bike history. I hope my trip to the source of the business will be of some interest to enthusiasts, and anything I learn about British manufacturing on the way will be a bonus. We’re in deep recession and frankly I feel resurgence in manufacturing may be key to any sustainable recovery.
Anecdotally, one of my current work projects is the new Manufacturing and Technology Centre in Ansty, Coventry, where I’m engaged in my role as a building fabric consultant. The partners in this scheme are Rolls Royce, Land Rover (and others) and the regional universities. Now, it’s unfortunate that Rolls Royce aircraft engines are under the spotlight after one failed out of Singapore recently. Interesting to note, though, that a Parsons’ derived multi-stage turbine blade was ruined by an oil fire in the incident, which caused the engine to shut down.
The tendrils of history run right through...
Thank god the weather is pretty terrible, or I would be kicking myself. The rain is light but the winds are heavy, working up to gale force tonight. I’m going to have to sit this one out.
I was talking to one of Pete’s scientist friends last night, before the trembling kicked in. Like Pete, Gary has worked on the nearby Harwell Science and Innovation Campus and with the Black Bullet in the back of my mind I asked him what he thought of British manufacturing (I know, I bet he was really pleased to see me). It may be a bit unfair but sometimes a very open question is like a lucky dice roll, he could have laughed it off, I was ready for that, instead he wanted to talk about the Parsons Generator.
“A great piece of kit,” he said, which Charles Parsons struggled to get into production. His coup was to reduce the forces acting on single blade turbines by developing a multi stage system and one of the applications for this was as a marine steam turbine. Anyway, to get noticed he gatecrashed the 1897 Spithead review in his prototype craft, the Turbinia, immediately after the inspection of the fleet by Queen Victoria. The story has it that he and his daring crew suddenly appeared weaving in and out of the Royal warships at a speed of 30 knots, they were uncatchable.
After this exploit he founded the Parsons Marine Steam Turbine Company, no doubt with the tacit support of the admiralty. His company went on to revolutionise (no pun intended) battleship propulsion. Of course I’ve just found this out on the net, which is why it reads like a potted history. It’s a good story though and if it’s a reliable example of how the innovative and talented make way over here, it speaks about the conditions faced thereabouts, or soon after, by the British bike industry.
I haven’t really dealt with this properly, but it’s an important ingredient in my enjoyment of the bike. I know from browsing the net that a lot of Enfield owners live in the USA and Canada, that’s a long way from home in terms of British Bike history. I hope my trip to the source of the business will be of some interest to enthusiasts, and anything I learn about British manufacturing on the way will be a bonus. We’re in deep recession and frankly I feel resurgence in manufacturing may be key to any sustainable recovery.
Anecdotally, one of my current work projects is the new Manufacturing and Technology Centre in Ansty, Coventry, where I’m engaged in my role as a building fabric consultant. The partners in this scheme are Rolls Royce, Land Rover (and others) and the regional universities. Now, it’s unfortunate that Rolls Royce aircraft engines are under the spotlight after one failed out of Singapore recently. Interesting to note, though, that a Parsons’ derived multi-stage turbine blade was ruined by an oil fire in the incident, which caused the engine to shut down.
The tendrils of history run right through...
Wednesday, 10 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.10 - Miles Covered 77.0
Tomorrow is the big day. It looks like the wrong day this week, if the weather forecast is to be believed, but it’s the chosen day.
I rode the Black Bullet into work this morning, the long way round. It was bright but cold and my hands and face are burning as I type. It’s probably nothing but there seemed to be a new rattle in the engine noise this morning. As I say, it’s probably nothing.
The good news is that the plug looks fine to my eyes - brown-ish, definately not sooty. I'm told it's better to run a little bit rich than too lean so a quarter turn in should richen it slightly, and put my mind at ease. The carb should really be properly set up but there's no time for this.
I thought about switching the day and going today but I have to get some reports out of the way, so I can start work on the Ship Hall to the Mary Rose project on Friday (see illustration). I’m expected in Portsmouth to present my findings next week and there are three CDs of drawings to get through.
The route is plotted and I’ll be looking for a gap in the clouds to take me up to the Midlands, via the Cotswolds. I hope to be in Enfield Road, Redditch at 12:00 noon, a quick photo op and a cuppa at my colleague, Simon’s, before I roll back down the road to Oxford.
It’s exciting, the only bugger is the rain. Too much of that and it’ll be an endurance event.
I rode the Black Bullet into work this morning, the long way round. It was bright but cold and my hands and face are burning as I type. It’s probably nothing but there seemed to be a new rattle in the engine noise this morning. As I say, it’s probably nothing.
The good news is that the plug looks fine to my eyes - brown-ish, definately not sooty. I'm told it's better to run a little bit rich than too lean so a quarter turn in should richen it slightly, and put my mind at ease. The carb should really be properly set up but there's no time for this.
I thought about switching the day and going today but I have to get some reports out of the way, so I can start work on the Ship Hall to the Mary Rose project on Friday (see illustration). I’m expected in Portsmouth to present my findings next week and there are three CDs of drawings to get through.
The route is plotted and I’ll be looking for a gap in the clouds to take me up to the Midlands, via the Cotswolds. I hope to be in Enfield Road, Redditch at 12:00 noon, a quick photo op and a cuppa at my colleague, Simon’s, before I roll back down the road to Oxford.
It’s exciting, the only bugger is the rain. Too much of that and it’ll be an endurance event.
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
The Black Bullet 3.9 - Miles Covered 71.2
The date of my pilgrimage to Enfield Road, Redditch, is set for next week. I’ve emailed the Birmingham Post, regional BBC and the Mail, and booked a day off work. I hope I’m blessed with some decent weather. I don’t mind the cold it’s the rain that makes it miserable. You’ve got to concentrate all the time, remembering that dislocation from the immediate physical effects of the weather that other drivers often have.
After a few Photos at Enfield Road, I’ll go for a cup of tea at a colleague’s house. I have to make a few checks before I go - top up the oil, check the plug and pump up the front tyre, which seems to have gone soft. I should assemble a roadside repair kit but what to take?
The motorcycle museum isn’t far from there and it would be nice to pop in to have a look at Ted Simon’s unwashed Triumph, the bike from Jupiter’s Travels.
I contacted Ted once, when I was the editor of jaguar-racing.com. He was planning his second round the world trip at the time and only seemed interested in raising money. I was a big fan and wanted to involve him in one of our events but came away a bit disappointed. I guess that can happen when you have expectations about people that you think you know when you really don’t.
I don't think he made it the second time round - I don't honestly know why he tried. It must be so hard to live up to your own reputation when you've done something so amazing. I think I'll stick with Redditch, for now.
After a few Photos at Enfield Road, I’ll go for a cup of tea at a colleague’s house. I have to make a few checks before I go - top up the oil, check the plug and pump up the front tyre, which seems to have gone soft. I should assemble a roadside repair kit but what to take?
The motorcycle museum isn’t far from there and it would be nice to pop in to have a look at Ted Simon’s unwashed Triumph, the bike from Jupiter’s Travels.
I contacted Ted once, when I was the editor of jaguar-racing.com. He was planning his second round the world trip at the time and only seemed interested in raising money. I was a big fan and wanted to involve him in one of our events but came away a bit disappointed. I guess that can happen when you have expectations about people that you think you know when you really don’t.
I don't think he made it the second time round - I don't honestly know why he tried. It must be so hard to live up to your own reputation when you've done something so amazing. I think I'll stick with Redditch, for now.
Wednesday, 27 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.8 - Miles covered 71.2
The start of the week is heralded by more crapola getting into London for work, this time it’s a jam on the M4. I don’t know how people who have to do this every day cope. The only guys who seem immune to it are on two wheels.
I’m supposed to be finishing off air leakage testing at One Hyde Park – the most prestigious residential accommodation in London, or Europe, if the publicity is to be believed. Residents will have a private leisure suite, including pool, gym, spa, racquet courts, cinema and party room at their disposal in the basement. They really won’t have to mix with the great unwashed, for anything, even vehicle access involves using a drive in car lift. It’s the ghetto-isation of the rich.
The news reports double digit growth in sales of luxury products. Ferrari, for example, has sold out of the newest model, at £375k a pop! The majority of customers are from the developing economies, like Brazil and China, and I wonder what their countrymen think of this kind of fortune from the other side of the big divide. The irony is they would probably aspire to the same material goals, given half a chance, as opposed to doing something for the greater good.
The poorer masses are learning what we are in many ways trying to unlearn. They’re gearing up while we attempt to downsize. Everybody wants a car that says something about them, a holiday abroad and a home they can call their own; shopping on Saturdays, lie-in Sundays, a manicure, pedicure, fat-cure, thin-cure, flat screen, iPhone, WiFi, ringtone. Big boobs, wet room, fly drive, high five, credit worthy, plunge pool, lo-cal, theme choon.
When I was younger and more idealistic, I thought that in a world of finite resources it surely follows that when one person has more, another must have correspondingly less? And when those that have less have so very little, like a shack with no power or plumbing, a Ferrari must represent some kind of insult? It seems not. What my dream guitar represents in all this is anybody’s guess – a small fart in somebody's general direction...
Years ago, in a small diving resort in northern Bali, I bought a bottle of local whisky to share with the young Balinese guys managing the cafe. I needed the company, having denied myself the opportunity to join half of Australia on the south coast, and we got slowly drunk as night fell. I tried to convince these guys that I too was a poor man – to give this some context, I was a despatch rider in London living from hand to mouth. I had borrowed some money from my girlfriend to get out there (to visit an old school friend, in Java), so my story carried some weight as far as I was concerned.
They listened politely but were having none of it. Never mind my camera being a crappy instamatic, my rucksack being the one my mum bought me when I was 16 to go to the Reading Festival. Just being there, thousands of miles from home, put me in a different league. It was a pretty miserable trip in the end, because I wanted to travel but hated being a tourist. It was OK while I was with my friend, Mark, but as soon as I went my own way I became a tourist and the mood changed. Something wasn’t right, though, I mean being miserable in paradise? What a knob.
When I get to the end of the jam I can see that there’s no obstruction on the London bound side of the carriageway, the hold-up is due to people slowing down to gawp at a car mashed up on the other side. You’d think people would be sick to realise this, having sat in a jam for the last hour, and make a point of looking away as they swiftly pass by.
Well, get ready for the developing world, we’ve had our fun and it looks like they want their turn. Let us hope they at least have the decency not to gawp at our crashed economy as they pass us by.
I’m supposed to be finishing off air leakage testing at One Hyde Park – the most prestigious residential accommodation in London, or Europe, if the publicity is to be believed. Residents will have a private leisure suite, including pool, gym, spa, racquet courts, cinema and party room at their disposal in the basement. They really won’t have to mix with the great unwashed, for anything, even vehicle access involves using a drive in car lift. It’s the ghetto-isation of the rich.
The news reports double digit growth in sales of luxury products. Ferrari, for example, has sold out of the newest model, at £375k a pop! The majority of customers are from the developing economies, like Brazil and China, and I wonder what their countrymen think of this kind of fortune from the other side of the big divide. The irony is they would probably aspire to the same material goals, given half a chance, as opposed to doing something for the greater good.
The poorer masses are learning what we are in many ways trying to unlearn. They’re gearing up while we attempt to downsize. Everybody wants a car that says something about them, a holiday abroad and a home they can call their own; shopping on Saturdays, lie-in Sundays, a manicure, pedicure, fat-cure, thin-cure, flat screen, iPhone, WiFi, ringtone. Big boobs, wet room, fly drive, high five, credit worthy, plunge pool, lo-cal, theme choon.
When I was younger and more idealistic, I thought that in a world of finite resources it surely follows that when one person has more, another must have correspondingly less? And when those that have less have so very little, like a shack with no power or plumbing, a Ferrari must represent some kind of insult? It seems not. What my dream guitar represents in all this is anybody’s guess – a small fart in somebody's general direction...
Years ago, in a small diving resort in northern Bali, I bought a bottle of local whisky to share with the young Balinese guys managing the cafe. I needed the company, having denied myself the opportunity to join half of Australia on the south coast, and we got slowly drunk as night fell. I tried to convince these guys that I too was a poor man – to give this some context, I was a despatch rider in London living from hand to mouth. I had borrowed some money from my girlfriend to get out there (to visit an old school friend, in Java), so my story carried some weight as far as I was concerned.
They listened politely but were having none of it. Never mind my camera being a crappy instamatic, my rucksack being the one my mum bought me when I was 16 to go to the Reading Festival. Just being there, thousands of miles from home, put me in a different league. It was a pretty miserable trip in the end, because I wanted to travel but hated being a tourist. It was OK while I was with my friend, Mark, but as soon as I went my own way I became a tourist and the mood changed. Something wasn’t right, though, I mean being miserable in paradise? What a knob.
When I get to the end of the jam I can see that there’s no obstruction on the London bound side of the carriageway, the hold-up is due to people slowing down to gawp at a car mashed up on the other side. You’d think people would be sick to realise this, having sat in a jam for the last hour, and make a point of looking away as they swiftly pass by.
Well, get ready for the developing world, we’ve had our fun and it looks like they want their turn. Let us hope they at least have the decency not to gawp at our crashed economy as they pass us by.
Sunday, 24 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.7 – Miles Covered 71.2
My first road legal outing on the Black Bullet was to the petrol station, for gas and air, and then, somewhat prosaically, to Blockbusters to return a DVD. From there, we took the Newbury Road as far as The Ridgeway and came back via Pete’s place. This comprised four starts in total and, much to my relief, the unenviable situation of struggling to start the bike under public scrutiny didn’t materialise.
The bike handles much better on the road than the farm tracks I’ve become used to, it just lacks a bit of top end. Pete had an AJS and reckons the Bullet should do 65mph, no problem. I got 50mph with the bike in its raw, un-tuned state, so there’s some work to do. But even at 50mph it was glorious.
The section into town was about listening, looking, weaving (a little) and braking, testing things out basically. After filling up and dropping off the DVD I piled on the revs up Chain Hill. At the top is what Jane calls The Money Shot, where the hedgerows drop back and a panorama of the Berkshire Downs suddenly opens up, in dramatic fashion.
It has been said that in a car you look at the world through a screen, a bit like TV, even with the window down it’s in a frame, the weather can’t touch you and you don’t necessarily feel the speed. On a bike you’re no longer a spectator. If it rains you get wet, if you fall off it hurts but it blows the cobwebs away and you do get to enjoy an unrestricted view.
The Money Shot was spectacular this afternoon, a late sun bursting through broody low-slung cloud, the landscape all gold and green. It was cold but the old bike jacket and new gloves worked a treat. A long shadow on the way back emphasised how up in the saddle the riding position is. Unlike a modern bike, which you effectively sit in, you’re on top of this old iron, getting a faceful of whatever’s going on.
I had the old girl wound back to the stop on a couple of curves. Again, as you’re not sitting in the bike you’re not really connected to the centre of gravity and the effect of shifting bodyweight on the handling is minimal. I’d like to think it’s a more dignified position but I do recall the pleasure available to the person who gets it right on a bendy B road in a modern sports machine. We’re not comparing apples with apples, however, and I’m not about to bolt on a pair of rear-sets.
In the spring I might get some panniers for the laptop have a go at commuting like this, meantime I’ve got the Redditch trip to organise.
The bike handles much better on the road than the farm tracks I’ve become used to, it just lacks a bit of top end. Pete had an AJS and reckons the Bullet should do 65mph, no problem. I got 50mph with the bike in its raw, un-tuned state, so there’s some work to do. But even at 50mph it was glorious.
The section into town was about listening, looking, weaving (a little) and braking, testing things out basically. After filling up and dropping off the DVD I piled on the revs up Chain Hill. At the top is what Jane calls The Money Shot, where the hedgerows drop back and a panorama of the Berkshire Downs suddenly opens up, in dramatic fashion.
It has been said that in a car you look at the world through a screen, a bit like TV, even with the window down it’s in a frame, the weather can’t touch you and you don’t necessarily feel the speed. On a bike you’re no longer a spectator. If it rains you get wet, if you fall off it hurts but it blows the cobwebs away and you do get to enjoy an unrestricted view.
The Money Shot was spectacular this afternoon, a late sun bursting through broody low-slung cloud, the landscape all gold and green. It was cold but the old bike jacket and new gloves worked a treat. A long shadow on the way back emphasised how up in the saddle the riding position is. Unlike a modern bike, which you effectively sit in, you’re on top of this old iron, getting a faceful of whatever’s going on.
I had the old girl wound back to the stop on a couple of curves. Again, as you’re not sitting in the bike you’re not really connected to the centre of gravity and the effect of shifting bodyweight on the handling is minimal. I’d like to think it’s a more dignified position but I do recall the pleasure available to the person who gets it right on a bendy B road in a modern sports machine. We’re not comparing apples with apples, however, and I’m not about to bolt on a pair of rear-sets.
In the spring I might get some panniers for the laptop have a go at commuting like this, meantime I’ve got the Redditch trip to organise.
Saturday, 23 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.6 - Miles Covered 60.4
A picture worth a thousand words - The Black Bullet has risen!
I cut a stencil at work yesterday and sprayed the number on a few minutes ago. When its dry I'm going for a spin, out on the main road.
I tried to download the official number plate font for this job but the Evil Corporation's IT department won't even grant priviledges to change the time on work computers, let alone install new fonts, so I checked the rules on alphanumeric dimensions and did the best I could with the fonts to hand.
It will be a very picky PC that to pull me over for non-conformity but a classic number plate is just shy of £40, and that would have to bolt over the original, so I'm going to make do with this arrangement for the time being.
The registration document states that the bike is, Rebuilt - assembled from parts some or all of which were not new. It's a bit of an insult to the old girl but the DVLA have played fair by their own rules and I can't slate them for that. The notification of registration came with a tax disc, I'm going to slot it into the holder and get out there. Nuff said.
Wednesday, 20 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.5 – Miles Covered 60.4
It was bloody cold this morning and I couldn’t help but think of Bob’s brother-in-law picking his bike up off the bank and jumping it down the lane. I’m still waiting for a letter from the DVLA, so sadly the Black Bullet hasn’t seen the light for a few days. The summer’s gone and those bright days of autumn are in short supply.
Back at the Olympic Park today, witnessing testing to cladding systems. The savvy London commuters have shuffled me to the back of the pack and I’m looking at standing on the train all the way in. Even the buffet car is chokka, every surface guarded by elbows and sullen morning faces (if I could see them, they’ve all got their backs to me).
I wander up through First and find a place on the floor in a lobby, by the bin. It’s one better than by the toilet and I can sit on my site helmet and use my laptop - First Class indeed.
When I get my registration number and tax disc, I want to do an inaugural ride to Enfield Road, Redditch, where this bike was made. I thought about Cairo to Cape Town but straight away I could see difficulties. The wife would never sign my timesheet. The likelihood of enduring some terminal breakdown, roadside banditry, or kidnap scenario en route dawned only afterwards.
It was the same adolescent tendency for exaggeration that led me to think I could make it across the Sahara, un-escorted, in a 1962 SWB Petrol Land Rover. I thought I was over it but as I watch my son at play I think perhaps it’s a boy thing and we never really get over it.
Certainly my girlfriend at the time wasn’t on the same wavelength when we launched ourselves down the M20 to Dover some 25 years ago. I didn’t realise this at the time, but I found out when our 4WD failed on Perpignan beach and we had to be rescued. “You and your stupid bloody adventure,” she shouted, storming off. I knew then that I should have listened to her dad and taken her camping along the Riviera. “What’s wrong with Europe?” he’d said. I had no immediate answer to this, except it wasn’t the Sahara.
Kenichi saw this in me and called it ‘e-conjo’, which means courage, or something, but then he was a drinker of Banzai spirit and perhaps not the best role model for an impressionable young man.
There was a distinct lack of any adult guidance present in my life at the time of the Africa trip and headstrong though I was, it wasn’t until a ragged ex French Legionnaire grabbed me by the throat at a campsite in southern France and spelled it out to me that I began to understand the enormity of the undertaking.
The guy was rough and he held a knife to my throat to demonstrate how easy it would be to divest me of all my worldly goods, I was truly helpless and the blade burned my skin. He then pushed me back down by the campfire and laughed, clicking the lock knife shut and waving at our roof rack stacked with petrol cans. “You need a diesel anyway,” he said (imagine a thick accent). “Zat way, when you run out you can beg some off ze truckers. Ze gaz is sheeet anyway.”
The next morning our new trip advisor had gone, leaving all his worldly goods behind. “He was on the run from the legion,” shrugged one of the French boys. “said we should take all his stuff, like he was not even here.” I bartered with the lad for the knife and kept it for many years. I think my mum eventually found it among my things in the loft and threw it out.
In the depths of a recession, a trip abroad, out of the way if you like, is an attractive proposition. But these days it’s not wholly my decision and to be honest I’d cry by the roadside for missing my family. So Redditch it is. I might give The Redditch Standard a call and see if they’re interested in a photo opportunity.
Back at the Olympic Park today, witnessing testing to cladding systems. The savvy London commuters have shuffled me to the back of the pack and I’m looking at standing on the train all the way in. Even the buffet car is chokka, every surface guarded by elbows and sullen morning faces (if I could see them, they’ve all got their backs to me).
I wander up through First and find a place on the floor in a lobby, by the bin. It’s one better than by the toilet and I can sit on my site helmet and use my laptop - First Class indeed.
When I get my registration number and tax disc, I want to do an inaugural ride to Enfield Road, Redditch, where this bike was made. I thought about Cairo to Cape Town but straight away I could see difficulties. The wife would never sign my timesheet. The likelihood of enduring some terminal breakdown, roadside banditry, or kidnap scenario en route dawned only afterwards.
It was the same adolescent tendency for exaggeration that led me to think I could make it across the Sahara, un-escorted, in a 1962 SWB Petrol Land Rover. I thought I was over it but as I watch my son at play I think perhaps it’s a boy thing and we never really get over it.
Certainly my girlfriend at the time wasn’t on the same wavelength when we launched ourselves down the M20 to Dover some 25 years ago. I didn’t realise this at the time, but I found out when our 4WD failed on Perpignan beach and we had to be rescued. “You and your stupid bloody adventure,” she shouted, storming off. I knew then that I should have listened to her dad and taken her camping along the Riviera. “What’s wrong with Europe?” he’d said. I had no immediate answer to this, except it wasn’t the Sahara.
Kenichi saw this in me and called it ‘e-conjo’, which means courage, or something, but then he was a drinker of Banzai spirit and perhaps not the best role model for an impressionable young man.
There was a distinct lack of any adult guidance present in my life at the time of the Africa trip and headstrong though I was, it wasn’t until a ragged ex French Legionnaire grabbed me by the throat at a campsite in southern France and spelled it out to me that I began to understand the enormity of the undertaking.
The guy was rough and he held a knife to my throat to demonstrate how easy it would be to divest me of all my worldly goods, I was truly helpless and the blade burned my skin. He then pushed me back down by the campfire and laughed, clicking the lock knife shut and waving at our roof rack stacked with petrol cans. “You need a diesel anyway,” he said (imagine a thick accent). “Zat way, when you run out you can beg some off ze truckers. Ze gaz is sheeet anyway.”
The next morning our new trip advisor had gone, leaving all his worldly goods behind. “He was on the run from the legion,” shrugged one of the French boys. “said we should take all his stuff, like he was not even here.” I bartered with the lad for the knife and kept it for many years. I think my mum eventually found it among my things in the loft and threw it out.
In the depths of a recession, a trip abroad, out of the way if you like, is an attractive proposition. But these days it’s not wholly my decision and to be honest I’d cry by the roadside for missing my family. So Redditch it is. I might give The Redditch Standard a call and see if they’re interested in a photo opportunity.
Thursday, 14 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.4 – Miles Covered 60.4
Still no word from the dudes at the DVLA - it’s been months since I started out on this project. I called the local office and listened to all of the options, the robot on the other end said, “If it is over four weeks since you submitted your application, press one.” It isn’t over four weeks, so it seemed pointless to 'press one'.
All that talk about Japan got me thinking; I was incredibly lucky to get under the skin of the place, thanks to Kenichi and family. I saw stuff and went places many of the other English teachers never did. Having a bike made such a difference, more than a car would have with the off-road opportunities added in. It was difficult to navigate, not being able to read the road signs, and there was no satnav or online journey planner in those days. For a trip of any length I would have to study the road map and transcribe the kanji characters of the key places along the way on a strip of paper, which I’d tape to the tank.
Kenichi, being a solid working class boy and confident in his element, suggested I stop at any mechanic’s workshop to ask directions, should I get lost. It was with a typical lack of appreciation of the enormity of the undertaking that he offered this advice. I did actually do this, however, and got help several times but if Kenny had been a hairdresser it probably would have been the same thing, only stopping at salons. People are funny like that, determined to stay within the boundaries of the familiar.
This was precisely what I wasn’t interested in at the time, it sounds like bravado but oddly a lot of it was down to insecurity. Since I was 18 I had heard of school friends taking off, going travelling, and this seemed like the biggest adventure to be had, the ultimate right of passage. While I applied myself to gothic punk in Bristol, my best mate took off for foreign soil. When he came back he seemed different and I got all defensive about it. “I travel in my mind,” I told myself, but the country of the mind tends to shrink when you stay in one place.
Eventually, after a panicky attempt to make up for lost time - involving a failed attempt to get to the Sahara in a rickety old Landrover - I got a call from a girl I’d worked with in a restaurant in Bristol. “Fancy a job in Japan?” she said, all crackly and distant. “I’ll give you a call next Sunday, when you’ve had a chance to think about it.” Next Sunday came round and I hadn’t really given it much thought. I’d moved back in with my mum and dad and was working in a music shop in Exeter, and I was severely depressed. When she rang back I said I’d go, mainly because the consequences of saying no were intolerable.
It was the best thing I ever did. It was challenging and sometimes downright scary, but I got out of the hole I’d dug for myself and after a while, when I stopped missing my friends, I didn’t look back. Every school holiday I’d jump ship for China, Thailand, Taiwan, eager to see more and join the ranks of my well-travelled peers. The fact that I’d grown up in Africa didn’t count. This was me alone, coming to terms with life with the world at my feet.
All that talk about Japan got me thinking; I was incredibly lucky to get under the skin of the place, thanks to Kenichi and family. I saw stuff and went places many of the other English teachers never did. Having a bike made such a difference, more than a car would have with the off-road opportunities added in. It was difficult to navigate, not being able to read the road signs, and there was no satnav or online journey planner in those days. For a trip of any length I would have to study the road map and transcribe the kanji characters of the key places along the way on a strip of paper, which I’d tape to the tank.
Kenichi, being a solid working class boy and confident in his element, suggested I stop at any mechanic’s workshop to ask directions, should I get lost. It was with a typical lack of appreciation of the enormity of the undertaking that he offered this advice. I did actually do this, however, and got help several times but if Kenny had been a hairdresser it probably would have been the same thing, only stopping at salons. People are funny like that, determined to stay within the boundaries of the familiar.
This was precisely what I wasn’t interested in at the time, it sounds like bravado but oddly a lot of it was down to insecurity. Since I was 18 I had heard of school friends taking off, going travelling, and this seemed like the biggest adventure to be had, the ultimate right of passage. While I applied myself to gothic punk in Bristol, my best mate took off for foreign soil. When he came back he seemed different and I got all defensive about it. “I travel in my mind,” I told myself, but the country of the mind tends to shrink when you stay in one place.
Eventually, after a panicky attempt to make up for lost time - involving a failed attempt to get to the Sahara in a rickety old Landrover - I got a call from a girl I’d worked with in a restaurant in Bristol. “Fancy a job in Japan?” she said, all crackly and distant. “I’ll give you a call next Sunday, when you’ve had a chance to think about it.” Next Sunday came round and I hadn’t really given it much thought. I’d moved back in with my mum and dad and was working in a music shop in Exeter, and I was severely depressed. When she rang back I said I’d go, mainly because the consequences of saying no were intolerable.
It was the best thing I ever did. It was challenging and sometimes downright scary, but I got out of the hole I’d dug for myself and after a while, when I stopped missing my friends, I didn’t look back. Every school holiday I’d jump ship for China, Thailand, Taiwan, eager to see more and join the ranks of my well-travelled peers. The fact that I’d grown up in Africa didn’t count. This was me alone, coming to terms with life with the world at my feet.
Thursday, 7 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.3 - Miles Covered 58.4
After a time of teaching English in Japan in my 20’s, I started hanging out with a Japanese family, and if this seems at odds with the formality normally associated with the Japanese, it was. Kenichi wasn’t mainstream, but at the same time he was very Japanese, and completely nuts. Photo: Kenichi, me (note ripped bloodstained trousers), Miki & Jim
“Biru San” (Mr Beer), he used to say, puffing out his chest, “we are super Japanese, daiyo.” With that he would rabbit punch the air, to drive the point home.
He was working class Japanese done good and, like Roy, he owned a motor repair shop, called Phenix Garage. Misspelling in English is not considered a mistake in Japan, hell, the discussions in class about how to represent any word or meaning in Kanji just ran and ran. There was a brilliant 5m long neon sign in Yachiyo Shi advertising ‘Harmburger’.
It was Kenichi who decided I was to be a motorcyclist. “Biru San, let’s go lindo,” (trail riding) he announced emphatically one day after class. I was 24, alone, about as far away from parental disapproval as I could get and, crucially, I was ready to fall off anything I could get my hands on. We started gently by going motocrossing in Narita the following weekend.
After the grazes healed and my ankle stopped looking like an aubergine (from falling heavily off kenichi’s daughter’s bike), it was decided that I would enrol at motorcycle school. Trail riding inevitably included some sections of road, linking up the trails, so I would have to get a Japanese licence.
Every week, Kenichi’s wife, Kimiko, would dutifully pick me up at my apartment and drop me back afterwards. In retrospect, I can’t help wondering what she thought of her husband taking this foreigner under his wing. I was the only blonde 6ft male for miles around, hard to miss, and the Japanese principal of the English School would not have approved of the plans he had for me.
If I was to be uncharitable, I suspect he sold her a line about free English lessons and looked forward to some righteous motorsport with his mates, using me as an excuse. Kenichi always had a grand plan, though, and eventually he revealed that his was to fly to the states and buy certain desirable cars at knock down prices. Employing the services of a bilingual negotiator, at knock down prices, was a key part of his plan. To be honest, I was more than happy to be paid in advance in sushi, beer and motocross. I would have gone on my first trip to the States for free.
Motorcycle school was fun. It was also safer than being taught by Kenichi. Looking back I was lucky to come away with just a bruised foot from my first go on a bike, ever, at Narita. What was Kenichi thinking, giving me a bike and just sending me out into the motocross melee? It was a question that cropped up with alarming regularity.
The school had a dummy road system which we would snake around on, kindergarten fashion, on 400cc Honda Reveres. The instructors would strut about in police style jodhpurs, barking instructions, which I just about understood. Otherwise I just copied the guy in front. I did well at the practical exam but when they put a written paper in front of me I just looked at them and said, “Impossible, daiyo.” My spoken Japanese had got quite good but I could never read or write it.
I guess they just didn’t know what to do with me from that point on. The examiner took me to the department head, who looked annoyed at being presented with an impossible problem. The department head took me to the school principal, who fumed back at him for the same reason. In the end I was ejected unceremoniously, but with a certificate in my hand. Probably the first and last gaijin to go through the Yachiyo school.
Kenichi found me a Honda XL250 single, it cost me a month’s wages but he had one of his mechanics replace the road tyres with knobblies and drive it over to the school on the day I graduated. “Biru San, let’s go!” he shouted, helmet on, eyes gleaming behind thick lenses. The ride home was nothing like anything I’d learned at school but if I was to keep up with him I quickly realised I’d have to break a few minor traffic regulations. The banzai spirit is intoxicating and foreigners don’t know any better, I told myself.
We had an expression, ‘gaijin value’, which took care of any difficulties related to cultural faux pas. Jim, who’d joined me in Japan by then, went out on my bike to fetch booze one Friday night, with a pissed yank called Daniel on the back. They were stopped by the law and Jim gave my name, Daniel wobbling on the back brandishing a bottle of bourbon. The cops let them go, which is crazy, but they just looked like too much trouble for a couple of small town policemen – the wonder of gaijin value.
I had a small accident soon after that and went to the police station to report it. Jim had omitted the detail about giving my name that night and these coppers were like, “yeah, we wondered how long it would be before we saw you in here...Mr Beer.”
I’ve had so many damn accidents since Japan, which is not in the script anymore, I hope. The story is supposed to be; westerner goes east to learn from Japanese master, not Japanese nut-job. It wasn’t just Kenichi either, there was this kid Miki, who worked for him, who wrung the neck of a two-stroke four until it spat him off. “What happened?” we asked, on a hospital visit. He couldn’t say, except it all happened on the expressway at 250kph. He was probably watching the clock instead of the road.
They love their speed the Japanese but an idiosyncrasy of licensing regulations means that big bore bikes are only ridden by old men. It’s hilarious to see these little prunes on giant bikes - good on ‘em though, go for it grandad. This is why they’re so intent on making pocket rockets, or were in any case, for Miki and his adrenalin crew. It would be nice to know what’s come of them.
I’m hoping the DVLA will get their shit together next week and send me a reg for the Black Bullet. I don’t even know what I’m missing but I’m missing it bad, ever since that evil corporation wrecked my inner peace. I even put the guitar up for sale. I know, it’s crazy, but achieving your dreams by UPS isn’t right somehow. It’s hard to explain. I need to get out on the bike and soak up some rain.
Wednesday, 6 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.2 - Miles Covered 58.4
Awoke after terrible dreams, interesting plot but really quite mortifying. A truly evil spirit, manifest in a church (I guess for reasons of melodrama) had latched on to my family and brought the most unforgiving curse upon it. Anything truly loved by us would be destroyed - this was the spirit’s sole purpose. There were three phases to the dream:
- The first phase was about denial. We tried to hide our son away from this malignant spirit. It looked into our hearts and found our love for him and popped his head off with a thumbnail, like a pimple. I won’t describe the act in any more detail, it was utterly appalling.
- The second phase was sacrifice. We wrecked the church in grief and anger and tried to instil hate in our hearts for each other, to protect each other. But as we screamed and struck each other it saw love as the primary motivation and as it was my dream, of course, it killed my partner.
- The final phase was even more unpalatable. I realised that the only way to destroy the demon was to learn to love it. If I could only dig deep enough, find a way to convince myself, to really believe it, feel it in my heart, then it would turn on itself and be consumed by its own vengeful, single minded purpose.
Christ, no word of a lie, I woke up gasping and in a sweat. Love the thing you hate the most? It still makes me dizzy just to think of it. Who could do such a thing after the havoc already wreaked? Surely it flies in the very face of being human?
Thankfully it was only a dream but it did not auger well for the week ahead and the parallels with what comes next are hard to ignore. Yesterday the boss called a special meeting to announce something important. Now you remember what I said about taking a photo of the Black Bullet with the family and the guitar all posed in front of the house? It was the 1st October 2010, the day I realised I had everything I ever wanted. Well, be careful what you hope for, it lasted barely a week.
To explain this I need to backtrack momentarily. We can only afford to live in this house in this village because it is part of a charitable housing trust, set up to save the landowner property tax. The trust requires that occupants qualify for charitable housing status by working on, or for, the Estate. It’s a legacy of more patriarchal times and we have benefited from this arrangement since I moved here to take the job.
Now our new parent company has decided to close our office and combine two offices in one, in North Oxfordshire, which effectively means we’re going to lose our home. It a crushing blow, make no mistake about it. We’ve built a life we love out here and some fool with a sharp pencil has just crossed it out. Simple as that.
There’s always been a sense of crossing over into the pastoral, as you drive down into the village from the main road at the end of a long day. The mobile signal fades and the chestnut bordered horse paddocks buzz with insects, picked out against the shadows by the low evening sun. The swallows go crazy for them, darting past ducks on a lazy flap over to the lake.
So it’s hard not to be really angry about this, but in the meeting rooms of a Cheshire Travelodge, or wherever it may be, it must be quite easy to ameliorate the bank manager by describing how you’re going to streamline your operation and pay back what you’ve borrowed by cutting this and rationalising that. I’ve been on the end of this kind of thing before and the funny thing is you’ll never find anyone directly responsible for making these decisions. It’s spineless bullshit, in my view, not ‘hard business decisions to match hard times’ as the people responsible would have you believe. These crackers don’t know hard times.
It reminds me of a telling scene in a kids movie where all the ants stand on each others’ shoulders to allow the ruling ants to climb to a leaf out of danger. When the last of the ruling ants steps to safety the ant at the top of the column pulls at the leaf to steady a wobble and the ruling ants nearly fall off.
“Let go,” shouts a ruling ant, “it’s for the good of the community!”
The top ant looks up and pleads, “but we are the community.”
We can only conclude that the new company has no interest in ‘the community’ and even if we survive this change and get to stay put, I’m not sure I can continue to work for them in the way I used to. there was no spring in my step this morning and I'm spending lunchtime in the pub, fuck them. Change is daunting but not nearly as scary as damnation.
Anyway, the final tranche of paperwork for the Black Bullet has been submitted. I posted it in this time, I’m not sure there’s anything more I can do or say to sway the decision. I headed the letter, Application for an Age-related Registration. Now we await the final outcome.
Friday, 1 October 2010
The Black Bullet 3.1 - Miles covered 58.4
Roy puts in the call I was waiting for and I fidget the rest of the way through a training session at work, looking out of the window like a bored schoolboy at the ebb and flow of the rain. By the time the discussion turns to safety method statements I’ve really had enough, but there's no easy way out.
It’s typical in these sessions for people with ambition to hijack centre stage, once the agenda has been covered, and try to out-shine each other. Old rivalries are thinly disguised by the veneer of debate, one to which you’d best not be fooled into thinking you’re invited. After 20 minutes or so of being an audience member, I slip out, leaving my notebook and jacket behind. This way it looks like I intend to return, which I don’t, not right away.
It’s not just me who feels surplus to requirements and when one person leaves it often breaks the spell. Pretty soon I’m joined in the back office by John, a young lad from North Wales. He’s a good lad, John, and he agrees to give me a lift up to Roy’s garage to retrieve the Black Bullet before they close up for the weekend. The rain is lashing down when we jump into John’s old Golf, which mists up immediately. He asks about the bike over the roar of the demister.
“You going to do it up?”
“No, don’t think so, I like it like it is.”
“You could do it up and sell it for loads.”
“S’pose so, but it’s not like that.”
I’m distracted, the combination of pooling water and conker mash on the road looks lethal. Must remember to take it easy under the trees on the way back.
John switches to chat about cars.
“When I sold my other car, it was a nightmare. Idiots calling me up day and night with stupid questions. I couldn’t relax at home, I hated it. I mean what would happen if I suddenly said "a thousand pounds", or something, without thinking?”
“Was there a danger of that?”
“Yeah, well, when you’re relaxing...”
“You think you might have sold yourself short just to put an end to it?”
“It was like they owned me. They were calling when I was asleep. One bloke from Manchester called and said, ‘how fast does it go?’ I said, ‘it’s a Focus 1.6, you know...’ he just didn’t get it. He said he wanted a fast car but they wouldn’t insure him for it. What do you say to that?”
We pull into Roy’s yard and ‘Yo’ Stuart and Kevin, his main mechanics. Kevin in particular comes over for a chat. He’s usually on the shy side, no shrinking violet, but quiet. He’s got this light in his eyes though, behind his glasses, the Black Bullet has got him all sparky.
“We didn’t think we’d see you til Monday, what with the rain an’ all.”
I pump myself up as this all-weather rider dude and to some degree I do mean it. Christ I’ve done some stupid things - riding in ice and snow - the only thing is, I’m old now and don't bounce like I used to. I’ve crashed every bike I’ve owned, the truth be told, and part of the Bullet’s attraction is its lack of out-and-out speed.
It’s nice to find genuine enthusiasm for this thing that I’m doing and I ask Kevin & Stuart to pose for a photo.
I pay as the boys wheel the bike out front. The rain hasn’t really let up and I’m hoping the damp doesn’t make her hard to start. I get a kickback after three strikes and then she goes, with the throttle held wide open. Appreciative faces look out from the dry, a few slightly embarassed man waves, and we’re off.
It’s good to be out on the road after a day cooped up in the meeting room, needle raindrops etching away the boredom. I shouldn’t be out here with no plate but it's back roads all the way home and I have pretty much everything else. John drives behind and tells me later that I was doing 55mph along one stretch - propelled by sheer exuberance.
Now I’m sitting in the front room looking at a long brown unopened box! My guitar has arrived and I've waited, a little anxiously, until the house is quiet to open it. The thing about dreams is they shouldn't really turn up in a box and confront you. It's probablty best if they don't. The longer and deeper you lust after something, the greater the potential disappointment, so I'm not going to open it now. Maybe do a grand opening tomorrow to show Poz what this 'present' really means to his dad and then of course I'm going to have to tell him he can't play with it. Shit. But what do I do?
It’s typical in these sessions for people with ambition to hijack centre stage, once the agenda has been covered, and try to out-shine each other. Old rivalries are thinly disguised by the veneer of debate, one to which you’d best not be fooled into thinking you’re invited. After 20 minutes or so of being an audience member, I slip out, leaving my notebook and jacket behind. This way it looks like I intend to return, which I don’t, not right away.
It’s not just me who feels surplus to requirements and when one person leaves it often breaks the spell. Pretty soon I’m joined in the back office by John, a young lad from North Wales. He’s a good lad, John, and he agrees to give me a lift up to Roy’s garage to retrieve the Black Bullet before they close up for the weekend. The rain is lashing down when we jump into John’s old Golf, which mists up immediately. He asks about the bike over the roar of the demister.
“You going to do it up?”
“No, don’t think so, I like it like it is.”
“You could do it up and sell it for loads.”
“S’pose so, but it’s not like that.”
I’m distracted, the combination of pooling water and conker mash on the road looks lethal. Must remember to take it easy under the trees on the way back.
John switches to chat about cars.
“When I sold my other car, it was a nightmare. Idiots calling me up day and night with stupid questions. I couldn’t relax at home, I hated it. I mean what would happen if I suddenly said "a thousand pounds", or something, without thinking?”
“Was there a danger of that?”
“Yeah, well, when you’re relaxing...”
“You think you might have sold yourself short just to put an end to it?”
“It was like they owned me. They were calling when I was asleep. One bloke from Manchester called and said, ‘how fast does it go?’ I said, ‘it’s a Focus 1.6, you know...’ he just didn’t get it. He said he wanted a fast car but they wouldn’t insure him for it. What do you say to that?”
We pull into Roy’s yard and ‘Yo’ Stuart and Kevin, his main mechanics. Kevin in particular comes over for a chat. He’s usually on the shy side, no shrinking violet, but quiet. He’s got this light in his eyes though, behind his glasses, the Black Bullet has got him all sparky.
“We didn’t think we’d see you til Monday, what with the rain an’ all.”
I pump myself up as this all-weather rider dude and to some degree I do mean it. Christ I’ve done some stupid things - riding in ice and snow - the only thing is, I’m old now and don't bounce like I used to. I’ve crashed every bike I’ve owned, the truth be told, and part of the Bullet’s attraction is its lack of out-and-out speed.
It’s nice to find genuine enthusiasm for this thing that I’m doing and I ask Kevin & Stuart to pose for a photo.
I pay as the boys wheel the bike out front. The rain hasn’t really let up and I’m hoping the damp doesn’t make her hard to start. I get a kickback after three strikes and then she goes, with the throttle held wide open. Appreciative faces look out from the dry, a few slightly embarassed man waves, and we’re off.
It’s good to be out on the road after a day cooped up in the meeting room, needle raindrops etching away the boredom. I shouldn’t be out here with no plate but it's back roads all the way home and I have pretty much everything else. John drives behind and tells me later that I was doing 55mph along one stretch - propelled by sheer exuberance.
Now I’m sitting in the front room looking at a long brown unopened box! My guitar has arrived and I've waited, a little anxiously, until the house is quiet to open it. The thing about dreams is they shouldn't really turn up in a box and confront you. It's probablty best if they don't. The longer and deeper you lust after something, the greater the potential disappointment, so I'm not going to open it now. Maybe do a grand opening tomorrow to show Poz what this 'present' really means to his dad and then of course I'm going to have to tell him he can't play with it. Shit. But what do I do?
Thursday, 30 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.12 - Miles Covered 57.3
The Black Bullet is in the hands of a local mechanic, Roy, at his backwoods motor shop across from the Williams F1 HQ. If this were a city it would be a ‘backstreet’ garage, but Roy’s shop is genuinely set back in the woods, near a canal and a rail bridge - an old transport hub, gone to sleep.
Although stamping kits are available on eBay, a botched job is unlikely to impress the DVLA and after all the hoops I’ve jumped to satisfy them, I want the new frame number to be crisp and certain. If anyone’s likely to go ‘thwack’, followed by "doh!" it’s me, so I’ve handed the responsibility to a man who’s done it before (or who at least has the official capacity to f@#k it up).
I maintain that the overstamp of one digit of the old frame number – the existence of which I’ve never denied, or tried to conceal – is just as likely to have been a result of such a cock up. A distracted worker reaching for a three and picking up a seven, or an odd match of engine and frame made good on the production line (if there was such a thing)? But that was over fifty years ago and everything’s so damn serious and controlled now. We do it to ourselves, it seems, we just can't help it.
The REOC dating officer has replied, quite quickly this time. The tone of his letters is increasingly taciturn but not without reason, I feel, and he’s not getting paid to be polite. “I cannot state it more clearly,” he says, “the number on the frame and that on the engine are six months apart, according to factory records.” So, once Roy has done his work and produced a receipt for it, I’ll take my growing bundle of papers down to Humourless at the Local DVLA office, hopefully for the last time.
Everything is coming to the boil. The guitar supposedly arrives tomorrow, which is a big deal for me, it's like a religious icon on tour. The Ryder Cup begins, I should get the bike back and there's cider-making this weekend, the first real autumn festival as far as I'm concerned. It’s all going on, full throttle.
Although stamping kits are available on eBay, a botched job is unlikely to impress the DVLA and after all the hoops I’ve jumped to satisfy them, I want the new frame number to be crisp and certain. If anyone’s likely to go ‘thwack’, followed by "doh!" it’s me, so I’ve handed the responsibility to a man who’s done it before (or who at least has the official capacity to f@#k it up).
I maintain that the overstamp of one digit of the old frame number – the existence of which I’ve never denied, or tried to conceal – is just as likely to have been a result of such a cock up. A distracted worker reaching for a three and picking up a seven, or an odd match of engine and frame made good on the production line (if there was such a thing)? But that was over fifty years ago and everything’s so damn serious and controlled now. We do it to ourselves, it seems, we just can't help it.
The REOC dating officer has replied, quite quickly this time. The tone of his letters is increasingly taciturn but not without reason, I feel, and he’s not getting paid to be polite. “I cannot state it more clearly,” he says, “the number on the frame and that on the engine are six months apart, according to factory records.” So, once Roy has done his work and produced a receipt for it, I’ll take my growing bundle of papers down to Humourless at the Local DVLA office, hopefully for the last time.
Everything is coming to the boil. The guitar supposedly arrives tomorrow, which is a big deal for me, it's like a religious icon on tour. The Ryder Cup begins, I should get the bike back and there's cider-making this weekend, the first real autumn festival as far as I'm concerned. It’s all going on, full throttle.
Saturday, 25 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.11 - Miles Covered 56.3
The inspection report from the DVLA has arrived, but no word yet from the Enfield Dating Officer. More delay and frustration accompanied by a distinct change in mood and the weather. The central heating comes on now in the evenings and I haven’t been up the track on the Black Bullet for a few days.
A cumbersome 17 digit VIN has been issued in place of the six digit original, which is to be stamped on the chassis and on a plate which must be fixed to the same. Once this has been completed and the dating officer has obliged with the required statement about the frame, a registration number will be within my icy grasp.
Unsurprisingly my enthusiasm has waned a little. It all looks so simple, why make it so complicated? Man gets old bike, fixes old bike, has old bike tested for roadworthiness then surely man gasses up and rides out, no? No. Old bike might wake up one night possessed by the ghost of Christine and break out of the shed to wreak havoc abroad. Oh no, who can save us? Why DVLA Man, I guess. Presumably by focussing his VIN ray, calibrated with the required unique vehicle identification number, the rampage of the Black Bullet (and Christine) may be thwarted.
I suppose it’s for my own benefit if the cycle gets nicked, but it’s hard to see it. Number stamping kits are available on eBay for under twenty quid - it just seems like a load of overzealous bureaucratic hassle to me.
In the meantime my attention has wandered to other things. I found the guitar I’ve been looking for (another thing strictly controlled by serial number). It’s bought and paid for and should arrive sometime next week, if I haven’t been had by an evil eBayer. I hardly sleep for the anticipation of it, thinking; ‘shit, I finally bought a Gibson Les Paul. Wow!’ It’s probably the longest unrequited material desire of my life. When I get it, I’ll stand it up against the bike, get Jane and Poz in there, our home behind, and take a picture of all the things I ever wanted, together in one place.
This momentous event coincides with that archived demo from the 80s being re-mastered by the bass player, who I haven’t seen practically since we made it. I played a black Saxon Les Paul copy back then, it was a terrible plank. Maybe that’s why I played so hamfisted. I have been instructed to search out any old pictures/artwork to add to the record and this afternoon I dug around in some old boxes, which is always fun, and found a few creased photographs. We were beautiful, dude. Scruffy, stoned, hungry and cold, but cool like rock and roll.
Photo: Ade, Me, Jim & Aidan (click on the photo to get the music)
A cumbersome 17 digit VIN has been issued in place of the six digit original, which is to be stamped on the chassis and on a plate which must be fixed to the same. Once this has been completed and the dating officer has obliged with the required statement about the frame, a registration number will be within my icy grasp.
Unsurprisingly my enthusiasm has waned a little. It all looks so simple, why make it so complicated? Man gets old bike, fixes old bike, has old bike tested for roadworthiness then surely man gasses up and rides out, no? No. Old bike might wake up one night possessed by the ghost of Christine and break out of the shed to wreak havoc abroad. Oh no, who can save us? Why DVLA Man, I guess. Presumably by focussing his VIN ray, calibrated with the required unique vehicle identification number, the rampage of the Black Bullet (and Christine) may be thwarted.
I suppose it’s for my own benefit if the cycle gets nicked, but it’s hard to see it. Number stamping kits are available on eBay for under twenty quid - it just seems like a load of overzealous bureaucratic hassle to me.
In the meantime my attention has wandered to other things. I found the guitar I’ve been looking for (another thing strictly controlled by serial number). It’s bought and paid for and should arrive sometime next week, if I haven’t been had by an evil eBayer. I hardly sleep for the anticipation of it, thinking; ‘shit, I finally bought a Gibson Les Paul. Wow!’ It’s probably the longest unrequited material desire of my life. When I get it, I’ll stand it up against the bike, get Jane and Poz in there, our home behind, and take a picture of all the things I ever wanted, together in one place.
This momentous event coincides with that archived demo from the 80s being re-mastered by the bass player, who I haven’t seen practically since we made it. I played a black Saxon Les Paul copy back then, it was a terrible plank. Maybe that’s why I played so hamfisted. I have been instructed to search out any old pictures/artwork to add to the record and this afternoon I dug around in some old boxes, which is always fun, and found a few creased photographs. We were beautiful, dude. Scruffy, stoned, hungry and cold, but cool like rock and roll.
Photo: Ade, Me, Jim & Aidan (click on the photo to get the music)
Friday, 17 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.10 – 56.3 Miles Covered
History is bound to be a bit of a recurring theme with all this vintage bike business and it’s nothing less than auspicious that a ghost ship from the past rolled in yesterday and took harbour. I got a text from an old friend, Jim, who I met 30 years ago when we both aspired to a life in music. ‘Check out the discography on Bristol Archive Records,’ was all it said. It was late but curiosity would not let me sleep and I flicked the PC on.
Our band released a demo of moody noises in the early ‘80s which was picked up by a music journalist and touted as the music of the moment. These songs are now available to buy via iTunes, as part of a wider compilation of post-punk Bristolia - with a suitable disclaimer to deflect future royalty claims. To be honest, it won’t sell but I bought my own demo, just for the hell of it.
Sitting in the partial darkness of a house all tucked up in bed, with my headphones on, hearing the thump and chime of cheap instruments mixed in with gallons of tape hiss made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It wasn’t many years after that that Jim and I rocked up in Japan, bought a load more gear, and re-invented the band. After that we tried London on for a few years before growing out of it.
The thing is, I came to live in Oxfordshire after London, I still have my guitar and am even thinking about getting another one – the one I always dreamed of owning but never had the money. This continuity brings the garbled mess spilling out of the headphones via the internet right back into the present, a dream manifest as real.
There's a photo of a band called The Pop Group on the site which really sums up my memory of the time. Scruffy boys in charity shop coats, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. It looks really cold in the picture, taken in a church, and I remember the boys in the band telling stories of melting the ice in the toilet pan with the first piss of the day, in the squat where we practiced.
I used to think of these as my lost years. We clung on to our dreams in penury, pumping 50p pieces into the meter for electricty but this and the scene were soon gone. The old squats became bright expensive houses once again, Punk got left behind as a new era of greed and profligacy gained momentum. It was a moment in time, but it was where adulthood began for us and it remains part of what we are.
I talked a bit about ‘feeling the journey’ and this is exactly what I mean, artifacts connecting people with the past, bringing on fleeting waves of shadowy sensation. When you get a bit old, the edge gets dulled and this eerie poking of a slumbering memory is worth it, for the buzz. I feel good today, more whole in a way for the reaffirmation that we were there, we had a laugh and we left our mark, however slight, along with all the other moody youths in a cold and rainy (mainly) post punk Bristol.
So I’m really looking forward to my first proper ride up the A417 and beyond, for the sensations this may bring. I took the bike to be inspected by the DVLA, which was a bit of an anti climax. The inspector kept referring to the decision that ‘they’ might make on receipt of his report. I thought he was ‘they’, my mistake.
The chassis number is still tripping things up। I have to get another letter from the dude at the REOC, stating that the frame is ‘of the period’. Then they’ll give me a modern VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) which has to be fixed/stamped to the frame. After that I can apply for an age related plate. The Black Bullet, according to them, is a Reconstructed Classic, which is ridiculous in my view, but then what do I know?
Our band released a demo of moody noises in the early ‘80s which was picked up by a music journalist and touted as the music of the moment. These songs are now available to buy via iTunes, as part of a wider compilation of post-punk Bristolia - with a suitable disclaimer to deflect future royalty claims. To be honest, it won’t sell but I bought my own demo, just for the hell of it.
Sitting in the partial darkness of a house all tucked up in bed, with my headphones on, hearing the thump and chime of cheap instruments mixed in with gallons of tape hiss made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. It wasn’t many years after that that Jim and I rocked up in Japan, bought a load more gear, and re-invented the band. After that we tried London on for a few years before growing out of it.
The thing is, I came to live in Oxfordshire after London, I still have my guitar and am even thinking about getting another one – the one I always dreamed of owning but never had the money. This continuity brings the garbled mess spilling out of the headphones via the internet right back into the present, a dream manifest as real.
There's a photo of a band called The Pop Group on the site which really sums up my memory of the time. Scruffy boys in charity shop coats, arms crossed and shoulders hunched. It looks really cold in the picture, taken in a church, and I remember the boys in the band telling stories of melting the ice in the toilet pan with the first piss of the day, in the squat where we practiced.
I used to think of these as my lost years. We clung on to our dreams in penury, pumping 50p pieces into the meter for electricty but this and the scene were soon gone. The old squats became bright expensive houses once again, Punk got left behind as a new era of greed and profligacy gained momentum. It was a moment in time, but it was where adulthood began for us and it remains part of what we are.
I talked a bit about ‘feeling the journey’ and this is exactly what I mean, artifacts connecting people with the past, bringing on fleeting waves of shadowy sensation. When you get a bit old, the edge gets dulled and this eerie poking of a slumbering memory is worth it, for the buzz. I feel good today, more whole in a way for the reaffirmation that we were there, we had a laugh and we left our mark, however slight, along with all the other moody youths in a cold and rainy (mainly) post punk Bristol.
So I’m really looking forward to my first proper ride up the A417 and beyond, for the sensations this may bring. I took the bike to be inspected by the DVLA, which was a bit of an anti climax. The inspector kept referring to the decision that ‘they’ might make on receipt of his report. I thought he was ‘they’, my mistake.
The chassis number is still tripping things up। I have to get another letter from the dude at the REOC, stating that the frame is ‘of the period’. Then they’ll give me a modern VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) which has to be fixed/stamped to the frame. After that I can apply for an age related plate. The Black Bullet, according to them, is a Reconstructed Classic, which is ridiculous in my view, but then what do I know?
Saturday, 11 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.9 – 54.4 Miles Covered
It’s the weekend before the big day. I don’t know how many years, exactly, the Black Bullet has been in storage but on Tuesday she rises out of the World of Shed and rejoins the everyday world of roads and transport. Old Bob laughs at me waxing lyrical about the bike. To him it’s just a mode of transport, but he’s got a twinkle in his eye when he tells bike tales.
“My brother-in-law rode a Bullet, everyday to work,” says Bob. “He ‘ad a turnin’ circle in front of 'is house an’ e used to pull in, turn fer the mornin’ and drop it on the bank for the night. The kick had broken off so e’d bump it down the lane next day to get goin’ again. Never 'ad it serviced, as long as I know, but it never let ‘im down.”
I have to check the plug before I do a long ride, as I haven’t really revisited the mixture issue since I resolved my carburettor problems. It can run rich or lean round the village but on a long journey it could cause serious problems. Too lean and it will overheat, possibly damaging the engine, too rich and it will run thirsty until the spark plug soots up and it goes all lumpy again.
I guess I’ll be pretty jumpy when I set off for Redditch, listening for mechanical gremlins with Jane’s reaction to the plan burning in my ears. “You’ll never make it,” she said chirpily, when I announced the intent. “Well, I...better I don’t make it before the weather turns,” I blustered impotently.
The route avoiding the M40 is about 75 miles, one way. If I can still feel my extremities after 75 miles I’ll go for a photo opportunity in Enfield Road, a roadside cuppa and head back. If I get in a fix, which I can’t fix, the Black Bullet and I will doubtless return on a bike transporter, courtesy of the insurers. I can’t believe they included for Europe-wide repatriation in the policy, could it be that they know something my girlfriend doesn’t? Perhaps they think no self respecting vintage biker rides out without knowledgeable mates and a tool roll?
This is a solo exploit for me. I know it sounds pompous but I want to ‘feel’ the journey and get close to how it used to be. Not for me the ‘Long Way Round’, or ‘Down’, or whatever it was. There’ll be no media team, support vehicles or mechanic in my wake. I was even considering leaving the mobile behind. It sounds a bit pathetic, doesn’t it, ‘even considering leaving the mobile’? but that’s how serious it is these days.
Some people confess to feeling naked without their phone and it's easy to deride them - cornered, just where the mobile companies want them - but it doesn't do to be too critical. On balance I'm still taking mine for the breakdown services, should I need them. It's one of the tools in my roll.
And why is it important to 'feel the journey'? Well, as I ride over the Cotswolds I imagine I'll be thinking of Bob's brother-in-law on is way to work, or perhaps a wartime pilot on the way to his station at Brize Norton. In a roundabout way, I’m hoping for some insight, perhaps a better understanding of what it is to be a Brit in the noughties might eventually be delivered through the medium of this old bike.
My Dutch side has always been a bit perplexed by the emotional Brits and my dad made no friends in old age putting the place down. He didn't mean people ill, he just had a rough ride in old age and it came out wrong. He used to drive my mum mad but as they are now both gone, bless them, and I also live with an English woman, I want to move on and embrace the culture that brought me up. It’s about time.
“My brother-in-law rode a Bullet, everyday to work,” says Bob. “He ‘ad a turnin’ circle in front of 'is house an’ e used to pull in, turn fer the mornin’ and drop it on the bank for the night. The kick had broken off so e’d bump it down the lane next day to get goin’ again. Never 'ad it serviced, as long as I know, but it never let ‘im down.”
I have to check the plug before I do a long ride, as I haven’t really revisited the mixture issue since I resolved my carburettor problems. It can run rich or lean round the village but on a long journey it could cause serious problems. Too lean and it will overheat, possibly damaging the engine, too rich and it will run thirsty until the spark plug soots up and it goes all lumpy again.
I guess I’ll be pretty jumpy when I set off for Redditch, listening for mechanical gremlins with Jane’s reaction to the plan burning in my ears. “You’ll never make it,” she said chirpily, when I announced the intent. “Well, I...better I don’t make it before the weather turns,” I blustered impotently.
The route avoiding the M40 is about 75 miles, one way. If I can still feel my extremities after 75 miles I’ll go for a photo opportunity in Enfield Road, a roadside cuppa and head back. If I get in a fix, which I can’t fix, the Black Bullet and I will doubtless return on a bike transporter, courtesy of the insurers. I can’t believe they included for Europe-wide repatriation in the policy, could it be that they know something my girlfriend doesn’t? Perhaps they think no self respecting vintage biker rides out without knowledgeable mates and a tool roll?
This is a solo exploit for me. I know it sounds pompous but I want to ‘feel’ the journey and get close to how it used to be. Not for me the ‘Long Way Round’, or ‘Down’, or whatever it was. There’ll be no media team, support vehicles or mechanic in my wake. I was even considering leaving the mobile behind. It sounds a bit pathetic, doesn’t it, ‘even considering leaving the mobile’? but that’s how serious it is these days.
Some people confess to feeling naked without their phone and it's easy to deride them - cornered, just where the mobile companies want them - but it doesn't do to be too critical. On balance I'm still taking mine for the breakdown services, should I need them. It's one of the tools in my roll.
And why is it important to 'feel the journey'? Well, as I ride over the Cotswolds I imagine I'll be thinking of Bob's brother-in-law on is way to work, or perhaps a wartime pilot on the way to his station at Brize Norton. In a roundabout way, I’m hoping for some insight, perhaps a better understanding of what it is to be a Brit in the noughties might eventually be delivered through the medium of this old bike.
My Dutch side has always been a bit perplexed by the emotional Brits and my dad made no friends in old age putting the place down. He didn't mean people ill, he just had a rough ride in old age and it came out wrong. He used to drive my mum mad but as they are now both gone, bless them, and I also live with an English woman, I want to move on and embrace the culture that brought me up. It’s about time.
Sunday, 5 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.8 – 50.4 Miles Covered
As you get older, you become more wary of sounding like your parents, particularly if you hear yourself saying the things you hated them saying to you. But there’s no escaping the mould you broke out of, so you might as well get used to it. That’s not to say you can’t learn from their mistakes, though.
My dad was an accountant, he worked with his books and never really did much of what I suppose you would call manual work. These days, this can be a disadvantage when you need to get things done. If you earn enough money, you can get someone to do manual tasks for you but you’re always reliant on their availability and integrity, and you can be left in doubt over what’s been done and if it was priced fairly. I think my dad was done loads of times, but he was too much of a gentleman to take anyone to task.
Like many people, this drives me nuts. I don’t want to do everything myself, far from it, but I don’t like to be fooled and want to know enough to make a realistic appraisal of any situation requiring my decisive action and my hard-earned cash. The oldest game in the world is not prostitution, but ripping other people off. Profiteering, taking advantage, exploiting a gap in the knowledge of the target.
I’m the annoying fly buzzing round the head of any tradesman called to my house, asking why, what and how? I can’t stand flash car dealerships, for example, where you only ever get to speak to salesmen. Mechanics won’t necessarily oblige with the detail I require but I avoid dealerships and use back street garages, where you can meet the mechanic who worked on your vehicle. It’s important to get more than lip service for your money and to support people who see that too.
The economy is driven by the roundabout of services rendered, as sure as eggs is eggs. Like my dad doing the accounts for, say, a plumber who fixes his leaky tap. As I've said, I don't want to do everything myself, I just want to make sure that I’m not paying over the odds for whatever it is I am purchasing, or need doing. Cash is too hard to come by and way too easily spent. It's good to cross something off your list with that 'good job, right price' feeling.
This attitude does suck up time, though, and it can be a little irritating having to check all the angles all the time but better this than the flat, depressing feeling that comes with knowing you’ve been done. So I spend a lot of time grading wants and needs. In fact, the process of researching a product or service often makes you realise it’s not as important or necessary as you thought. Again, it’s best to realise this before you commit to it, so even if you come back to where you started, it’s not time wasted.
After all this, it’s taken me about a week to buy riding gloves. As usual, I have a list of requirements and what I want from my gloves is;
· Warmth without loss of touch;
· Touch without too much vibration;
· Water repellent without being sweaty, and;
· Protection/resistance to abrasion.
I have some gauntlets from my despatch riding days but it's like wearing footballs on your hands and there are too many levers to tweak on the Black Bullet. They’ll do for the depths of winter, if necessary.
I checked the online inventories of motorcycle clothing, thought I'd cracked it when I found a protective workwear catalogue in the office, spent a little time looking at gear for hunters and even bouncers, and ended up in an unexpected but related area of activity.
Proprietary bike gloves for my uses are either too racy, bulky or expensive. The variety of workmens gloves kept my nose in the PPE catalogue at work all morning – think about it, gloves for working outside with vibration producing tools, a good match for my requirements. But carriage on these items was prohibitive, unless bulk ordered. I found some cool fleece lined, deerskin wranglers gloves from the States – $30 alone to post – and some mean short wristed bouncers mits, a bit too mean and short for me.
The best fit, in the end, were some winter cyclists gloves with gel inserts in the palms. They’ve got dumb ‘Team Gel’ tabs on them but they tick all the boxes and they were £22, free p&p. Hope I got it right, after all that. I’ll find out on my proposed trip to Redditch in a few weeks time.
My dad was an accountant, he worked with his books and never really did much of what I suppose you would call manual work. These days, this can be a disadvantage when you need to get things done. If you earn enough money, you can get someone to do manual tasks for you but you’re always reliant on their availability and integrity, and you can be left in doubt over what’s been done and if it was priced fairly. I think my dad was done loads of times, but he was too much of a gentleman to take anyone to task.
Like many people, this drives me nuts. I don’t want to do everything myself, far from it, but I don’t like to be fooled and want to know enough to make a realistic appraisal of any situation requiring my decisive action and my hard-earned cash. The oldest game in the world is not prostitution, but ripping other people off. Profiteering, taking advantage, exploiting a gap in the knowledge of the target.
I’m the annoying fly buzzing round the head of any tradesman called to my house, asking why, what and how? I can’t stand flash car dealerships, for example, where you only ever get to speak to salesmen. Mechanics won’t necessarily oblige with the detail I require but I avoid dealerships and use back street garages, where you can meet the mechanic who worked on your vehicle. It’s important to get more than lip service for your money and to support people who see that too.
The economy is driven by the roundabout of services rendered, as sure as eggs is eggs. Like my dad doing the accounts for, say, a plumber who fixes his leaky tap. As I've said, I don't want to do everything myself, I just want to make sure that I’m not paying over the odds for whatever it is I am purchasing, or need doing. Cash is too hard to come by and way too easily spent. It's good to cross something off your list with that 'good job, right price' feeling.
This attitude does suck up time, though, and it can be a little irritating having to check all the angles all the time but better this than the flat, depressing feeling that comes with knowing you’ve been done. So I spend a lot of time grading wants and needs. In fact, the process of researching a product or service often makes you realise it’s not as important or necessary as you thought. Again, it’s best to realise this before you commit to it, so even if you come back to where you started, it’s not time wasted.
After all this, it’s taken me about a week to buy riding gloves. As usual, I have a list of requirements and what I want from my gloves is;
· Warmth without loss of touch;
· Touch without too much vibration;
· Water repellent without being sweaty, and;
· Protection/resistance to abrasion.
I have some gauntlets from my despatch riding days but it's like wearing footballs on your hands and there are too many levers to tweak on the Black Bullet. They’ll do for the depths of winter, if necessary.
I checked the online inventories of motorcycle clothing, thought I'd cracked it when I found a protective workwear catalogue in the office, spent a little time looking at gear for hunters and even bouncers, and ended up in an unexpected but related area of activity.
Proprietary bike gloves for my uses are either too racy, bulky or expensive. The variety of workmens gloves kept my nose in the PPE catalogue at work all morning – think about it, gloves for working outside with vibration producing tools, a good match for my requirements. But carriage on these items was prohibitive, unless bulk ordered. I found some cool fleece lined, deerskin wranglers gloves from the States – $30 alone to post – and some mean short wristed bouncers mits, a bit too mean and short for me.
The best fit, in the end, were some winter cyclists gloves with gel inserts in the palms. They’ve got dumb ‘Team Gel’ tabs on them but they tick all the boxes and they were £22, free p&p. Hope I got it right, after all that. I’ll find out on my proposed trip to Redditch in a few weeks time.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
The Black Bullet 2.7 – Miles Covered 44.8
The DVLA inspection date is set for Tuesday week. I dropped in at the local office yesterday to arrange it, having recieved the outstanding insurance certificate (see 2.5).
The counter ticket machine is on the blink but there's a severe woman handing out handwritten ones. I'm actually on my way to a job in East London, so I ask politely about the wait. She underestimates by half and I stand patiently in a pool of sunshine just outside the door.
Unsurprisingly, the humourless girl behind the counter doesn't know what the letter from the dating officer means.
"Did my colleague say this was acceptable?" Clearly my previous visit has been recorded.
"No, she said the bike would need an inspection, in Theale, but I didn't have an insurance certificate..."
"I don't understand. Normally we just see a dating letter, not a refusal to issue one. I'll have to ask."
"What's the problem?" The ticket woman has sidled up behind me. It turns out she is a senior manager. I'm glad I was polite to her.
"The gentleman has a letter refusing to date the vehicle."
I sense the girl is overly fixated on the refusal aspect of this damn letter.
"There appears to be some confusion regarding the frame number. I say 'appears to be' because no one knows for sure if there has been a factory-based error, or a subsequent change..."
"It says," she persists, tapping the page and reading aloud, "'I have had to refuse a dating certificate on two grounds' and 'I cannot issue a dating certificate due to overstamping of the frame number...'"
I turn to the manager, "It also says, 'the bike is a 1953 Bullet and is correct in every detail'. The bike is all original, it just might not be one bike..."
The manager nodds imperceptably at the frank admission, straightens up and looks more severe than ever - no Poz to mollify her more extreme considerations this time; "Book it in at Theale, and we'll see what they have to say," she says, and walks off.
I'm not sure what nearly happened there but I'm glad I was on hand to deflect it, if that's what the nod was about. A phyrric victory, perhaps, but there's always the chance that the inspector might be sympathetic and we can move swiftly on from this bureaucratic bend in the road.
I must organise transport and prepare for the inspection. And, as at school, take the given chance to pump the lecturer for clues on the upcoming test.
"Is the inspection primarily a roadworthiness thing?" My voice is unexpectedly conniving, as I shuffle papers into my splitting 'Bike Docs' envelope.
"No, it's to identify the vehicle. That'll be fifty-five Pounds."
"Oh yes. So, ah, what happens if it turns out to have been stolen, I mean years ago, is there a chance I might lose it?"
"I can't tell you that. In six-and-a-half years of working here, I've never come across a situation like yours. I'll get you a receipt for the registration fee."
The die is cast, as they say. It was interesting to note that my 'situation', as Humourless called it, is not a common one. I don't know what the implications of this are but in anticipation of a good result I've booked a few days off, hoping that I'll be able to hit the open road before the end of the month.
I've decided to attempt a small pilgrimage, to the birthplace of the bike. There are backroads to Redditch - across which the M40 doubtless storms. I've cleared it with the missus and if "you'll never make it" can be taken as a statement of acceptance, I'd better source some waterproofs and gloves.
The counter ticket machine is on the blink but there's a severe woman handing out handwritten ones. I'm actually on my way to a job in East London, so I ask politely about the wait. She underestimates by half and I stand patiently in a pool of sunshine just outside the door.
Unsurprisingly, the humourless girl behind the counter doesn't know what the letter from the dating officer means.
"Did my colleague say this was acceptable?" Clearly my previous visit has been recorded.
"No, she said the bike would need an inspection, in Theale, but I didn't have an insurance certificate..."
"I don't understand. Normally we just see a dating letter, not a refusal to issue one. I'll have to ask."
"What's the problem?" The ticket woman has sidled up behind me. It turns out she is a senior manager. I'm glad I was polite to her.
"The gentleman has a letter refusing to date the vehicle."
I sense the girl is overly fixated on the refusal aspect of this damn letter.
"There appears to be some confusion regarding the frame number. I say 'appears to be' because no one knows for sure if there has been a factory-based error, or a subsequent change..."
"It says," she persists, tapping the page and reading aloud, "'I have had to refuse a dating certificate on two grounds' and 'I cannot issue a dating certificate due to overstamping of the frame number...'"
I turn to the manager, "It also says, 'the bike is a 1953 Bullet and is correct in every detail'. The bike is all original, it just might not be one bike..."
The manager nodds imperceptably at the frank admission, straightens up and looks more severe than ever - no Poz to mollify her more extreme considerations this time; "Book it in at Theale, and we'll see what they have to say," she says, and walks off.
I'm not sure what nearly happened there but I'm glad I was on hand to deflect it, if that's what the nod was about. A phyrric victory, perhaps, but there's always the chance that the inspector might be sympathetic and we can move swiftly on from this bureaucratic bend in the road.
I must organise transport and prepare for the inspection. And, as at school, take the given chance to pump the lecturer for clues on the upcoming test.
"Is the inspection primarily a roadworthiness thing?" My voice is unexpectedly conniving, as I shuffle papers into my splitting 'Bike Docs' envelope.
"No, it's to identify the vehicle. That'll be fifty-five Pounds."
"Oh yes. So, ah, what happens if it turns out to have been stolen, I mean years ago, is there a chance I might lose it?"
"I can't tell you that. In six-and-a-half years of working here, I've never come across a situation like yours. I'll get you a receipt for the registration fee."
The die is cast, as they say. It was interesting to note that my 'situation', as Humourless called it, is not a common one. I don't know what the implications of this are but in anticipation of a good result I've booked a few days off, hoping that I'll be able to hit the open road before the end of the month.
I've decided to attempt a small pilgrimage, to the birthplace of the bike. There are backroads to Redditch - across which the M40 doubtless storms. I've cleared it with the missus and if "you'll never make it" can be taken as a statement of acceptance, I'd better source some waterproofs and gloves.
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