Back in the bun fight that is the early morning commute into London on the train – my last trip to the Rothschild bank building in St Swithins Lane. The August bank holiday has passed and the station is rammed with regular commuters renewing their passes. Britain is in recession but everybody seems busy. Is recession down to a lack of confidence? It surely isn’t a lack of willingness, on the part of the people, and of things that need doing.
It’s also summer’s end and the countryside is being stripped of its grassy down, plucked of its fruit and pulled of its veg. However it’s the movement of harvesters and tractors that catch my son’s eye. The bigger the better, and yet he’s so small. There’s a palpable urgency in the movement of giant farm vehicles up and down the lanes so you’ve got to go carefully.
In a microcosm, I’m also watching the weather, looking for a dry spell that’s long enough to make a good job of mowing the lawn.
When I was a young man in Cornwall I used to have a recurring Hammer Horror vision of rounding a bend on my bike at speed and coming up on a tractor with some kind of spiked attachment taking up the full width of the road. It didn’t matter what spiked attachment it was, I’d seen them in farmyards and they reeked of pain and death for motorcyclists.
If riding the lanes in autumn is tinged with fear, by way of compensation the run through the summer makes you feel more alive than ever. It’s thrilling to lean forward over the clocks with nothing between you on the blurred hedgerows. Occasional glimpses of faraway hills, or the sea, and the giddy strobing of light as you zip through the shadows under the trees. It’s as close to flying as you can get without leaving the ground. All these thoughts and feelings are returning as a precursor to getting the Black Bullet back on the road, legally.
I’ve bought the prerequisite insurance, which starts tomorrow - a great deal including repatriation of the machine should it break down irreparably in Europe - so once the DVLA inspection is out of the way, it’ll be just in time to confront my autumn riding ghosts.
