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.
