The Black Bullet 4.12 - Miles Covered 105.1

It’s no treat to be woken up in the night with inexplicable squits (for want of a more delicate expression), knowing that the boiler’s gone troppo (and by that I don’t mean the wife (to be)), and that our emergency fund is about to be smoked on a replacement car (Jane recently trashed hers on black ice). But I remind myself that at least we have an emergency fund, a rented house – so the landlord will fix the boiler – and an insurance policy to restore some of the cost of the car. The squits, on the other hand, must just be endured.

Fortunately it’s an office day today and as I’m unlocking my bicycle in the shed, I notice the Black Bullet half-hidden beneath a pile of baby stuff. A rolling stone gathers no moss but a stationary motorcycle does and I reckon it’s time to take the old girl out. It puts a much needed smile on my weary face as I scoot over to the office on the back roads, like I did before it was road legal. It’s muddy and slippery out there but if I’m serious about the Iceland caper (TBB 4.10), I can’t afford to be fainthearted.

The tick over needs sorting out as the engine stalls without throttle being applied. This means if I want to ride properly togged up, I have to snap and strap everything in place before I kick it over. If it takes a few kicks, I’m sweating before I get it running. If I don’t want to start the day sweaty, I have to take at least my helmet and jacket off. I suppose the pause is what the bike needs for the plug to dry off and now that the thing is primed it starts straight away, leaving me trying to get dressed while simultaneously blipping the throttle. It’s comic, but also dangerous, as I often ride without fastening my chinstrap.

Although setting the idle is pretty straightforward, like all these things, there’s a knack to it, which I don’t yet have. As far as I understand it, the carb should be tuned first and after my drag-knuckle attempts to repair it (TBB 1.1 to 1.10) I haven’t much enthusiasm left for this process. It’s foolish of me though, it’s a process like any other and nothing to get too wound up by.

I have to eat some humble pie on the issue of car insurance. Granted, Jane’s accident was a textbook write off, leaving nothing to argue about – a sympathetic cop, a reliable witness, no other parties involved – but even the valuation of the car was reasonable. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’d eat my words (TBB 4.4) but I haven’t had to argue with anyone to get paid and this is a point in favour of the ‘abstract construct’ called insurance.

Finding a replacement has taken me to used car lots in the last few days, we’re always on a tight budget and this means my experience of buying a car is quite different to the power play others might enjoy in a floodlit palace of motoring pleasure. One of the used car salesman did make me laugh though.

“...thing is," he says with authority, "nothing goes wrong with modern cars these days, they’re built to last.” We're standing in the strangely domestic setting of a sliding patio doorway which has been installed to make his Portakabin office more welcoming.

“Except when they go wrong,” I counter, bluntly.

“Oh yes, well, some people drive cars that are eight, ten years old,” he opines, looking both hurt and alarmed by these inconsiderate beggars. “Old bangers that are well past their sell-by date. Cars aren’t meant to go on that long.”

“Except old, old ones,” I say stupidly. He’s giving me flannel and I wonder if he’s been speaking in platitudes so long he doesn’t even notice anymore. He’s not completely stupid, though, and I feel a bit bad playing him on when he gives me a sharp look and redirects his attention to a lackey who is preparing this neglected looking Honda for a test drive.

If ever there was a car past its sell-by date it’s this one. I test it out of guilt, and in recognition of the lackey’s efforts to get it going, but it’s a dog and by the time I get back I feel absolved.

“Clutch is slipping,” I say, dropping the keys into the man’s open palm. “You might want to have a look at that.”

“Price is negotiable,” he says, at the same time giving up and turning away. It’s not been an entirely pleasant customer experience but then I wasn’t very nice either, so we call it quits (or in my case, ‘squits’) and both move on.

Ultimately, I think I prefer the less desperate flannel of a recognised dealership. It may not be any more honest but I think I'll be more likely to have my consumer rights respected if the car I buy has any latent defects.

The Black Bullet 4.11 - Miles Covered 103.5

It’s been a while since I’ve had to attend building testing at the Olympic Park, in London, and therefore also a while since I’ve clashed blades with the Commuterati out of Didcot. A doleful lack of edge saw me shuffled to the back of the pack in the queue for the train this morning despite, at one stage, being second in line.

“I’ll just get in last, shall I?” I grumbled at the last to push in front of me. Now I’m opposite a huge city gent who seems to have been reversed into his suit. He’s a bit too big for the seat which means his jacket has ridden up badly as he sat down and he’s got nowhere to put his arms, so they kind of waggle about tentacle-like in front of him. He’s plugged in and opted out so there’s no point in even trying to make eye contact through the pudgy folds of his face to say ‘good morning’.

One thing I do notice, as he tries various armrest options, is the rubberised wristband, like the ones at the Blue Lagoon in Iceland. These things can be programmed to offer all kinds of services from rights of access to fiscal exchange. At the Icelandic spa your wristband talks to your locker and to the bar out on the lake. There’s no scrabbling for change, guarding keys, or trying to remember your locker number, all of which contributes to the general sense of wellbeing as you splosh about. My guess is he uses it to get into his office.

We ran into his type - albeit the French variety - corporate eventing at the Blue Lagoon one evening. Three rubicund executives piled into the changing area, in robes, to recover cameras from their lockers. Our friend, Nick, who speaks fluent French, said that their excited chatter was spattered with tit and arse references. Doubtless, female colleagues in bathing suits were too good an opportunity to miss.

Wading out into the floodlit water the entire party could be seen clustered near one of the steaming vents. Throw in a couple of giant bird heads and it could have been a scene by Bosch or Breughel.

Out of the six people in my immediate vicinity, five are texting or otherwise stroking little screens. It’s all a bit weird in a way I find difficult to explain without appearing to be a hypocrite or a technophobe.

I was describing the flight to Iceland earlier and the same thing occurred to me then. From my seat in the cabin I could see several seatback screens in operation and something Old Pete said sprang to mind; “people seem to think they have a right to be entertained,” he said, rolling his eyeballs. It’s a common complaint of the old about the young but the so-called old are probably just as bad. It’s mad to think that when I was at school we had a school computer installed. There were no other screens to speak of.

I’m really glad I can sit on this train and tap away - I might not be writing at all without the facility, it really works for me - but the constant need to be entertained is worrying. I can’t think straight with the TV on, for example. Is that just a lack of concentration on my part, or TV doing what it does best – i.e. helping me to switch off?


Nick playing the saw in a music shop in Reykjavic - heck, why not?

The Black Bullet 4.10 – 103.5 Miles Covered

If Jack is to be believed, we never feed him. But cats are masters of manipulation and tyrants of the try-on and are not to be believed at all. I have a soft spot for our have-a-go trip hazard, however, and bought some whale meat back from Iceland, forgetting that the biggest fish on the planet is actually a mammal. Anyway, he eats mammals too and boy is he going to get a surprise at teatime.

Whales, for all the hoo-ha they attract, are perfectly edible. I’m sorry for them that this is the case and nothing excuses overzealous exploitation of the animals by factory methods but I’d like to think a few killed for reasons of sustenance, off the shores of isolated communities, do not require such an apology. Either that or we should all become vegan, which may not be such a weird idea in time to come.

For now, whale meat, particularly that which has been salted and buried – in other words, preserved in the Scandinavian grave style – is like biltong, or beef jerky and is quite delicious. I’m not so sure about rotten shark, which reminds me of natto - fermented soya beans which have the consistency of lumpy snot and a smell that rightfully turns the stomach.

These rotten foods are characteristic of isolated communities where times were sometimes very hard and eating was a matter of bravely scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don’t know how they made the transformation into delicacies unless delicacy is a euphemism for rotten muck we can feed to the tourists, which is quite possible. A few oddballs in the Kanto (Tokyo) region of Japan like natto but most consider it disgusting, which is plainly is. So I gave the shark a miss and don’t feel I lost out.

Iceland is another place though, with the emphasis on other. It struck me that although there is nothing particularly bike friendly about it, it is friendly, in a slightly shell-shocked way, and the spirit of adventure is pure. It made me think about my time in Japan, where all this bike business began, and to consider taking the Black Bullet over for a tour.

Right from the start, when we got on the plane, there was something different going on: no busy body at the door checking passes for the umpteenth time and no condescending and vaguely humiliating safety demo, just a quick flick on the seatback screens – in Icelandic. Complimentary soft drinks were offered and no one tried to sell us any junk on a tax free basis.

I was impressed with this. It was as if it was suddenly okay to be a child of nature again, to see money making as a base necessity not the inevitable right and duty of all in Christendom. It might be over-egging the pudding but this is how it felt. There was a lack of things going on, other than the important processes of travel itself, a certain space, and an unusual amount of legroom.

"I want to come back," I said under my breath, while still on the bus into Reykjavic.

The Black Bullet 4.9 - Miles Covered 103.5

After my run-in with Welsh Kieran over Jane’s car insurance renewal, I was feeling a bit bruised in the customer services department. It didn’t help when a subsequent attempt to register with a foreign exchange website resulted in a resounding ‘computer says no’ situation. The problem comes from having a foreign name.

I know this because once upon a time, my name was misspelt on the electoral roll and ever since then nobody believes I am who I say I am. It’s like living in Terry Gilliam's Brazil. It’s even funny, until it stops you from getting things you really need done.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the ineptitude meant the authorities couldn’t find you but in my experience it’s only enough of an error to stop you, not them. None of my utility bills have my name spelt right but they don’t seem to mind that one bit and they take my money just the same.

I thought it would be simple to put this particular error right and around about general election time, in the summer of 2010, I phoned the electoral roll guys up and spelt my name down the phone to them. Everything seemed sorted after that and my polling cards arrived with all the right letters on them, in all the right order, but six months later I’m on the phone to the customer services department of this Forex company trying to sort out a failed online registration.

“Oh yes, hello Sarah, I’m having a bit of trouble registering, your security checking system doesn’t recognise me at my stated address.”

Sarah looks into it and agrees with my prognosis, that my name is probably misspelt on the electoral roll. Not on their third party database, mind, but on the electoral roll. It's like she has an allergy to implied fault.

“Erm, I’ve called my local electoral office and they’ve spelt my name back to me correctly and unprompted from the data they currently hold. They’ve also been sending me correctly addressed letters since the election back in the summer, so I don’t think it’s them.”

“Oh, well they probably haven’t released the data. It can take up to three years...”

“They say they completely refreshed the entire database on the First of December," I interject, "and that any corrections made before that would have been notified seperately."

“Well, why don’t you try registering with your name as it was spelt before?” suggests Sarah, seeing an easy way out.

“I’d rather not. It would be like trying to register under a false name, if you get me. Just the kind of thing we’re trying to prevent, no?”

“Well, I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do." she says, ignoring the 'we' aspect that I've introduced in a gentle attempt to make it our problem. "It’s a points system, and if you don’t have enough points, there’s nothing I can do.”

Once again, It doesn't take a mind reader to know she wants rid of me. Most of these agencies want to make a community out of (or into) a business opportunity but this kind of thing is generally too real for them. At least customer services, god bless 'em, can't really hang up, unless you lose control.

“I see.” I pause. I’m calm. I want help, not conflict. “I notice that you can input passport and driving licence details during registration, if you want to apply for a currency card that is. Do you think it would help me amass the required number of points if I add these details, to prove my identity?”

“You can try it.”

“Thanks, I will.”

I try but it doesn’t make any difference and despite the fact that I have no court cases to answer, no bad debts, a full time job, a bank and building society account (both in the black), a biometric British passport and a full UK driving licence, I’m out in the cold. And all because of an aged data entry mistake that doesn’t even exist anymore. I'm 'Tuttle', not 'Buttle', right?

It was probably this very error which prevented me from successfully applying for a credit balance transfer, to a 0% credit card, to buy time on an emergency washing machine purchase last year. The crazy thing that time was the card was offered to me by my own building society who I've held an account with for over 25 years! What the hell are those people doing in there behind the glass, playing Tiddlywinks?

Just for the hell of it, I decide to pose as my partner and go through the registration process again. No problem this time, it all goes through, even though I'm now really faking it. I even get to buy the currency, logging in as Jane but using my debit card to pay. It makes no sense at all. It’s like that ‘oh, money, yes please’ moment, and suddenly all is forgiven. No wonder the system gets played, really.