The baby had a restless night and an overlong nap at lunchtime (one of the huge benefits of living near the office) made me feel sick. It was worth it though, pointless sitting at your desk yawning with deep down tiredness just to keep up appearances. If I get pulled for erratic time keeping I'll just tell the truth, I’m target oriented not a clock-watcher. The point is surely how efficient you are, not how long you can sit at your desk dreaming about walking out while appearing to be useful. Anyway, I must have been sponge diving in my sleep, I dropped like a stone, which is probably why I feel a bit sick.
When I woke I heard Undertow, by Warpaint, drifting up the stairs from the kitchen radio. Their debut album, The Fool [Rough Trade, 2010], is a slow burner but well worth the effort in my view. Rob and I went to see them in London a while back - I felt a bit sick that night too, for a completely different and slightly weird reason. The air was thick with the smell of oestrogen and I swear it started to wash over me, in noxious waves. There’s only so much a straight guy can take in the land of purple velvet. Or as Jane indelicately put it, "it’s rock minus the cock, right?"
The required days off and ferry to St Malo are booked so the Black Bullet is going to Le Mans. It is 80 miles to Portsmouth and another 140 on the other side, avoiding motorways. I am satisfied with this. It’s far enough for openers and, provided I don’t nail the throttle too long down the dual carriageways, it’s surely not too much to ask. There will be a spare seat in the back of Tony’s camper should the Bullet go 'Kapow'. I have to phone the insurer and check if I must go back with the bike.
Spares to carry include mostly things I can fit myself, and if I don’t get round to doing the de-coke, and therefore the head gasket, I suppose I might take a kit along. Need to talk to the insurer first. If they pick the bike up and take it all the way back home, leaving me in France, I’ll be less inclined to try and fix it out there. It would be a shame to be caught out by a busted bulb, or cable, though, so these things need to be ordered and packed. I think it’s against the law in France to be without spare bulbs in any case.
When our old Series II Land Rover blew a piston near Agen, back in the day, we had no Plan B. We limped to a campsite and walked miles into town to talk to some guys in a freight agency. We were desperate and strapped for cash, our entire fund would get the Land Rover back to Dover, where we’d have to sell it, or borrow money to get it fixed. In the end the vehicle was too tall by a few centimetres to train back to the UK anyway, and they wouldn’t allow me to let down the tyres to conform with the height restriction.
We visited a local Jag dealer who said it would cost thousands of Francs to fix and basically laughed us out of his shop. Back at the campsite we drank a bottle of Pastis with this guy called Max, who was labouring with a road building company, and decided to have a go at it ourselves. We were worried that the owner of the Chateau would not look kindly on a couple of itinerant youths turning their classy campsite into a tented workshop, so the disassembly went slowly at first, at dawn and at dusk. We stashed the parts in the tent and slept in the back of the wagon.
A week later the site manager came over and asked how it was going. She was sympathetic and told us the owner’s brother-in-law had a farm vehicle workshop down the lane. Without those guys we would have struggled to make this plan work, they really bailed us out. I had little experience and no training as a mechanic, just a box of Imperial spanners and a Haynes Manual. Fortunately, a 1962 Land Rover is like Meccano for adults, with very few special tools required.
Once we’d pulled the pistons, they came by with a digger and lifted the engine out of the bay on a strap. We did a bit of back-breaking work on the neighbouring farm and waited for the pots to be skimmed by an engineering works. The gasket set and assorted parts arrived and the workshop guys gave me a bench for a couple of weeks. It's funny to recall the giant tools in that place. Big tools for big machines. I was like a man from Lilliput taking a job at Gulliver's Garage.
I set about looking like I knew what I was doing but was often stuck and relied on assistance. One particular guy was in charge of making sure we didn’t take up the bench longer than necessary and when he realised I was pretty clueless he gave me as much help as he could, to chivvy things along. Then disaster struck one day when he noticed the head was cracked and told me a new one would have to be found.
My girlfriend’s dad, the guy I wouldn’t listen to [TBB 6.6], gave us some minor bull on the phone about a business trip he had to make to nearby Toulouse and that he’d located a replacement head (of which there were none in France) which he would deliver to us at Toulouse airport. He was looking out for us alright, but typically I didn’t see this at the time. I kept being bailed out but insisted on keeping my pride intact. I think Max must have given us a lift over there to pick it up, I’d never been so happy to see Old Brian, I can tell you.
So, I’ve had some experience of blowing up in France, and the stage is set for my inglorious return on yet another form of even more ancient transport. It might be better to have a timely chat with Old Pete about the de-coke. It will surely be a confidence booster but I’m just a little bit worried I might build in more trouble than this preventative maintenance is meant to fix.
