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He awoke from death a little uncertainly. The sun was shining on the dew-damp grass upon which he lay. He’d died on the pavement. He cautiously looked around, not moving his head. Grass, trees, not a building in sight. He’d died in the middle of a city. He had a vivid memory of the pavement covered in a spreading pool of his blood. His shocked face reflected in the shop window, staring back at him with a look of idiotic incomprehension, as he cradled his spilling guts in his hands. This was unbearably cruel. This hope. He closed his eyes and slowly, reluctantly,moved his hand down to his stomach. Stifling a sob he laid his hand on the gaping hole left by the bullet’s exit. His stomach was whole. Oh god, oh god. He opened his eyes and forced his gaze down. His stomach was undamaged! And he was oddly naked. He sprang to his feet and started patting every inch of himself he could reach. There were no wounds. He checked his pulse. Present. ‘This makes no sense’. It was his voice. The damp grass was still cool on his feet. He had a pulse. He was experiencing sensation. His senses were working. He breathed on his hand. Breath. Surely that means I’m still alive? But I can’t be. As an atheist he was was fighting really hard not to call this the afterlife. I’ve still got a physical body, consciousness, a pulse, breath, all the things you lose in death. He was starting to freak out. Take deep breaths. Be amazed you can take deep breaths. The only thing he could think of was this was the last dying reflex of his brain, a comforting fantasy to ease him into the void. ‘That’s the spirit. Snatch despair from the jaws of miraculous hope’. He pondered the “miraculous”, and thought it best to move on. He wanted to soak up every second of this last experience. Drink in the colours of the sun rising through the trees. Smell the crushed grass beneath his feet. Suck every possible atom of joy and sensation from this moment. What he really wanted, he realised, was a piss and some clothes. Maybe a fire. Coffee and an internet capable device. And wifi. He turned around slowly, scanning the grass until it lead into trees on all sides. None of the above. No fences, or cattle, no smoke in the sky. Nothing to indicate he wasn’t the only person in existence. Ah well. He relieved himself. He stood gazing around for a while longer, taking stock. He was fairly sure he wasn’t dead, any suitable rock would refute it thus. But that raised more questions. If he wasn’t dead, let’s go with that, he thought, if he wasn’t dead… well, everything. It was all questions after that premise. How did he get here? Why wasn’t he dead? Where were the wounds? Where were his clothes? He looked at the short grass around himself for […]

My cunning plan to sell my old bike to pay for the new one hasn’t paid off yet. I suppose I’m the only idiot who buys motorbikes in the middle of winter in a lockdown. It didn’t sell on th’ebay, and after I’d listed it I realised they want 10% of your selling fee for listing it! Say, £240 to sell your bike! I’ve put it on Autotrader for 6 weeks for £32. And Gumtree for free. I put it through the MOT without a problem, but then had to cancel the insurance on it to transfer my no claims bonus to the new bike. I’ve moved my old bike into the garden and moved my new one round the front. Now I’ve just got to wait for lockddown to ease and the weather to warm so the old one will sell. I took the new one out for a quick blast as it was unseasonably mild and sunny the other day. It’s not the prettiest of bikes, but it’s amazingly capable. I’ve taken the boxes off the back until I need them, you just unlock them and press a button and they lift off. I did a dry run loading the boxes. I can fit my proper boots, bike leather and layers in the side boxes, my lid and waterproofs in the top box. I am set! Roll on my first marathon in May. That’s down in Milton Keynes so it will be a good test. It does the luggage thing, it seems economical and comfortable. There is great wind protection so it’s not noisy. And it is a hoot! Unlike it’s engine donor bike, the banzai Fireblade, you don’t feel you should be winding it up all the time and getting peak performance near the red. This is especially frustrating as second gear is good for 90, so you thrash through two gears then have to back off the fun or lose your license. This one doesn’t need winding up. Whatever gear you are in you can just open the throttle and the acceleration will sit you back in the saddle. I was on a twisty country lane, patiently sat behind two cars, there was a small straight so I pulled out and opened it up. The bike just exploded past them like they were in reverse. It took a lot of the fun out of it, in a way. I can’t wait to ride it properly. My third bike from the title is my triathlon pushbike. All I wanted to do was tighten the gear shifter thing in the end of the handlebars. I took the shifter off, tightened the nut, put the shifter back on, the gears had gone really stiff. Took it off. Reassembled it. Nope. Looked it up on the internet, tried again. No. I finally got the shifter working but suddenly it felt like I had an extra few inches of cable. I’d lost all tension in the gear cable. I have no […]

OK, so my sensible deconstruction of ‘buying new motorbike is essential. NOW!’ argument didn’t wash. To be fair, at least I’m sort of swapping motorbikes, not lashing out another two grand on top. And it’s sort of sensible. I was driving myself insane obsessing over that Triumph Daytona, which is, bottom line, a beautiful but wildly impractical bike. Sports riding position (which I like, but is rarely comfortable, especially over distance). Zero storage capacity. And made to be revved straight to licence shredding speeds. It was very, very desirable, and I wanted it so bad, but I resisted. Just. I was tempted again when I saw another impractical beauty, but this one would have been about £15K by the time I’d bought it blind from the States. A 1940s Harley. If you were wondering what Wendy wants for Christmas, you can’t go wrong. Then I saw a totally different bike. It’s a CBF1000 Honda , so you know it’s going to be quality, but the model had completely slipped under my radar. Take a Honda Fireblade (warpspeed race bike) engine, detune it, (so you have all the power in the bottom and the middle rather than at a gazzillion revs) and stick it in a tourer set up. I should have taken some pictures. That was from the advert and it looked fine on my ‘phone, but it’s all grainy on here. The guy bought it last year and got it all set up for touring Ireland, but then Covid, so that’s not happening. It’s got virtually all the bits I would want to add. Taller screen with the wind calmer thing, progressive fork springs, new set of nicer sounding exhausts, crash bungs, and full, detachable, luggage. The only thing I might add are heated hand grips. I was looking at the advert, with those boxes and the fairing,and thinking of my marathons. I could ride to the race, stash my lid, leather, boots and clothes, do the run and change back. I wouldn’t have to worry about borrowing Wendy’s car, or horrendous drives in traffic. Then I read the Motorcycle News reviews, which are absolutely glowing; because it’s a detuned race engine it is so unstressed it runs forever (while I was window shopping one came up that had done 161,000 miles). It’s got all the low down poke you could want. It’s supremely comfortable over distance. And it’s a 1000cc bike that delivers somewhere around 50mpg, with a 200 mile tank. My current 600cc bike, even after buying a power commander to make it run right, still only does about 30mpg. You are desperately looking for a petrol station at 100 miles. And the 1000 is cheaper than my current bike. I cracked like an egg. Wendy’s off work with stress so I seized the opportunity to get a lift to pick it up from Crewe. Wendy is not a confident driver outside of her familiar comfort zone, and is scared of motorways, so I said I’d drive […]

I am being sensible. Which is no fun and not playing to my strengths at all. I was totally bored a few days ago and started looking on eBay. Just window shopping things for my triathlon training. But that is a slippery slope. You are looking at power meter pedals for the pushbike, when you make one small typo typing in “power meter pedals” and you accidentally type “Triumph Daytona 675” into the search box. Happens almost constantly, I find. That was it then. Full-on obsessive mode. It’s the same gorgeous three cylinder engine I had in the Street Triple, but with a proper riding position, fairings, and a real world first gear. The one on the Street Triple was just for pulling wheelies. Unfortunately it did it when you weren’t expecting it, so that was a bit… interesting. Anyway. I was in full-on obsessive mode, thrashing the internet day and night, trying to find the best possible bike for the money. Because they were first introduced in 2006 (which I still keep thinking is brand new, but is actually 15 years ago) they have come down to merely expensive. Starting at slightly under £4K. I asked about and several companies would give me £1,800 for my bike in part exchange. One came up two days ago. 2006, great condition, 26K miles (quite high for a bike, but Triumph actually make good bikes these days) and red. Red bikes are faster. Basic science. Just look at it! I wrote the email asking how we should proceed, was the shop in lockdown, could I ride down and swap bikes? It’s in Leicester, which google says is 2 hours away. And the BBC weather say it’s going to be -1C until 14.00 tomorrow, so a bit brisk for the ride. Then I started thinking it over. I’ve not ridden my motorbike in over 3 months. (Admittedly 6 weeks were due to a broken shoulder, but still.) I work 2 miles away, so I pushbike in. If I get a job where I have to commute my Honda, with it’s topbox and heated handgrips, is much more practical (putting a topbox on the Daytona would be a crime against humanity), and there’s nothing wrong with my Honda, apart from a poor MPG. But Honda or Triumph I wouldn’t be riding it to my current job, it’s too cold just to go for fun rides, and any time I have for said fun rides I should be training. So I’d be spending £2,000 on a pretty ornament I’d not be riding. I sent a second email saying I’d changed my mind. Wendy thinks it’s maturity catching up with me. More likely it’s the promised easing with age of my BPD. Recklessness and spending sprees are genuine symptoms. And when you can combine the two by buying a motorbike, well, that is just good time management in my books. In other news, I had my check up with the doctor at the hospital and he […]

Wendy casually asked if I’d still like to retire to Cornwall the other day. Being who I am that promoted the prospect from under the radar to most important thing ever that need to be resolved immediately. I started thrashing the internet, but it was instantly apparent that wasn’t happening. Even that houses that have got weird stuff in the walls and mining subsidence warnings so were ineligible for a mortgage were starting at £100K. And that would be cash. I shifted my attention abroad. Relatives in Spain and Bulgaria seem to be doing fine. We could get a flat in Spain, or a mansion in Bulgaria. Yay! I was getting all excited, planning our best options. Then I thought I’d better see if Bozo had managed to finalise anything about Brexit. He has. Put the plebs right back in their place. The people who have already settled abroad can carry on as normal, us who would like to do the same can forget it. Now you have to apply for a long term visa, prove you’ve got €34K in savings, and pay for your own private healthcare. As a pensioner. Ha! This news following on the heels of someone trying to stop Bozo from scrapping holiday pay as he takes a blowtorch to worker’s rights and regulations. Super. Thanks Gammon Brexiteers. I know a lot of younger people were misguided by the empty “Take Back Control” slogan and the “£350 million a week to the NHS” lies, but statistically it was pensioners who were most rabidly Brexit. I read that between the vote and the implementation so many of them had died that it wouldn’t have passed if it had been called then. I also know that all the people I know personally of that generation were Remain. (As far as I know.) The sad thing was there was little to get excited about the Remain campaign, but a vague, jingoistic, racist dog whistle of hope in Leave. There was a cartoon, a fat cat rich person with 19 cookies, pointing at the starving underclass person with one cookie and saying to the working class person “Look out, that immigrant is stealing your cookie”. Statistically though, it’s hard not to feel a tad bitter that another door has been slammed behind the Boomer generation. Affordable/ council housing, free education, student grants, a benefits system that worked, worker’s rights, the NHS, and now the right to work and retire abroad. Ho hum. I just wish there was some way to opt back in. So that’s not happening. We are one month into Brexit and it’s already a disaster. The government have been advising companies to set up businesses in the EU to get around the restrictions that they have overseen. I say overseen, you can’t call saying “ner, ner, Johnny Foreigner, we’re not listening” negotiating. But. Blue Passports. Swings and roundabouts, innit? In better news, several good things have happened. I got an email this morning saying the wide fit […]