Swings and Roundabouts

A very grumpy ride over to Lickey this morning to take Ruby for her 13,500 mile service (yes, I am a bit late on that one) has moved me to offer some notes to West Midlands motorists:-

1. Motorcycles overtake things. I am a very nervous overtaker so chances are if I am overtaking a tractor and you are in the far distance heading towards me, there will be enough time for me to pull out, pass the tractor, pause to pick a few flowers, have a cup of tea out of my tartan thermos and pull back in before you get within 20 feet of me. There is no need to flash your headlights in wounded offence.

2. Motorcycles filter. If I didn’t think there was room for three of us to share the road’s width, I wouldn’t be doing it. Please do not honk your horn because a kick in the wing mirror often offends.

3. On leaving the motorway – I’ve personally taken the view that if someone is stuck in lane 2 having misjudged how soon the exit would be upon us, and is indicating hopefully, then it’s a nice thing to do to moderate my speed and allow them to tuck in in front of me. Thank you for educating me in the local custom of staring slack-jawed at the satnav while picking up speed on an intercept course. It’s some time since I’ve had to skitter across the tiger-tails and I enjoyed the experience this morning. I blame the M42 “managed motorway” for turning you all into passive zombies who have forgotten that motorway driving is an interactive experience.

I handed Ruby in and received the yellow peril in exchange. Filling in the insurance form was fun.

• Have you had an accident in the last three years? Yes.
  
• Have you been convicted of a motoring offence or received a notice of intended prosecution in the last three years? Yes
  
• How long have you had a clean licence? Not since 2004.
  

The excess is £1000 so I’m hoping Mr Jallilemudi and his red Honda stay well away from me this time.

The GS800 is fun. If I had an inner hooligan it would certainly be coming out to play – the riding position is much more forward, in an off-road stylee with elbows out and weight over the front wheel. The engine note sounds just a little bit like an over-excited sewing machine but deepens up in higher gears. And the exhaust is of such magnificent bore that I fully expect to return to the bike to find Cher straddling it.

How cool is this?

The next art project for the "Fourth Plinth" at Trafalgar Square is an invititation from Antony Gormley to be one of 2,400 people who will stand on the plinth for an hour each.

If chosen I would be allowed to take "anything you yourself can carry onto the plinth." Not sure this would include Ruby....

I have in my hand a piece of paper....

I was determined that I wasn't going to bid for one of Graham's memory sticks with the 2009 LM list on - 2 reasons: firstly, it feels a little bit like getting an unfair advantage, and mainly, because I'm rubbish at keeping secrets. It's not my fault, it's genetic - Hairy Harry, my A-level English teacher, used to challenge us to name the three mass communication devices of the 20th Century: telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-woman.

But my curosity is stronger than my principles, and here I am with one plugged into my mac, and a sneak preview (see - even the english language regards previews as a bad thing) rolling out of the printer.

The first peek at the list is like coming downstairs on Christmas morning and examing the shape, rattle and heft of your presents to see if you know what any of them are before you're allowed to open them properly (I'm told other families were allowed to get stuck in more or less as soon as they woke up. As Highwayteen I had to wait for my sister to get up, have a cup of tea, have a shower, wash her hair, dry her hair......but I'm not bitter ;)

In big red letters it says here "Please note that any person that publishes or allows to be published by any medium the current year's landmarks before the end of the rally will be liable to disqualification." So I have to be very careful in expressing my happiness, but my first look at the list tells me that it includes the venue of my sister's wedding - which I would have photos of myself at on a bike already were it not for the fact that I crashed on the way to it trying to brake for another LM I'd just sailed stright past (and I use sailed advisedly given the weather at the time); and that while bagging another LM I will have the opportunity to buy some rather wonderful 4-ply sock wool.

I hope that's cryptic enough - would be a shame to get disqualified before I'd even started (!) It looks like we are all in for another fantastic tour of Britain.

Who Watches the Watchmen?

Well - me, for starters. If I can find a cinema showing it. And I'll sit there with a smug secret. I wasn't a cool teenager. My mum bought my jeans at M&S, so they would have looked good if I was acting in a revival of Oklahoma!, but in the northern market town of my youth they were simply a source of ridicule, as were my Claire Rayner spectacles (wings, lovey, wings) and my early fondness for Cliff Richard. But I did love my science fiction. I used to brave the dodgy newsagent by the bus station to buy Interzone, I got all the RPG jokes in The Colour of Magic, and in 1987 I took the train to Manchester's foremost SF & Fantasy bookshop (the name of which utterly escapes me. It started near the Corn Exchange and moved to Oxford Road, and the bags had Rodney Matthews' iconic presentation of Elric of Melnibone on them, if that jogs anyone else's mind...) and spent my babysitting money on what must have been one of the first copies of Moore's masterpiece.

I read it lots of times and didn't understand it. Actually, I got the story about the pirate ship, but the rest of it rather passed me by. Which probably just goes to prove that I was unworthy to open it. But on 6th March when lots of people rush to Amazonto order their movie-tie-in-version, I'll be sitting back reading my 21-year-old copy and, no doubt, still looking puzzled.

The 1987 Watchmen is probably the second coolest thing I own (I put the bikes in first place). I also prize my T-shirt that declares "I did it with Aerosmith at the Marquee." Since spotting them on sale in HMV I took great joy in sidling up to other people wearing it and asking "did you really? No? Hahahahahahaha."

Uncool *and* irritating. It's a miracle I'm still here.

Mood swings

I try not to plug the computer in before I go to work because I know that I'll womble off after interesting threads and before I know it Terry Wogan will be introducing Ken Bruce (I'm sorry, something happened when I wasn't looking and I turned into a Radio 2 listener). But I needed to cheer myself up this morning because the benefits of my hard-won early night were destroyed by the muppet who set the fire alarm off at half past midnight. Given the choice of meeting my neighbours in my bedsocks or burning to death I decided it was a false alarm and went back to sleep, keeping a cautious ear for the sound of crackling. So I woke up a little tetchy. But now, while not quite a ray of sunshine, I am at least a break in the clouds, because my email has told me that I'm finally going to learn some motorcycle maintenance. This has been a longstanding ambition since Sonia told me that if I was going to drive it I had to know how to fix it. I've taken some steps along the path - I have half a City and Guilds in motorcycle electrics (I can tell you what's wrong with your spark but not fix it) and have a full set of spanners (contrary to popular belief) which will finally get a bit greasy. And the best bit is that it's being taught by Steve and Caz, courtesy of the fine people at HBAM.

Weightlifting

Spring is making a tentative entrance - yesterday Florence (the car, now named for the indomitable Florence Blenkiron after coping magnificently with the unexpected snow on Thursday night despite having tiny little wheels) revealed that temperatures had climbed to a positvely tropical 11.0 degrees C, and it's also light both ends of the day - so this morning I put my lid back on (still stinks, unfortunately) and after dealing with the inevitable consequences of parking under trees, revealed by the melting snow (does anyone make bird-shit wipes? I'd buy them...) we were off. The car reminds me of a Wendy House on wheels: it's very practical, you can fill it with lots of useful things, keep it clean and tidy and hoover it when needed. But rolling it into a corner and out the other side is never going to feel like freedom.

Brrr!

Ruby is really missing her garage...

confiteor deo omnipotenti

Last night the snow fell. I looked out of the window and could enjoy the sight of it, glittering in the sodium lights, tracked by next-door's dog, happy in the knowledge that this morning I would be driving to work in my little blue box. This morning the snow was falling harder, great big wet white flakes of it, blanketing the breadth of the dual carriageway and making even the A14 a thing of beauty. I drove my car, I turned on the windscreen wipers to clear the snow from my vision, I turned up the heater so I wouldn't get too cold, and I drank my coffee that I had stored safely in the cup-holder. I did get stuck in a little queue. But I felt it a fair exchange.

Sorry.