Tired and confused

I'm packing for the Round Britain Rally Awards Dinner tomorrow night. Because the taxman wants £15,000 in underpaid PAYE off me, I'm on something of an economy drive and am booked into the campsite, which is one-fifth the price of the team hotel. But because I also have to work 6 - 12 tomorrow before I can set off to Conkers, I'm going in the car.

This is presenting me with an unforseen difficulty. I know how to pack for camping with Ruby. One pannier for stove, gear and hard things including tins of food. One pannier for clothes. Top box for maps, camera, charging cables and notebook. Tie-down bag for anything else.

With a whole car-load of space available to me, I am at something of a loss. I have a pile of gear in the kitchen which looks like too much and I'm sure I've left out all the important stuff.

I cope better with boundaries. I'm sure there's a metaphor in here but I am too tired to find it. Probably becuase last night lacked boundaries and after slightly too many cocktails in fabulous company I didn't get to bed until 3.15am.

There should be a word for days like today

As part of my campaign for a biker vocabulary, which to date has mainly consisted of suggestions of names for all the different kinds of rain, I'd like to nominate a new weather phenomenon that needs its own festival.

Today is the first day (in my part of the world, at least) that the sun, falling on black leggings, feels warm.

It's a hugely important day in my biking calendar and I think we should celebrate it, though probably not by locking Edward Woodward in a giant wicker man and setting light to him.

...and what got you into biking?

I am tidying up. I call it tidying up but mostly it consists of seeing a box and thinking, I wonder what's in there? Then I open it and find that the box is mostly full of 1985.

Although my dad was a scooter boy in his youth he had given it up on joining the ranks of management accountancy. So I grew up not knowing any bikers and didn't actually sit on a bike until the morning of my CBT.

This magazine spread - which was lurking in the box, sandwiched between a diary from when I was 15 and quite clearly unhealthily obsessed with one of the boys in my science class and a poster of Michael Praed as Robin of Sherwood - is the reason I became a biker. It's from a magazine called Looks and the blonde lady in the photo had volunteered for a makeover. She worked as a courier and they glammed her up and put her in ski-pants (a dead giveaway that it's the 80's...) And 15-year old me read it and though - that's for me. I too want to wear big boots, have spiky hair and sit on Chelsea Bridge next to my extremely large motorcycle.

According to the small print, the Kawasaki costs a massive £2,959 and does 137mph.