November 2007
People tell me that I’m not doing enough on my web site. Here we are in November and I’m still cracking on about what I was going to do in August.
They are right of course. I should be blogging away like there’s no yesterday, and thanking my lucky stars that anyone wants to read me. And since the web site is all about me – wonderful, death-defying, multi-tasking, life-enhancing, globe-transcending ME – maybe you will be interested to hear why such a paragon (or conceited asshole; take your pick) can’t even get it together to write about himself.
Well, the problem is life. My life gets in the way. It has grown into this huge, unmanageable conglomeration of things to do. They’re all things I want to do, and they keep me healthy and give me a lot of satisfaction, but I can’t keep them in bounds.
There’s always more.
I like building stuff, and growing stuff, and playing the piano, and meeting people, and traveling, and cooking, and eating and drinking in good company, and being alone to think and remember stuff. And then there’s the writing, and the publishing too, of course. I’m full of ideas about more things to do.
In theory it’s a great system. The building keeps me fit. Growing food keeps me healthy. There’s plenty to exercise my brain and fight off senility.
It would be a perfect arrangement if I could only find a way to keep it in order, but my house is a plethora of unfinished projects, my grounds have too many patches of wasteland. I keep missing credit card deadlines, neglect has brought my piano playing into disgrace, there are too many irresistible opportunities to travel, and too many things to write that I haven’t written – including my web site.
I’ll try to do better, but I can’t promise. I think my life will always be a mess. Heaven help my executors.
I hope they won’t be called upon too soon.
Nobody has yet asked me the secret of my longevity, because 76 isn’t all that old any more but I do meditate often on my good fortune. How come I still run up the stairs, when my step-father (bless him) told me that men stop doing that by the time their fifty? Let alone ride round the world?
I’ve concluded that it can’t be just my genes that keep me so sprightly. It must be something I’m doing. So maybe, in it’s own unintended way, this messy life of mine is doing me good. And for the past 44 years, since I last had a job, I’ve only been doing things I wanted to do, as opposed to doing what others want me to do. Not too many people can say that? It makes me unemployable, of course, but I’m proud of it.
Recently, with my tongue firmly stuck in my cheek, I invited well-wishers to come and help sort out a small part of the mess. There was some brush to clear, and to my amazement a platoon of people responded eagerly. I was humbled. In my usual inept fashion I made it as difficult for them to come as possible, but even so two of them actually made it here.
This is what the jungle looked like
before Dave and Dan, two brushwhackers of extraordinary skill and daring
penetrated the forest. We laboured mightily for most of the day and here is how it looks now – a veritable sylvan glade.
I rewarded them with food and a slide show, and Dave, who came here from Canada, left behind several bottles of precious fluids which he said he wouldn’t be able to get back across the border.
We dug up many curious artifacts with which to enrich the local dump, and the accumulated brush made a great bonfire for Guy Fawkes day which I celebrate regularly every fifth of November.
Whose effigy we actually burn is a hot topic.
I leave it to people’s imagination – after all, not everybody feels the way I do about Bush, Cheney and Co. Almost everybody though.
Aside from that, I should tell you more about my six weeks in Europe. I had a great time, as usual, at the Gieboldehausen meeting in Germany. I had the great pleasure of meeting Doris Wiedemann, a motorcycle journalist and adventurer with a wonderful toothy smile who took me on a superb back roads tour on the way south to Stuttgart.
The first day was a delight.
On the second day I got more wet than I have ever been, even in an Indian monsoon. The rain was unbelievable and relentless. Visibility on the autobahn was terrible, there was fog at times too, and despite my Aerostich suit I was soaked from my waist to my toes. Doris was in even worse shape, because her lights packed up and she had to ride on, in the dark, in the same torrential downpour, to Augsburg.
She didn’t tell me about her lights or I don’t think I would have let her go on. I don’t know how she survived, but she’s a great rider, and made it home safely.
The next day I rode under the Alps to Italy, and got myself into an Italian motorcycle magazine called MotoTourismo.
Maria Barry, the badge-lady who turns up at lots of rallies and rides vintage Triumphs, has been urging me for years to taste the delights of Tuscany, so I spent a week at her mother’s guest house in Barga, and threw a literary reading and book sale in for good measure. It’s an interesting and pretty mountain-top village, strangely full of Scots.
How that happened I don’t know, although they are rather clannish, aren’t they.
Maria introduced me to the book shop owners and I tried to look suitably bookish. The food and wine were outstanding, and so was my waistline. I tried to keep control by clambering up and down the steep village streets as much as possible, but it was a losing battle.
Hate to say it, but it was probably a good thing I left when I did.
I rode the bike up to Slovenia, and then to Hungary, and then to Ukraine. Iv’e been think how marvelous it is to have this bike in Europe. The old BMW Funduro may not be a very glamorous bike. I remember when I first rode one ages ago in the nineties I didn’t like it much, but I’m converted. For what I want to do, which is to travel long distances easily and safely it’s a terrific bike, and I’m surprised again to realise just how safe I feel on it. It’s a ’97 model – I got it very cheap – I’ve had to put tyres, a chain, and new head bearings on it and in two years I’ve done 12,000 miles. I got some boxes from Al Jesse and they’ve performed very well. I know I announced my conversion to soft luggage, but that was for the rough stuff in Africa and so on. For civilised cruising around Europe boxes are probably better.