News from Ted
Happy New Year to you. I hope you enjoyed the festive season and that you’re optimistic about 2021 bringing with it a positive change in our collective fortunes.
Here in France, I said bon voyage to 2020 under rather unfortunate circumstances. While celebrating New Year’s Eve with a neighbour, a fire broke out in the kitchen of my partner’s beautiful place next door. We discovered it in time to save half the house, but the damage is extensive. We’re both entirely unharmed and that’s all that really matters.
The aftermath of the New Year’s Eve fire in the kitchen
We’ll be taking sanctuary at my home in Aspiran, and I’ll get back to the next chapter of An Interrupted Life as soon as I’ve replaced my laptop.
In the meantime, my very best wishes to you all.
It’s been ten weeks since I asked the existential question which afflicts all of us from time to time: Is it me or the bike? Is it my state of mind that is making my bike behave badly, or is it my bike’ s bad behaviour that’s giving me the willies? Today I am happy to announce that it was the bike all along.
If you remember, I had a BMW 650, which I brought from Germany to my house in France three years ago, when I was 86. It was a long ride and I celebrated the fact that I felt really good, and the years fell off me. The bike also ran perfectly well except that every now and again it stopped. To get it going again I had to pull the fuel line off the tap, spill a bit of petrol, shove it back on again and ride until it stopped again. Nobody could figure out why. Then for one reason or another the bike had to sit in the garage for a very long time, and when I got it out again I was 89.
It was still mysteriously stopping and more often, but worse than that it felt really bad, like I could never find the right gear. So that’s when I put the existential question. Was it me or the bike? Maybe I’m just too old to ride a proper motorcycle. Many people had suggestions about the fuel problem. But it wasn’t a vacuum in the tank, and it wasn’t crap in the tap.
Simon de Burton, visiting me, said he thought the fuel filter might be overheating and vapourising the fuel, so the string was to hold it away from the block. But that didn’t help either.
Well I thought of giving it all up, but I’ve become sentimental in my old age. This bike and I have been through some stuff together, and among other things it was seriously twisted up front, so my right hand always arrived at the destination a little before my left hand. I was quite used to riding it like that, but I thought, as a last tribute I’d get it straightened out. Maybe at the same time the shop will figure out what made it keep stopping.
So. I got it back this week. It’s straightened out and there’s a new front disc. I rode it sixty miles to Bedarieux and back and it felt wonderful. And now that I look at that picture above again, it’s obvious what was wrong, because the filter is empty. Before I brought it from Germany I had never had an inline filter. I didn’t know that it was supposed to be full. The mechanic knew exactly what to do. There was a blockage in the carburetor and he sucked it out with a vacuum. Job done. No charge. If you ever get stuck in my area go to Moto Activ in Clermont l’Herault.
So here, looking rather dorky, is yours truly, on the road again for another year, with nothing to worry about except next Tuesday.
PHOTOGRAPH BY MY NEIGHBOUR M. ARNAL
More interruptions next week. Cheers.
It came as a terrible shock to hear last Wednesday that Harry Evans had died. I suppose it seems odd to be surprised when a 92-year-old leaves the premises, but I honesty felt he would live for ever. Apart from being the greatest newspaper editor in living memory, Sir Harold Evans (to give him his full monicker) was also a good friend. Without his support my “Jupiter” journey could never have been the same. I worked for him briefly just before he left The Times, and he later published two of my books when he was the boss of Random House.
He was 89 when we had lunch together in New York three years ago and I wrote to him early this year hoping to hear that he was well. I told him that I had now reached the age he was then. He replied:
TED
Firmly in my memory is our pic of what [was] needed for a prodigous Journey.
I HAVE already scouted the territory ahead of you….a stripling of 89 indeed.
Keep going!
Harry
Here’s the pic that was firmly in his memory. In black and white, on newsprint, it was often as good as a passport. It’s comforting to know it stayed with him almost to the end. Thanks Harry. I’ll keep going.
There was a time when I was riding in Malaysia towards Thailand that my bike felt really uncomfortable. It was my first long trip on the bike since the accident that shot a lead pellet into my eye. I was nervous, trying to recover the confidence that I had built up over three years of riding, but the bike just felt wrong. I couldn’t account for it, and I couldn’t even describe it. I stopped and looked at the chain – sometimes if the chain was too slack it seemed to have this clunky effect – and the alignment too (I was on a Meriden Triumph 500) but everything seemed OK, so I persevered, and got to Hat Yai.
Next day the bike felt perfect.
The same thing had happened in Africa, riding south from Mombaça on a pot-holed dirt road towards a frontier. I was nervous. I’d heard that they might give me trouble and even refuse to let me through. Once I got to the other side, the bike felt fine, but I put that down to the smooth asphalt.
From the time I first got that Triumph I couldn’t bring myself to give it a name. To me it was a machine; a valuable, important machine but still just a very clever assemblage of metal parts, nuts, bolts, chains, bearings, and so on. I just didn’t want to get caught up in silly anthropomorphism.
But gradually, over time, I found it hard to resist the idea that the bike had some kind of primitive personality, mainly because it was kick-start. Nothing rouses my ire faster than an engine that won’t start and flailing away uselessly at a kick-starter just makes it worse. However I have to say that generally the bike started promptly and efficiently, and particularly in moments of crisis, such as when a nearby elephant looked likely to take a run at me. At moments like that, when starting or not starting was a matter of life and death, it would be a bitter twisted soul that didn’t say, “Thank you, dear motorcycle.”
So, gradually, the motorcycle smuggled itself into my affections and it got to the point where sometimes I couldn’t be sure whether it was my state of mind that was affecting the bike, or vice versa.
What’s all this about?
Well I told you last month that my BMW Funduro (which I often call Fundador after a Spanish brandy, by mistake) had a problem. It stopped unexpectedly, starved of fuel and the only way to get it going again was to pull the fuel hose off the tap and put it on again. After all the obvious solutions proved negative, my friend Simon suggested the fuel filter was too close to the block and got hot, creating a vapour lock. So I tied a piece of string round the filter to hold it away. And on Tuesday I was all set for a trial run. Obviously it needed to be a hundred kilometres or more and I was nervous. The bike ran beautifully when I brought it here from Germany, but that was in 2017. I haven’t been anywhere on it since, and I’m three years closer to the grave. I’m absolutely fine on the scooter, but there’s always that niggly thought; will I be fine on a proper bike?
Well the bike felt terrible. There was one little sweet spot in each gear, at around 4000 revs, and anywhere else it felt like it was about to fall apart. I gave up very quickly, and drove it back into the garage. Now I’m wondering, how could it get so bad just sitting there. Was it really the bike, or was it me?
I shall have to find out soon. Watch this space or, if you can’t bear it, look away.
The only thing to mar that beautiful ride from Bavaria to Aspiran when I brought my BMW down to France in 2017 was an erratic but persistent fault in the fuel system. Every now and then the fuel stopped running, and I had to find a spot by the roadside to stop and fiddle. I quickly found out that if I wrenched the tube away from the tap and plugged it in again everything was OK for another fifty or sixty kilometres.
This annoyed me but not as much as it annoyed my travelling companion. She felt herself exposed on the roadside, and she formed the opinion that if I filled up at every available opportunity it would happen less.
I didn’t believe her theory but had no explanation myself. It was not suction from the tank. I rode with the gas cap open for a while but it still happened.
There was no blockage at the tap. When I took off the tube, the gas ran freely. The filter likewise showed no sign of being blocked.
My reluctance to keep stopping for a refill created bad feeling which eventually built up into a full-scale shitstorm, and became what I still think of as the worst thing that has happened to me in my life, although I have no scars to show for it.
Always remember to carry string (along with your umbrella, of course)
The other day, three years too late, a friend of mine called Simon de Burton came by, took one look, and said “Your filter is too close to the engine block. I bet it’s because the petrol is vapourising and causing an airlock.”
That sounds like the perfect and most promising explanation. I have yet to prove it. I shall do so in the coming days, but some of the joy of discovery has already dissipated. Another biking friend, Helmut Heusler, came to visit, and he has had decades of experience as a design engineer for the big German car makers.
He says, “Throw the filter away. It’s quite unnecessary.”
I’ll try to prove Simon’s theory before I do though.
I have never had to deal with the French Gendarmes before. I see them around of course, always very smart and business-like as befits a national police force. Usually I see them in their vehicles, and they are very impressive on their BMW motorcycles. They wear a blue uniform and in the heat of summer here in the south they cast off their jackets and wear broad braces to support their military style trousers, but this does not imply a relaxed or slovenly attitude. I have always thought of them as a force to reckon with. On the one occasion that I was stopped, at random on a roundabout, the Gendarme was very pleasant and polite and joked a bit as he went through the routine of checking my license but you knew it was the velvet glove over the iron fist.
Recently they have been building a new headquarters for the Gendarmerie alongside a road I travel quite frequently and it is finished now, a very fine looking purpose-built establishment flourishing aerials and such, surrounded by a panoply of new houses that I assume houses the agents. All very convincing and I must say it bolstered my impression of a powerful, effective force of rather superior people, well above the municipal police one sees around.
The new Gendarmerie National headquarters of Clermont l’Heraoult
After my recent unfortunate loss through cyber crime I went to the bank to explain how I had been tricked into sending a number of large payments to the account of a criminal in Switzerland and my counselor said that I must report it to the Gendarmes immediately. I have to say I was little nervous and excited at the prospect of my first interaction. I imagined the kind of interrogation they might put me through, thinking that their investigation might stretch across Europe and back to the States where I suffered the final coup de grace. Interpol and the FBI might be involved. I prepared the paperwork as best I could before going there last Friday.
I parked alongside a barricade with stern warnings about this being a military establishment and threatening dreadful consequences to trespassers. It was quite hard to find a way in. I had to guess where the office was. A heavy iron fence surrounded it but eventually I found a locked gate. This being corona virus time there was also a sign to say that it was obligatory for everyone in this establishment to wear a mask. In a place like this that would be an iron rule so I fumbled for my mask, because I don’t normally wear one outside. As I was hooking it over my ears I heard the gate unlock itself. I went through into a sort of holding area locked in on both sides, and then the door of this imposing establishment unlocked itself.
I found myself inside a rather small, dowdy-looking office much like the old offices of yore and my respect for the whole enterprise began to diminish. A young blonde woman in uniform sat behind a pane of glass and looked at me, rather indifferently, intimating that I should say something. Unusually for France she didn’t even say “Bonjour.” She was not wearing a mask. In fact none of the people coming in and out at the back of the office wore masks. I felt like a dick.
“Do I have to wear this?” I asked. She gave me a Gallic shrug. I half removed it
“I have come to report a crime,” I said.
“Oh yes,”
“I have been defrauded out of a large amount of money.”
The telephone rang. She reached for it, gratefully I fancied, and talked animatedly for several minutes. Then she turned to me again.
“You were saying, Monsieur?”
“Somebody imitated a friend’s email address and tricked me into sending four large payments to a bank account in Switzerland.”
She seemed not to understand me. I did my best to explain. After a bit of this she said she would pass me on to a colleague, an older woman with dark hair and glasses who had come in and was now standing in front of me, mask-less, of course.
I went through it again.
“What is this to do with us?” she asked. “It’s none of our business. You should go to Switzerland, Monsieur.”
They were happy to see me leave.
I see the Gendarmes differently now.
Maybe they should go back to where they came from
Just keeping up to date on the various ways in which the French Bureaucracy challenges our ingenuity. I have received a registered letter from Nantes.
The government office at Nantes is well known to everyone, including the police, as a black hole. It is where you send applications for a change of driving license.
The letter, paraphrased, says, “Sir, on the 9th of July, 2018, we received your application to change your British driving license for a French license. We have examined your request. However, since your request was made, you have renewed your license, and since your current license is not the same as the one you sent us 14 months ago, we cannot make the exchange. Please accept our most distinguished consideration.”
My current license will be valid for three more years. I wonder if the people at Nantes will be able to hold on to my new application until that too has expired. Is there a Guinness record in the offing? I’ll keep you posted, unless I too have expired.
It’s not like me to have nothing to say.
I sit here at my computer and all sorts of disconnected ideas are flitting around like fish beneath the surface but they can’t break through, as though they were trapped under a sheet of ice.
Nothing seems worth saying when the two countries I am connected with by language and history are both now governed by flamboyant frauds, each one intent on bolstering his ego by leading his country to destruction.
And as if that weren’t bad enough one of them, Mr Trump, seems quite willing to risk universal extinction as well.
Still, for the time being, life does go on. After three years of waiting, some potential writers have taken note of my offer of hospitality and advice. At the beginning of the year I had Malcolm Dunkeld here for a few days. He was kind enough to say that my comments were ” extremely valuable.”
Christopher Lee is coming to visit next week with a view to spending more time here later. He says he’s determined to find a way to elevate his travel experiences so that they energise and excite others. Derek Mansfield plans to come at the end of the week with the same thing in mind. And Mark Holmes, who attempted to rejig his life by riding off on a Triumph Rocket, has sent me a book which he thinks could be improved.
So it’s beginning to look as though my purpose in buying this house with all its bedrooms may be tested. Meanwhile others come to visit. Catherine Germillac left this morning after a couple of nights here. She’s been in Corsica and Sardinia , still on her famous 125cc Desirée, which she rode all over the world years ago. Yesterday she went to see one of the great historic sites in this part of the world, the mediaeval village of St. Guilheme-le-Désert. The village itself was crowded with tourists, but high above it is a ruined castle which is supposed be out of bounds – so of course she scrambled up there. The panoramic view she captured on her phone was extraordinary. And I’m the stupid guy who forgot to ask her for the picture.
Instead, all I have to offer is a picture of our new shop. Yes, at last, we have our Epicerie again and it’s a great resource. So now Aspiran has it’s baker, it’s Café and it’s grocer. Some things get better.
You can just see the shop at the far end of my street. 
Ah, there it is.
It used to be the fire station
Here’s the boulangerie
And here’s the café / bar, but it’s shut on Mondays.
but you can buy soft drinks at the Tabac/post office
So you see, we’re a thriving little village (sort of)
For ten years now I’ve been going to Arizona in May to face sand-storms, mud, wind, rain, snow and even occasional good weather (I’m kidding: there was lots of good weather, but it’s the other stuff you remember). And the reason for taking such risks with my health and good humour is to be among several thousand other fools like me worshiping at the feet of Apollo, who must, I think, have been the God of Adventure.
It’s called the Overland Expo and it’s an assembly of all the daftest vehicles you’re likely to see, from millionaire multimogs to all-terrain strollers. I came to love the crew that runs the show, through all kinds of adversity. In particular the Land Rover guys, like Duncan and Andy and Graham and Chris, who thrive on mud and disaster. And I really admire Roseann and Jonathan Hansen who started the whole crazy thing.
Anyway, I go there to talk. That’s all I do. I used to do it with pictures like everybody else, but somehow instead of helping, the pictures just got in the way. For some reason people like listening to me. I don’t usually know what I’m going to say – one thing just leads to another – but this time I DO know. I’m going to talk about fear, and how to make it work for you.
The idea came to me when I took my bike out for a spin round my village today. It was only a short ride, but it was the first time this year and for me it was quite significant. The truth is that when I haven’t been on a bike for a while I begin to wonder whether I’ll ever get on one again. Every year it takes a little bit more courage to believe that I still belong on the back of this old warhorse. The problem is age, old age. Perhaps a few of you are already thinking about it. To stop or not to stop, that is the question.
I’ve just been visiting in England, meeting new people. It’s not long before they discover how old I am and sooner or later someone asks, very politely, “Are you still riding?”
Of course I say “Yes,” but I’m fudging it really, because that was last year.
I took that picture of my bike here in the garage under my house, where it’s been gathering dust for many months. It’s the same one that cost me a fortune and a friendship to bring to France, and I’ve hardly used it. I do a lot of work in my garage and the bike keeps staring at me. In two weeks I will be 88 years old. I’m very aware that many people would say a man my age has no business riding a motorcycle, so I have that to contend with as well.
“I’ll have to take it out soon,” I told myself, but I kept putting it off and I have to admit I was scared. I was afraid that when I got on it I wouldn’t feel safe, that I’d get the message, “It’s over”. For someone who spent many years on the road with nothing but a bike for company, that thought is ultimately depressing.
So today I took my fears out of the horror film category, and put them to use. I took the bike on the road and In no time at all I felt fine, and I’m good for another year.
You can’t seek adventure without taking a risk. And if there’s risk you’d be a fool if you didn’t have some fear. The trick is to make it work for you. I learned a lot about that during my four years around the world. We’ll have lots to talk about. I hope some of you can be there.
Nathan Millward, who is unquestionably one of my favourite characters, has been doing a gig at the motorcycle show in London for a number of years. It consists of putting people on a small stage at one end of this vast arena to tell stories about their travels. He’s run through most of the top attractions in the motorcycle world and this year was finally reduced to me. I played hard to get at first, but he said OK, piss off then, so I quickly changed my tune and bought the air tickets in a hurry, something I later came to regret.
Having called my bluff, Nate could have made me grovel but instead he couldn’t do enough for me. He fixed up a hotel right next to the show for three nights and got a mate of his, an IT wizard called Brian Goodbourn, to fetch me from the airport. He told me thrilling stories, all virtual of course, all the way into town. Here’s the picture he sent me to know him by.
The Motor Cycle News people who run the show believe in fruitful disruption, so they put our stage about 100 yards away from a live race-track, where small bikes roar around in circles at 9000 revs, and a commentator with a mike brings the races to a thundering conclusion about every fifteen minutes.
Of course, as seasoned travellers used to shouting at the natives, we easily rode above their interruptions. This obviously annoyed MCN so every now and again they would take a sports bike engine up to maximum revs right next to us at the McGuiness Bar, but nothing could dim the beauty of our tales.
However, things did begin to go strange. Our books were displayed on flimsy tables that were actually constructed from matchwood, and my books are heavy. I layed them out across the surface of the hardboard top to spread the load but eventually the inevitable happened. Somebody leaned on them, and the whole thing collapsed. Not a disaster, you might think, but I happened to have my hand under the table as it fell, and it took some little bits of finger with it, producing a liberal helping of blood.
The first aid station was a long way away – I would have called it second or third aid – but I am not squeamish. I soon found some paper napkins to mop up the blood and to wrap around my bleeding digits, but there was blood on the books and that did, at first annoy me. Then a realized that far from damaging the books, it might actually improve them.
Would not my most fervent fans be delighted to have a little bit of me along with the book, as a sort of sacred relic? When I announced from the stage that I had books marked with my own precious essence there were loud guffaws of mirth, but when I sat down again the bloody books were quickly snapped up.
My publisher, who happened to be visiting me at that moment was flabbergasted and gobsmacked. In all his years of marketing books he had never thought of offering the author’s blood as an inducement to buy. It will be the saving of many a small bookshop. There is no way Amazon can replicate it, and we can look forward to some bloodthirsty scenes at Waterstones and WHS.
Well things calmed down for while. About three weeks ago a fellow called Peter Ryder, who obviously also rydes, asked to buy a print of one of my pictures. I’ve never done this kind of thing in the past but I told him that if he cared to have a bunch of prints made at my expense he could have one of them for free, so now here comes Pete with a big cardboard envelope of gorgeous prints. I chose two pictures, printed A2 size – that’s 24” by 16”. This is the obvious one:
I did some smaller ones of this one too, at £8 a throw.
Then I had big prints made of this one as well.
To my astonishment, the one with me in it sold out quite quickly at £20, but I only sold two of the other one. Curious because I actually prefer the one of the bike, but that just shows what a shy and modest person I must be. Anyway, this seems to be something people like so I’m thinking of printing some more. Let me know if you’re interested.
So things went along merrily until the show closed. Then came the dénoument, and it was swift and deadly.
Nate and I were strolling to the exit. Contractors were tearing down their exhibits. Suddenly a shot rang out and I fell to the ground. Several people standing around, including Nate, were certain I’d been assassinated and looked around wildly for the shooter.
As for me, I hurt my knee quite badly on the concrete floor, so it took me a moment to get up and reassure everyone that I hadn’t been hit. We never knew where that explosive noise came from, but I have one more reason to be glad to be alive.
That wasn’t the end of my troubles. My knee really hurt, so I had to get a cab to the airport. Then more stupidity. That air ticket I rushed into? I got the month wrong on the return half, so I got stuck at Gatwick. So I hastily booked an airport hotel, and again got the day wrong and had to spend half an hour on the phone listening to jolly Butlins-style music to get my money back.
The moral of the story? I must be getting old. But my blood’s good.
