News from Jupiter
Turning Ninety
April 30, 2021
Well, tomorrow’s the day when your favourite anti-hero turns ninety. I know, it’s only a number, but for some reason we have to measure out the remorseless flow of time. Seven years ago, in California, I had to go to a hospital in Stanford for s diagnosis of some small thing, although I was generally in rude good health, and while there I passed […]
Goodbye To All That
January 17, 2021
I am sorry for the long interruption of my interruptions. This has been a wild time for me and the country. In fact, it’s been an annus horribilis for everyone (and you can blame the Queen for introducing that fancy phrase). First I allowed myself to be swindled out of a huge amount of money, and then the house burned down on New Year’s Eve. […]
A New Year Interruption
January 5, 2021
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 […]
To bike, or not to bike
November 1, 2020
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 […]
Maybe, after Covid, Colombia doesn’t seem so dangerous any more
October 19, 2020
Mike Thomsen is a friend of mine who offers motorcycle tours from Cali in Colombia. I’d like to share my recent correspondence with him and a piece he’s written that I really like. It’s very clear and level-headed, and I recommended you read it. Mike, It has aways bothered me that I was of so little help to you after you so kindly invited […]
Remembering Harry Evans
September 26, 2020
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 […]
Is it me, or is it the bike?
August 16, 2020
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 […]
A Story Out Of Time
July 26, 2020
There’s a story I forgot to tell, back in the early fifties soon after I came back to London from Paris. The war had been over for almost ten years but London was still a city-in-waiting. I didn’t know it at the time of course, but looking back I can see how much quieter it was then, particularly at the end of the day. And […]
Three years too late
July 12, 2020
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 […]
The rise and fall of the Gendarmerie – as I saw it
July 6, 2020
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 […]