News from Jupiter
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 […]
A Trio of 89th Birthday Parties
May 3, 2020
My grateful thanks to all those of you who took the time to wish me a happy birthday on Facebook and Twitter. Since coming to France I have had three wonderful birthday parties. We filled a neighbour’s garden with people and the delicious aroma of chicken and sausage barbecued by yours truly, Here’s one of them: Here’s another: This year there were four of us […]
Recording An Interrupted Life
March 27, 2020
For some time now I’ve been working on an autobiography. I’m doing it mainly for the sake of my descendants who, like most young people, don’t think of asking questions until it’s too late, partly because they’re too busy, partly for fear of being bored, but also I think for fear of finding it rather embarrassing. However, being a writer by profession, I can’t do […]
Après Overland Expo East
October 20, 2019
What I like most about the Overland Expo meetings is hanging out with the crew, and here I’ve managed to take a really bad pic of three of my friends. That’s Alison Delapp at the back, spitting out an olive stone, and Duncan the Scot who runs the incredible LandRover training course, giving me the thumbs up, and Graham in front who manages just […]
The Joint Is Jumping
October 1, 2019
It’s almost four years since I conceived this Aspiran project, and at last it seems to be taking off. For those who still don’t know I’ll explain. At the same time as I wanted to move back to France from California, I thought the best use I could make of my remaining years on this earth would be to help other travellers who […]
Hotting Up In Aspiran
September 21, 2019
Things are hotting up in Aspiran just as the weather is cooling down. All of a sudden, it seems, people are finding me. On Thursday I was waiting for Christopher Lee to arrive and work on a book. Then that same day, out of nowhere, came two Aussies on a BMW 800 just to say hello. Hein and Corene Schwartz were on their […]
Here’s a new twist?
September 18, 2019
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, […]
Behaving Strangely
September 2, 2019
I’m off to Ukraine for a flying visit at the end of September to celebrate the tenth anniversary of my worst motorcycle accident. I’m celebrating the fact that it had no visible lasting consequences. In 2009 I was riding my 650 BMW to the Polish border, at a steady pace on a good road in fine weather. As always I was riding close to […]
It’s happening
August 12, 2019
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 […]