transport of delight

I haven’t been out for such a long time, I’ve had a major issue with one of my eyes and the sight was quite badly affected for a while. The news from the hospital at my follow-up was that the current position – giant jellyfish floaters wobbling about and a permanent shimmer in the corner – is as good as it gets. So now I just need to get on with learning to live with it. And a ride in the sun to an ice cream parlour with friends – well, that doesn’t get much better as therapy, does it?

It’s a bit of a cliche to say “two wheels move the soul” but ten thousand of them arriving certainly shakes the tarmac.

I listen to Planet Rock in the morning. Sometimes I feel I should be a proper grown-up and listen to BBC6Music or Radio 4 or something, but I like Sam’s weekend morning show and I like the Shed of Rock and I like The Full English (and I’m still grateful for The Full Wingman though I think my recording of it has been lost with the work laptop).

I was drinking my coffee mulling what to do with my day and deciding in what order to tackle gardening, washing the bike and going to Sainsbury’s when Sam mentioned Dave Day. Now I’d heard about this ride to honour one of the best human beings in the world, Dave Myers, and I’d thought the police would never allow it, and put it to the back of my mind. But here it was, happening today, and it was going to stop at the National Motorcycle Museum which is about 20 minutes from my house. So I dithered a bit and decided that I ought to go down, and if nothing else I’d get a nice bacon batch and I could wash the bike when I got back.

It’s brilliant riding on a demo or memorial run. I’m only good at two things on a bike – one is finding tiny gaps to plunge through in London courier style, and the other is riding in staggered formation on motorways. I did a lot of demo rides in the glory days when the police still escorted them, and one of my favourite memories is a Kill Spills ride up the motorway from the Ace Cafe to a bike festival – the traffic slowed and we all had to filter, and a fella in a BMW thought he’d be clever and get in the way. He thought better of it when the Met rider gave him the “copper’s look” and we all sailed through.

So I finished faffing about, got my gear on and headed down the A46. I thought I might go on a bit of the ride north so I pulled in to top up the tank, and there were 4 bikers at the pumps in bright shirts, and more bikers tooting and waving on the way past, and it was good.

The NMM got everyone in and parked up, but of course we weren’t the ride, we were just the locals. When the ride arrived, the ground shook, the cameras rolled, and it was really very emotional, because these weren’t your die-hard demo riders, the ones who turned out for every Fred Hill run or Ride to the Wall. These were people I’d never seen around, on every kind of bike and in every kind of gear, turning out to pay tribute to someone they’d probably never met but who meant a lot to them. “He loved what we all love,” said a chap I was talking to. “Bikes and food”. (yes, that was a relief)

I really hope Dave Myers knew how much he was loved when he was still here.

And of course getting lots of bikers in and parked over 90 minute is a lot easier than getting them all out again. And this is where I started to twitch because there were some really big spaces people weren’t making use of. I took a deep breath and reminded myself this was the NMM car park not the Euston Road, and the man on the Ducati Diavel didn’t want to get bonked out of the way by a woman on a Gnarly Thing with the devil on her shoulder egging her on.

It took a long time to get out of the car park and then it became clear that the novices didn’t really know how to ride on a motorway demo-style so I nipped off at the next exit and rolled gently home.

Then the BBC messaged on Twitter to ask if they could use my photos but that’s a beef for a different post!

It was a lovely day. Thank you, Dave, and thank you Planet Rock.

That’s where you find Folklore at the Astley Book Farm. It seemed straightforward but finding Mind Body and Spirit took me several laps of the stacks. It was a good job I’d been fortified for the challenge by tea, cake and a splendid sausage roll.

I had set out on the outfit with the intention of starting my 2024 Round Britain Rally account but just wasn’t feeling it. It has been a difficult Easter and it seems that even though I have faithfully attended art therapy every week for a year, it only takes a small setback for the void to claim me again.

In times of trouble we turn to the internet. I follow a kind and gentle account on Instagram called @_great_kraken_ in which a chap with a splendid beard and a magnificent selection of hats introduces the concept of the “solo date” as a means of celebrating the single life. I struggle to celebrate my life so I decided on a solo date to the book farm, a place I used to visit occasionally in pre-COVID times. I’m so glad it has survived. If you’re not familiar with it check out the website. It’s very similar in spirit and layout to Barter Books in Alnwick, one of my very favourite places.

I can’t say the date started well, unless getting stuck behind two separate bin lorries is your kink. While the outfit has many advantages, including excellent carrying capacity for books, a proper jockey wheel for Werner, a new foot pump so I can fix my flat bicycle tyre, and a large bag of crochet magazines for the charity shop, it does mean that filtering is out of the question. Patience is required but it has never been my strength.

The cake was good, the random selection of books was good, I bought a guidebook to Ukraine which led to a chat with the lady on the till about my trip to Lviv last year to chop vegetables at the Lviv Volunteer Kitchen, and I got to spend the rest of the day reading The Other Wind which I didn’t realise Ursula K Le Guin had added to the Earthsea series until I saw it on the shelf. Was it a good date? It should have been but it didn’t really dent the desolation. Brains are rubbish.