'and another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust'
No more Corsaro's and now no more Buells, the only Harleys that seems really fullfilling and that have a little more kick and more importantly a grin factor, a shame to hear though I have yet to hear what the plans for MV are, I suppose you could argue that an MV is more desirable bike across the board. They're just a shit load of money.
I only had one real ride of a Buell but I have to say I loved it, quirkiness an' all. The roadtest is somewher in this blog's back archive thing.
Motorcycles aside,
I picked up a copy of New Model Army's new album, 'Today is a good day'. What a corker! I thoght 'High' would be really hard to beat as I judged it probably the best since Thunder & Consolation, but this new one is absolutely awesome.
They don't really break too much new ground, but they just get better and better at what they do do.
Lyrics I wish I could have written, passion, fire, and an absolutely awesome band keeping the Sullivan ship coursing ahead.
They have to be for me the archetypal proper English band ever, fuck the Beatles and the Stones, nod and a tip of the hat to Zeppelin and the Who,They are not still producing but this lot are.
Brilliant album, go buy and listen!!!
Monday 26 October 2009
Wednesday 7 October 2009
Lament for Morini
I read today in the trade press the merest snippets of information regarding the future of Moto Morini. Creators of the fang tasticherissimo 1200 Corsaro Veloce.
It would appear that despite selling 15% more machines in the year to date (more than the entirity of 2008 year), they cannot and have not made ends meet.
If any bike needed an airing to a wider audience, this was one of them, superb motor and great styling. A real fucking header of a bike, glad I rode one before they were no more.
KTM manufacturers of my equal first most desirable road bike to a penurious pocket and puddle sized eyes of desire have also slipped by 40% in brand sales. That is a fuck of a lot of toasters to sell to make up the difference.
Mr. KTM I will personally sing the praises of an Orange meanie throughout the land if you wanna give me one. Hell they aren't any good sitting in the factory gathering dust and spider's eggs!!
Talking of orange the sodium lamp opposite my garret window sheds flaming drips of rain, whilst the blue lights of Der Polizei, flash down the hill chasing some itinerant drunk who appears to be waving a fire extinguisher about.
I can almost hear his last gleeful cackle into the rainy sky before the batons rain down quick sobriety and enforced penitence, the blue lights blinding him. Could be a her I suppose?
It's a million laughs a night here in Mega City One, Home of the homeless, denizen of the desolate, The lost and lonely ones, the crazed and foolish, deceivers, believers, the vain, the mad, the sick and the craven.
Oh yes my friends in Etherworld, hear my laughter.
It would appear that despite selling 15% more machines in the year to date (more than the entirity of 2008 year), they cannot and have not made ends meet.
If any bike needed an airing to a wider audience, this was one of them, superb motor and great styling. A real fucking header of a bike, glad I rode one before they were no more.
KTM manufacturers of my equal first most desirable road bike to a penurious pocket and puddle sized eyes of desire have also slipped by 40% in brand sales. That is a fuck of a lot of toasters to sell to make up the difference.
Mr. KTM I will personally sing the praises of an Orange meanie throughout the land if you wanna give me one. Hell they aren't any good sitting in the factory gathering dust and spider's eggs!!
Talking of orange the sodium lamp opposite my garret window sheds flaming drips of rain, whilst the blue lights of Der Polizei, flash down the hill chasing some itinerant drunk who appears to be waving a fire extinguisher about.
I can almost hear his last gleeful cackle into the rainy sky before the batons rain down quick sobriety and enforced penitence, the blue lights blinding him. Could be a her I suppose?
It's a million laughs a night here in Mega City One, Home of the homeless, denizen of the desolate, The lost and lonely ones, the crazed and foolish, deceivers, believers, the vain, the mad, the sick and the craven.
Oh yes my friends in Etherworld, hear my laughter.
Monday 5 October 2009
Another sleepless night
I'd almost forgotten that I had a blog. There certainly hasn't been much motorcycle action of late, well the last year really. Dark circumstance has overtaken my waking hours, no bikes to speak of just sedentary desolation.
I've always scribbled on a reasonably regular basis, mainly about bikes, mainly because they have been a constant throughout my working life.
When I had no bikes and the dredds gripped my soul and squeezed my heart, only wine, the keyboard and a whimsical semi autobiographical tale about a sentient statue I have been constructing in my head kept me alive.
I vowed to vanity publish this collection of vignettes one day. I've written fifteen, this will form the basis of the next one. It's incomplete as I have not yet weaved in the Statue or in fact much of it into the story/plot.
Friends are kind, they tell me my writing is good. (I have my doubts)but as I haven't put anything on this for practically a year, I thought I'd create some space and then fill it up with some dark vision or two.
I'm desperate to finish but can't concentrate at the moment, been looking for a filip for months to kick start the next page or two. This could be it. Amazing what pictures worry, anxiety, bitterness and loss can do for the mind.
It was just a dream, ('cept it was a powerful one.)
Psycoanalysts requiring patients sign up here. What does it all mean..... crumbs!!!!
Goths, EMO's and lost children of the night read on.
A dream whilst enduring another sleepless night.
Pushing through dense woodland, tightly packed, akin to mangrove. Broad trunked and saplings alike forming a formidable barrier to progress. It’s not that the progress is hard , though it isn’t effortless either, it’s just that progress is slow.
I can’t remember entering the woodland mangrove forest. It’s remarkable by its clean monochromatic aspect, all greys and blacks and silvers and smoke, no other colours to bleed chaos into the symmetry of shades in evidence before me.
I don’t know how long I have been walking. It could be days. I’m not tired or hungry, I am not apprehensive, I am just pushing steadily through the dense wood, Where to I don’t know. I rack my brains.
When I look up I see the leaveless upper boughs poking into the metallic graphite sky, all black, all crooked, skeletal. Should I see meaning in this?
I see the shadow of the great black bird. It shimmers fast but purposefully across a screen of trees ahead. I wonder how I have seen this, the trees are so tightly packed. Nevertheless I did see it and I saw it clearly.
I look up through the bony screen of upper boughs again. Those accusatory fingers, some pointing some imploring to the graphite sky. The smooth, unblemished, airbrushed sky, almost lit from behind in the absence of perhaps a chrome sun or silvern moonlight.
My only view of the sky is a narrow circle above and slightly to the front of me, I see no great black bird wheeling around. I look down and see the shadow once more.
I push forward again curious, should I follow the smoky silhouette as it shimmers in black against the black trees ahead?
Where to giant Corbett? Illusory Albatross?
There is no wind, not a breath, no leaves to sussurate. No wind, that cannot be! The wind is always somewhere.
There is no sound, not a twig cracked underfoot no protestation from the trees as I pass through. I can only hear myself breathing from inside, the tree’s are absorbing sound.
I and the shadow are alone
The only sign of life are the trees (I can’t tell if they are dead or alive, I surmise that they are dead as there is no foliage or fall from them).
The trees could be stone, smooth stone.
How could I push past stone? How could I push through a wood as dense as this with no snags, no briars. They cannot be stone. They are however ageless, they’ve always been like this, this place has always been here. How did I get here? Still following the Raven.
How much time has passed? I don’t recall. No sunset, no sunrise, no variation of temperature, still no wind, still walking, pushing through the mangrove.
I have no shadow, the bird has flown on ahead or dissipated between the trees.
Still walking with only the space inside to think. No real room outside of me.
Just me, the trees and the sky now. Still walking, wandering, wondering.
DT 30/09/09
I've always scribbled on a reasonably regular basis, mainly about bikes, mainly because they have been a constant throughout my working life.
When I had no bikes and the dredds gripped my soul and squeezed my heart, only wine, the keyboard and a whimsical semi autobiographical tale about a sentient statue I have been constructing in my head kept me alive.
I vowed to vanity publish this collection of vignettes one day. I've written fifteen, this will form the basis of the next one. It's incomplete as I have not yet weaved in the Statue or in fact much of it into the story/plot.
Friends are kind, they tell me my writing is good. (I have my doubts)but as I haven't put anything on this for practically a year, I thought I'd create some space and then fill it up with some dark vision or two.
I'm desperate to finish but can't concentrate at the moment, been looking for a filip for months to kick start the next page or two. This could be it. Amazing what pictures worry, anxiety, bitterness and loss can do for the mind.
It was just a dream, ('cept it was a powerful one.)
Psycoanalysts requiring patients sign up here. What does it all mean..... crumbs!!!!
Goths, EMO's and lost children of the night read on.
A dream whilst enduring another sleepless night.
Pushing through dense woodland, tightly packed, akin to mangrove. Broad trunked and saplings alike forming a formidable barrier to progress. It’s not that the progress is hard , though it isn’t effortless either, it’s just that progress is slow.
I can’t remember entering the woodland mangrove forest. It’s remarkable by its clean monochromatic aspect, all greys and blacks and silvers and smoke, no other colours to bleed chaos into the symmetry of shades in evidence before me.
I don’t know how long I have been walking. It could be days. I’m not tired or hungry, I am not apprehensive, I am just pushing steadily through the dense wood, Where to I don’t know. I rack my brains.
When I look up I see the leaveless upper boughs poking into the metallic graphite sky, all black, all crooked, skeletal. Should I see meaning in this?
I see the shadow of the great black bird. It shimmers fast but purposefully across a screen of trees ahead. I wonder how I have seen this, the trees are so tightly packed. Nevertheless I did see it and I saw it clearly.
I look up through the bony screen of upper boughs again. Those accusatory fingers, some pointing some imploring to the graphite sky. The smooth, unblemished, airbrushed sky, almost lit from behind in the absence of perhaps a chrome sun or silvern moonlight.
My only view of the sky is a narrow circle above and slightly to the front of me, I see no great black bird wheeling around. I look down and see the shadow once more.
I push forward again curious, should I follow the smoky silhouette as it shimmers in black against the black trees ahead?
Where to giant Corbett? Illusory Albatross?
There is no wind, not a breath, no leaves to sussurate. No wind, that cannot be! The wind is always somewhere.
There is no sound, not a twig cracked underfoot no protestation from the trees as I pass through. I can only hear myself breathing from inside, the tree’s are absorbing sound.
I and the shadow are alone
The only sign of life are the trees (I can’t tell if they are dead or alive, I surmise that they are dead as there is no foliage or fall from them).
The trees could be stone, smooth stone.
How could I push past stone? How could I push through a wood as dense as this with no snags, no briars. They cannot be stone. They are however ageless, they’ve always been like this, this place has always been here. How did I get here? Still following the Raven.
How much time has passed? I don’t recall. No sunset, no sunrise, no variation of temperature, still no wind, still walking, pushing through the mangrove.
I have no shadow, the bird has flown on ahead or dissipated between the trees.
Still walking with only the space inside to think. No real room outside of me.
Just me, the trees and the sky now. Still walking, wandering, wondering.
DT 30/09/09
Monday 5 January 2009
Bollox to this!!
Today it snowed, tomorrow it will be icy, for the rest of the week my fingers will seize from the ill remembered and ill suffered mild frostbite received at the hands of Jack Frost some years ago.
I remember the occasion of diagnosis well. I had for weeks been commuting 100 miles or so daily in the depths of the worst case fimbal winter for years on my GPZ900R (equipped with titanium belly pan slider for the daily Pevensey Roundabout heroics, and a pipe that used to set of car alarms if I cogged it down a few in a closed street environment (chortle)).
Each day I turned up at work furiously massaging my fingers into some semblance of useful digitry other than the reddened claws of a skin raped freak, the bike shop I worked in had no heating, so consequently the aforementioned claws remained cold all day and then I rode home.
I'm too much of a tough geezer to stop and pansy around trying to sear some heat from the sonorous and mighty R's 4-1 through my completely uselss (however hideously expensive, non waterproof- despite the myriad of swing tags that had attracted them to me in the first place, pieces of shit that passed as top of the range winter gloves)so consequently, by the time I had quick changed clutchlessly and kept as much momentum in the highest gear possible and returned home the aforementioned skin on the claws felt like it was peeling with intense cold heat.
Naturally I plunged them into the nearest warm thing I could find, usually a bowl of washing up water as a grim second to my then girlfriends cleavage which worked once but the skin on one side of my face also nearly peeled away at the harsh slap it received and was never an option a second time.
I digress, after a few weeks of this appalling scenario, my hands eventually puffed up into sausage like proportions. (Those who know me laugh now ((as you did then you swine)), but I can tell you it was rough), I literally couldn't bend my fingers or grip much at all.
I made an appointment to see the doc, who gingerly poked the grimy and reddened digits even himself likening them to sausages (the sarky b'stard)He asked me what I did for a living and the sorry tale of frost and fear and loathing on the Worthing trail was duly related (thanx Hunter you were a friggin' genius).
He immediately came up with a diagnosis and cure, the diagnosis was that some pipes or capilliries or summat had burst and the fluid usually contained therein had seeped out and swollen my fingers to epic porkinson proportions, (I briefly teased dogs with them), he said I have a perfect cure....... 'Buy yourself a car, don't worry they'll go down gradually but you'll probably notice the damage done in the future if it gets really cold and you don't wrap them up'.
I was ready to stab the fuckers with a scalpel/pencil/penknife, safety pin to relieve the pressure they hurt that much and were a very odd hue of bruised purple and livid cerise but he advised against it.
I eventually bought a right old crapheap Fiat 127 so that I could remain warm over the winter months.
Ironically the heater didn't work and it was dubbed The Fridge' by all of my winter passengers.
Because of Xmas and the the sundry requirements of grinning nicely in all the right places to all the right people, the kids off school and a wallet barer than a hibernating hedgehog's stomach, the Z1R has kinda taken a back seat for a while.
The rear wheel has been reduced to stained and definitely unvirginal bare aluminium finish by way of extensive Nitromors attacks and patient wire brushing.
It is actually ready to etch prime and paint but I need gainful employment to proceed, plus a warm environment in which to spray in, (the house is out of bounds despite breaking up the furniture to fuel the fire and the assorted rags wrapped around our miserable limbs for pitiful warmth don't help nozzle control also).
However as I think I previously mentioned, Yuasa company furnished some power through the loom and the all the lights work and the motor turns over. Which is very very nishe!
I have in my possession some fine pattern Hi-Flo oil filters which will be bunged into the sump, subject to removing the crusty pipes and not rounding the ancient sump plug and breaking fingers in the resultant slippage or gush of filthy fluid passing itself off as oil, though by now it must have reverted to it's original state of crude (just my luck barely 45 dollars a barrel, hardly enough to retire on, 'another kick in the bollocks Sir' leers an obsequious and oleaginous type voice from the ether or is that the inside of my head? No matter, Onward.
I did notice that the clutch doesn't actually work, though the gearbox does, due to the fact that its a half cable, half hydraulic affair which appears to have seized. Whatever possesed the the designers of Kawasaki Heavy Industries to pioneer this dreadful half bastard mongrel lash up is beyond mere mortal thoughts nearly thirty years hence. Hopefully if I can get the cockpit fairing off and remove the clutch master cylinder assembly, wire, and lever assembly and replace it Bob is truly all of our uncles and will desrve his place in Zed heaven.
If not then I'll be compelled to swear like a Sicilian and endeavour to embed my spanners into the side of the cinderblock garage wall and then sigh resignedly and have to take the clutch basket plates etc to task which is not a job I relish.
Still it's just time and a few bob, all of which I haven't got at present as I roam The Net and the styrofam littered streets of somebody elses drunken midnight kebabbery looking for discarded local papers that haven't been snapped up by the homeless hegemony for a worthy job for a man of my illustrious talents, all of which can be counted on the fingers of one hand no doubt.
But consider the girth and experience in those fingers my friends,dutch dyke owners fearful of When the levee breaks' (apologies had tosqueeze a rock n roll mention in somewhere, ladies........
Oh by the way anybody read 'When giants walked the Earth' by Mick Wall, (Biog of Zeppelin)?
On the book front I can heartily reccommend Iain M Banks's latest Culture novel 'Matter', am suprised at the actual humanity of Baron Von Richtofen (having read his autobiography >1917 recently)ploughed through a 700 page anthology of sci fi writers which was rather average other than a story entitled 'Mother Aegypt' which was fantastic and written by Kage Baker, and just started The John Peel biog 'Margrave of the Marshes' which is shaping up rather well.Tried reading an Irvin Yalom book entitled 'Loves Executionor and Other Tales of Psychtherapy, apparentley it may help me become a better person, I fear that it was quite tedious and discarded it after a number of cases were digested. I am to remain obviously a hopeless wreck of a man with no social graces or esteem in the world from any of my contempories or peers. Sobeit!!!
Shalom (contempory but far from the truth of the matter I fear)
or if you prefer....
Peace love, fast motorcycles, good reading matter, proper brown beer or Bordeaux red if you prefer a more subtle poison, watch out for the sharks etc, hope 2009 is good for you.
Note to self must raid Master Polnuds extensive library next time I see the bloke.
I remember the occasion of diagnosis well. I had for weeks been commuting 100 miles or so daily in the depths of the worst case fimbal winter for years on my GPZ900R (equipped with titanium belly pan slider for the daily Pevensey Roundabout heroics, and a pipe that used to set of car alarms if I cogged it down a few in a closed street environment (chortle)).
Each day I turned up at work furiously massaging my fingers into some semblance of useful digitry other than the reddened claws of a skin raped freak, the bike shop I worked in had no heating, so consequently the aforementioned claws remained cold all day and then I rode home.
I'm too much of a tough geezer to stop and pansy around trying to sear some heat from the sonorous and mighty R's 4-1 through my completely uselss (however hideously expensive, non waterproof- despite the myriad of swing tags that had attracted them to me in the first place, pieces of shit that passed as top of the range winter gloves)so consequently, by the time I had quick changed clutchlessly and kept as much momentum in the highest gear possible and returned home the aforementioned skin on the claws felt like it was peeling with intense cold heat.
Naturally I plunged them into the nearest warm thing I could find, usually a bowl of washing up water as a grim second to my then girlfriends cleavage which worked once but the skin on one side of my face also nearly peeled away at the harsh slap it received and was never an option a second time.
I digress, after a few weeks of this appalling scenario, my hands eventually puffed up into sausage like proportions. (Those who know me laugh now ((as you did then you swine)), but I can tell you it was rough), I literally couldn't bend my fingers or grip much at all.
I made an appointment to see the doc, who gingerly poked the grimy and reddened digits even himself likening them to sausages (the sarky b'stard)He asked me what I did for a living and the sorry tale of frost and fear and loathing on the Worthing trail was duly related (thanx Hunter you were a friggin' genius).
He immediately came up with a diagnosis and cure, the diagnosis was that some pipes or capilliries or summat had burst and the fluid usually contained therein had seeped out and swollen my fingers to epic porkinson proportions, (I briefly teased dogs with them), he said I have a perfect cure....... 'Buy yourself a car, don't worry they'll go down gradually but you'll probably notice the damage done in the future if it gets really cold and you don't wrap them up'.
I was ready to stab the fuckers with a scalpel/pencil/penknife, safety pin to relieve the pressure they hurt that much and were a very odd hue of bruised purple and livid cerise but he advised against it.
I eventually bought a right old crapheap Fiat 127 so that I could remain warm over the winter months.
Ironically the heater didn't work and it was dubbed The Fridge' by all of my winter passengers.
Because of Xmas and the the sundry requirements of grinning nicely in all the right places to all the right people, the kids off school and a wallet barer than a hibernating hedgehog's stomach, the Z1R has kinda taken a back seat for a while.
The rear wheel has been reduced to stained and definitely unvirginal bare aluminium finish by way of extensive Nitromors attacks and patient wire brushing.
It is actually ready to etch prime and paint but I need gainful employment to proceed, plus a warm environment in which to spray in, (the house is out of bounds despite breaking up the furniture to fuel the fire and the assorted rags wrapped around our miserable limbs for pitiful warmth don't help nozzle control also).
However as I think I previously mentioned, Yuasa company furnished some power through the loom and the all the lights work and the motor turns over. Which is very very nishe!
I have in my possession some fine pattern Hi-Flo oil filters which will be bunged into the sump, subject to removing the crusty pipes and not rounding the ancient sump plug and breaking fingers in the resultant slippage or gush of filthy fluid passing itself off as oil, though by now it must have reverted to it's original state of crude (just my luck barely 45 dollars a barrel, hardly enough to retire on, 'another kick in the bollocks Sir' leers an obsequious and oleaginous type voice from the ether or is that the inside of my head? No matter, Onward.
I did notice that the clutch doesn't actually work, though the gearbox does, due to the fact that its a half cable, half hydraulic affair which appears to have seized. Whatever possesed the the designers of Kawasaki Heavy Industries to pioneer this dreadful half bastard mongrel lash up is beyond mere mortal thoughts nearly thirty years hence. Hopefully if I can get the cockpit fairing off and remove the clutch master cylinder assembly, wire, and lever assembly and replace it Bob is truly all of our uncles and will desrve his place in Zed heaven.
If not then I'll be compelled to swear like a Sicilian and endeavour to embed my spanners into the side of the cinderblock garage wall and then sigh resignedly and have to take the clutch basket plates etc to task which is not a job I relish.
Still it's just time and a few bob, all of which I haven't got at present as I roam The Net and the styrofam littered streets of somebody elses drunken midnight kebabbery looking for discarded local papers that haven't been snapped up by the homeless hegemony for a worthy job for a man of my illustrious talents, all of which can be counted on the fingers of one hand no doubt.
But consider the girth and experience in those fingers my friends,dutch dyke owners fearful of When the levee breaks' (apologies had tosqueeze a rock n roll mention in somewhere, ladies........
Oh by the way anybody read 'When giants walked the Earth' by Mick Wall, (Biog of Zeppelin)?
On the book front I can heartily reccommend Iain M Banks's latest Culture novel 'Matter', am suprised at the actual humanity of Baron Von Richtofen (having read his autobiography >1917 recently)ploughed through a 700 page anthology of sci fi writers which was rather average other than a story entitled 'Mother Aegypt' which was fantastic and written by Kage Baker, and just started The John Peel biog 'Margrave of the Marshes' which is shaping up rather well.Tried reading an Irvin Yalom book entitled 'Loves Executionor and Other Tales of Psychtherapy, apparentley it may help me become a better person, I fear that it was quite tedious and discarded it after a number of cases were digested. I am to remain obviously a hopeless wreck of a man with no social graces or esteem in the world from any of my contempories or peers. Sobeit!!!
Shalom (contempory but far from the truth of the matter I fear)
or if you prefer....
Peace love, fast motorcycles, good reading matter, proper brown beer or Bordeaux red if you prefer a more subtle poison, watch out for the sharks etc, hope 2009 is good for you.
Note to self must raid Master Polnuds extensive library next time I see the bloke.
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