Sleep eludes me.

It's 00:54hrs and I can't sleep. My curtains are drawn back and the broken clouds of the autumn storm dash across the night sky, by turns revealing and obscuring the full moon.
When obscured,the light of the moon illuminates the sky and the garden is in shadow; when revealed, a glow, like that in an infra-red photograph, highlights the trees and shrubs visible from my bed.
Grissom, our white cat, glows in this light as he sleeps on the bed. The night is quiet punctuated by occasional sounds; Tasman, our tabby and white cat, gently snores at the foot of the bed and Grissom, having stirred due to my blogging, is crunching cat biscuits in the kitchen. From time to time a brief shower is heard on the tin roof as the last of the rain is deposited and the house creaks as it contracts as the temperature falls outside.

The Walks

 

I hear the pitter pat                                

of the rain on my hat                                

and the hiss                                   

as the drops                                  

hit the grass.                                 

My sodden jeans cling                         

like a rain-soakéd thing             

to my legs                                       

as I stride                           

down the path.                             

The dog rushes by                                            

with a glint in his eye                              

as he startles                                                        

some birds                                                             

into flight.                                                               

There's a shriek of delight                 

from two girls at the sight                    

of the dog                                                              

dashing 'round                                                     

in the rain.                                                  

Water drips from his face                    

he's a total disgrace;                             

mud speckles                                                        

his body                                                                  

in spots.                                                                  

He chews on some wood                                

as only he could                                                  

stripping bark                                                       

from the branch,                                                   

then runs on.                                                                     

Then later that day

in the usual way

the sun sets

and the night

gains domain.

We walk the silver path

that winds through the grass

as the clouds

pass the Moon

up on high.

The raindrops that fell

upon tin rooves, leave a smell

of eucalyptus,

fresh grass

and dank mud.

When the walk is complete

I dry the dog's feet

then sit down

to reflect

on the day.

The dog eats his food

then adds to my mood

by settling

down on

my lap.

Then we both make our way

at the end of our day

to our beds,

where we dream

of new walks.

~

Tales of Whoa! Pt 8.( Honda 400/4 Owners Club S.A.D. inaugural meeting - Episode 3.)

The Journey Home.

You know how it is dear readers; you go away for a weekend and, what with all the fun, it passes Oh so quickly. However, this weekend away seemed to suffer from some sort of temporal inertia because the final few hours of the night appeared to pass really slowly as  they do when you are cold and wet! However the morning finally dawned and we all decided to make an early start home so we packed up what little we had and left the campsite, no doubt to the relief of the remaining campers.
We sensibly decided to stop for some breakfast just before we got onto the New Forest end of the M27 where tea and toast fortified us for the journey home.
The journey itself was uneventful but the temporal inertial became worse, the colder I got...it was only a 2 hour (ish) trip but it seemed to take much longer as my temperature dropped. By the time I got home, I felt as if I'd aged years and I could barely get off the bike. 
Salvation was at hand, however, in the guise of the continuous flow water heater over the bath, commonly known as a geyser. (As opposed to a geezer...THAT would be TOO weird!) The salvation works like this...you turn on the COLD tap and start to fill the bath whilst you are peeling of your wet clothes. By the time you are naked, the bath is about a quarter full. You get in and because you are wet and freezing anyhow, the water doesn't feel all that cold, in fact it probably feels slightly tepid. You turn off the cold tap and turn on the geyser to a slowish flow. The water in the bath gradually warms up, as do you. You get to a point in the process where you feel quite hot; you turn off the hot water at this point and you wait - as your body comes up to temperature, you begin to feel cold again so you turn the hot water on again. Repeat until you feel hot and remain hot. Do it slowly. No chilblains. Do it carefully. No scalding. Lie back, reminisce about the weekend and what you have started. Bliss.
Here endeth the inaugural meeting of the Honda 400/4 Owners Club, Sub Aqua Division. More Tales of Whoa! to follow soon. 

Comfortable Boots.

I pull the laces tight, looping them around the two pairs of ski-hooks, and then around the back of the boots and finally tying off with a bow. The laces may be too long for these boots but they do provide that feeling that no matter what you do or where you walk, the boots are not going to become loose.
These boots are, by modern standards, passed their best; one is stained with chainsaw oil and both are scuffed, faded and a little cracked in places, yet they are also the most comfortable articles of footwear that I possess.
They feel like an old friend and, as such, they give comfort and support but are prepared to remind me of my short-comings -  usually by leaking because I have been too idle to dubbin them.
Like a friend, good boots will support you on life's journeys, both short and long, easy and hard, up hills, down dales, along the plains and around the world.

Tales of Whoa! Pt7.( Honda 400/4 Owners Club S.A.D. inaugural meeting - Episode 2.)

The morning after the night before.

You know how it is…you’ve drunk probably more than you should have, you’ve made your way to what passes for your bed on a camping holiday, you’re sleeping it off when…2 REALLY LOUD MOTORBIKES ARE STARTED INCHES FROM YOUR EARS! Oh, how we laughed at Rob and Al’s alarm call prank…NOT!

Anyhow, once we get ourselves together, we decide to go off for a ride to clear our heads and to see some of the New Forest.

Where we eventually ended up eludes me now; it was either Mudeford or New Milton but the exact location seems to have been landscaped now as I can't find it on Google Earth. Suffice to say, there was a roadway or parking area at sea level, immediately adjacent to the sea. The roadway terminated at a massive sea defense constructed of rocks and what looked like old tank traps. We duly rode down to the end of the road, parked up and spent a while clambering over the rocks and having a jolly good time; the day was warm and clear and there were fine views of the Isle of Wight.

So, the time came for us to depart and we return to our bikes...and the sea-covered roadway. The tide had come in; not seriously enough to make the road impassable but it had certainly encroached by about a yard and was a few inches deep. We duly started up, Slim and myself on the 400/4 and Al and Rob on their bikes. I took the lead and thought it would be a good idea to ride close to the (sea) edge of the roadway, which I did successfully and without incident and at a fair speed, until...the roadway doglegged! I forgot about that! The road went 45° to the left and the bike went 45° down into the Solent and then fell sideways.

Mercifully, the water wasn't deep, but it was deep enough to submerge the bike and Slim, whose helmet started to fill with water and was under the bike. I lifted the bike off him pretty smartish and composed myself and made sure he was OK. Rob and Al, seeing that we were OK, had stopped and were having a bloody good laugh, as you would; it must have been bloody funny to see.

So there we are, standing in the Solent, completely soaked, holding the bike upright; Slim and I sort of looked at each other, shrugged and started to extract the bike from it's watery parking space and, surprisingly, we succeeded. It took about 5 minutes of heaving and swearing, without Al and Rob's help (They weren't going to get wet...take note of that.), and we had the bike on the roadway with seaweed and sand hanging off it and water dripping from most places that water shouldn't drip on a bike.

Now came the thorny problem of what to do now; the campsite was miles away and I didn't really want to leave the bike where it was...so I tried to start it. The ignition was still on, the bike was in neutral so I pushed the starter button...the starter motor turned the engine over but the engine was having none of it. I switched off and pulled off the plug leads to drain the water from them and to dry them off as well as I could. Al and Rob are standing to the rear of the bike, chuckling. I switch on, this time checking the kill switch is set to "Run", press the starter button; again, the engine turns over, gives a little cough...then nothing. At this point I decide that using the kick start may help as there would be less drain on the battery and I also added a little choke to help it along. Al and Rob are having a bloody good laugh now.

As an aside, one of the things I've failed to tell you, dear reader, is that my 400/4 had a 4 into 1 Motad exhaust system fitted so it had 1 biggish silencer...that was now full of water.

2 or 3 sharp kicks of the started bought the engine to life, irratically I grant you, but sufficiently well to empty the silencer, like a fire extinguisher, over Al and Rob! Not sufficient to soak them but enough for payback to the laughing at our expense.

We leave the scene with my bike firing on a random number of cylinders so the journey back to the camp site was...interesting.

One of the roads back had, what was colloquially called, a suicide lane on it; it was between the two main lanes and was used by either of them for overtaking. So there was this slow moving lorry ahead, the bike seems to be running better and I go to over take it, I get about half-way passed it when the bike splutters and slows. At the same time, a car decides to overtake from the other lane! As I can't back off because I don't have time so I drop a gear and open the throttle; at that self same time, all four cylinders start to fire again. The surge of power and forward momentum takes both Slim and myself by surprise; all I see are his feet sticking out from underneath my ampits and a melancholy yet angry wail from behind me as he gets a close view of the Foden's hub caps, I also see a diminishing gap between said Foden and the on-coming car so I did what any sane person would do. I aimed for the gap and shut my eyes! 
And got away with it! Not feeling a sickening impact, I opened my eyes, checked the mirror, dabbed the brakes to allow Slim to get seated again...and departed the scene on a rush of adrenalin and a sigh of relief.
That evening back at the camp site, Al and Rob regailed us with the twin views of the bike going into the Solent and the bike and it's riders not meeting their maker some time after. They then disappeared off to Southampton for a night of debauchery and SvenDonalds whilst we make do with a packet of soup heated over my trusty army-issue burner. The soup warmed us for a while but as we were still wearing damp clothes, we soon cooled off resulting in us scabbling on the ground, in the failing light, trying to find the last of the tobacco we dropped whilst trying to roll a cigarette because we were shivering too much.
Thus ended the inaugural day of the Honda 400/4 Owners Club S.A.D; that's the Honda 400/4 Owners Club Sub Aqua Division...and Slim and I are still the only two members to our knowledge. :)

Tales of Whoa! Pt6.( Honda 400/4 Owners Club S.A.D. inaugural meeting - Episode 1.)

The night before the morning after.

What horror story is going to unfold this time you are asking yourselves. I know, you won’t believe me when I say none, but it’s true! You are in for a bloody good laugh however.

I’d split up with the woman I loved and was living in a bedsit in Worthing back in 1985 and I had done my damnedest to restore contact with all the guys I used to know. In the fullness of time Easter came round and it was suggested that we went down to the New Forest for the weekend. So off we went; me and my red 400-4 with Slim on the back, Al on his CB750 and Rob on a CB900.

The journey down to the New Forest was tough for the 400-4 until we pulled over under a bridge on the motorway near Fareham, had a fag and deposited Slim onto the back of Rob’s bike thus making my old girl capable of sensible speeds. (For those of you who haven’t worked it out, Slim wasn’t!)

We finally arrived at the campsite adjacent to the Balmer Lawn Hotel in the early afternoon, drove in straight past the site attendant, found our pitch and then walked back to pay the man who was less than pleased with us.

The afternoon passed away with us putting up the tent, getting food and generally being idle. The evening saw us being lured into the bar of the hotel by the promise of cheap beer... and cheap it was. Courage Directors at 50p a pint! After an evening of rowdy drinking we left the bar only to be confronted by a two-fold obstacle; fresh air and a 300 yard walk in the pitch dark over roots and through trees to get back to the tent.

The trouble with fresh air is that it is bad for you. You can sit in a smoky, crowded bar, drink all night, walk around, go for a pee and have no problems what so ever. As soon as you step outside, however, and breathe in that fresh air, it goes straight to your head and you become intoxicated. Which is what happened. You know that queasy feeling in the pit of your guts that lets you know that the merest hint of fried breakfasts or of anything vaguely lavatorial will make you puke, so you concentrate on walking, trying to ignore everything else that is going on around you. Of course it doesn’t work. One of the others ( I was too drunk on fresh air to remember which) was walking passed a skip and the urge to chuck his cookies was too much, so over the side of the skip his head went and the retching began. As did the chain reaction. Whether through laughter or the thought of what was going on, all four of us had eventually assumed the position around the car park barfing to our hearts content and scaring the straights. After that it was “simply” a case of trying to negotiate our way back to the tents, in the dark, through the trees and over tree roots, all the while resisting the urge to burst into wild, raucous laughter.

At this point, the astute amongst you all, my dear audience, will have noted that, other than the journey to the New Forest, there has been no mention of bikes…or disasters. Suffice to say that, in the second episode of this tale, all will be revealed as will what S.A.D. stands for. ;)

Under Pressure. (Sorry Mr Bowie!)

Self-inflicted demands are the worst.