Days -3 to -1

Europe » United Kingdom » England
April 30th 2009

Published: April 30th 2009

I think you are generally meant to start a story at the beginning. It’s just not always clear exactly where that beginning is. This tale tells of two up ride to Australia, my girlfriend and I on a 1982 CG125, but to tell that story I need to start with another.

Rewind three months. Against my better judgement, I had attempted a similar, solo trip to Cape Town. It turned out to be abortive, and from the day I left I realised that I had made the wrong decision. For many years I had planned the trip, and I had only ever envisaged travelling alone. Then Hannah threw a stick in my spokes.

Hannah was always the one that got away. She was my best friend’s girl when we were fifteen years old. From the moment I met her I wanted her. I had played that one moment over and over in my mind so many times over the years it had taken on the polished sheen of a Hollywood film. I could detail that scene down to what bystanders were wearing, the smells in the air, and the birds laughing at my envy from Wimpy’s eves. The best friend had waxed lyrical about her, and as she walked up looking like a Disney princess, I realised they were no idle boasts. But it was not to be; however much I wanted her, it didn’t change the fact that she was with my best friend. I had to wait for my time.

Seven years I had to wait.

A week before my last tour of Iraq, I received a text on my phone, from Hannah. It was only a handful of pleasantries but I almost had a stroke. I was living in a ten man room, crammed with aching and stinking soldiers, but I could have streaked around that room naked, kissing all their blistered feet in turn. We continued exchanging texts; although we both had partners, we were both unhappy, and that weekend, I rode straight from the cesspit that is Sir John Moore barracks in Lydd, to Hannah’s cute little flat in Coventry. Despite seven years of barely seeing each other, and various failed relationships in between, we fell straight into easy company. We drank and talked, as if those seven years of separation had been seven minutes spent in the next room. I arrived at half five in the evening, and the next time either of us looked at a clock, it was nearly six in the morning. To this day, neither of us can account for those lost hours, we were instantly so comfortable with each other that we had just talked them away.

The inevitable happened, and I left for Iraq again, completely gutted that I had finally a chance with Hannah, and duty was in the way. We had both finished things with our previous partners, and Hannah said she would wait. She did, and when I returned we had an incredible three months barely out of each others sight. We visited bars, pet shops and strip clubs, camped out in the Highlands in minus fifteen weather, lay at home doing nothing, drank and talked nonsense that nobody else would understand, developing the exclusive idioms and in jokes of a couple in love. For two people who always claimed they didn’t like spending too much time with others, it was a major u-turn. Whatever it was we did, we enjoyed it because we were together. Despite all this the happiness was always tempered by the knowledge that I was going away again.

That is where I made my first mistake. I had planned my Africa trip for so long that I felt I had to go through with it. After all, I was used to being away, and I wouldn’t be gone longer than a year. I was wrong, I had never been in love before. I shouldn’t have gone. It was selfish and I found myself missing Hannah so much that I didn’t appreciate the trip fully. I began racing through countries barely seeing them through a fog of pride and misplaced vanity. Even the most amazing experiences fell flat, because I was seeing them on my own. All I wanted to do was talk about them with Hannah.

This is the tale of that ill fated first trip three months ago. The edited version was published by TWO magazine.

A bike, a full tank of fuel, and the sun high in a foreign sky, this is what aftershave adverts are made of. I had less than 600 kilometres to Sierra Leone. With the will of God and a good breeze behind me, I could make it in a week. Men plan: God laughs.

‘Bang!’ That’s when my rear tyre blew out spectacularly. Within half a second of it happening, I was riding on the rim. I had a puncture back in Western Sahara, but that went with a ‘phhhssst,’ and let the bike come to the wobbly uncertain halt of an all night stoner. This time it kicked off like a 3am Stella drinker. I was rounding a slight corner, and tried to steer the bucking bike over the fist deep corrugations into the verge. No problems, I was only doing 30 mph, I could bring it to a safe halt, if I could just control the rear end, with the rim clanging off of every corrugation.

That was my last thought as the metal hoop hit a half buried rock and slewed violently to the side. I was way out of shape, the rear was sliding, trying to overtake the still shod front rubber. No drama, as long as the rim carried on speedway sliding I could still ride this out.

Then the rim dug into the lip of a corrugation, and stopped dead.

I didn’t.

Rewind two months. I’d left the army, and didn’t know what to do. No more pretending to be a soldier, no more tanks and helicopters. No more combat trousers and rifles. Back to leathers, back to fast bikes and slow days. Back to boozy afternoons telling war stories to strangers in bars who couldn’t understand even if they wanted to. Back to being the old man in the back of the bar. At 22 years old. Back from sandy countries where people don’t much care for my presence, back into grey and pleasant lands where people don’t much care for my existence. I had to get off, I didn’t know exactly where, or how, but I knew I needed to go. Stick a pin in a map. How about Cape Town? France, Spain, Morocco, and then roll down the African West Coast all the way to Cape Town. It sounded like a good plan, and sounds easy when you say it quickly.

Route sorted, I needed a steed. It had to be cheap, and it had to be reliable. There was only one obvious choice in my eyes. The Honda Cub; the chicken chaser, the C90, the pizza bike, the most popular bike in the history of wheels with engines bolted to them. From an idea on one day, Ebay porn the next, straight into standing in day old dishwater coloured Bedford, so dreary and post past it modern it would give Lowry a stroke. In between the locked up lock ups and weed tortured concrete, under a leaking sky the shade of an industrial accident, sat my new love. To anyone else a dog, but to me she appeared a pearl red dressed fox. Only two previous lovers, one old guy, one gay guy. She needed me. Tyres kicked. Bars waggled. Pre purchase checks completed. A monkey changed hands, and this monkey jumped on the back of his Cub.
Luggage taken care of by my old army duffle bag and some twenty quid fleabay panniers, I was ready to go. Slow and steady, cheap and cheerful. January 9th saw me on the ferry to St Malo, with the Cub sat safely in the hold, surrounded by a herd of monstrous GS1200s, looking like an antelope laid down with elephants. It all seemed unreal; was I actually riding to Cape Town on a scooter? Reality hit me when I rode off the ferry and into France. Apparently reality is cold, really cold. Newsflash; France in January, dressed in jeans and leathers is less comfortable than sex with a silverback. With the determination of a migrating salmon, all I could think about was Southwards momentum. While the ice welded my beard to my scarf, and froze my goggles until the world appeared as a spider legged kaleidoscope, the desperate mantra kept rolling on my lips, ‘it will get warmer in the South, it must get warmer in the South.’ With an optimistic top speed of 40mph, getting anywhere isn’t fast, and it seems even slower when trying to stave off the twin perils of exposure and autoroute traffic. Sometimes the slow lane just isn’t slow enough, even lorries had twice my momentum, each one sucking and blowing me back and forth over the icy black streak of road. It took three days to get through this torture and into Spain. Surely Spain would be warmer?
Wrong. More wrong than a one piece race suit on a Harley. I hit Spain during their worst weather for years. The storms didn’t stop from Andorra to Algeciras. On the plus side the roads were incredible; picturesque grey squiggles scratched out of the mountain sides, no more than dotted lines on my large scale map, but I chose them because anything had to be better than sitting down and switching off on autoroute autopilot. Dodging sleepy sheep and suicidal Sainz wannabes on the backtrail boondocks was far better than dicing with supersonic Porches and comatose lorry drivers on the autoroute. What could take a day on the motorway took me a week on backroads, as hours melted into days in a succession of never ending switchbacks and corkscrew spirals to heaven. The route often wound so circuitously around the steep mountain sides that it swallowed and regurgitated itself continuously; going North to get South and West to go East; two miles travelled for one mile crow’s flight. A child with a box of crayons, a strip of acid, and a spirograph couldn’t have created something more randomly bewildering. Still, it was pretty, and the roads were perfect; swinging, swooping apexes with bowling alley smooth surfaces and views to die for. Admittedly very little run off, and plenty of hazards that make dying for it quite a likely proposition. To emphasise that danger, just in case I had forgotten it, an avalanche caught me in the Sierra Nevada, turning what road wasn’t swept away into a cracked up crazy paving waltzer ride. If I had been minutes earlier, I would have been bounced down the mountainside with rocks the size of sedans. Spain was a first for me, but it certainly won’t be the last. It was almost a pity to be mounted on a Cub; the moment I get another sportsbike, I will be coming back to kill myself.

Spain and France were enjoyable, I loved all of it; drinking champers in Champagne, and cognac in Cognac, and riding through Rioja, but unfortunately not finding a bar. Being propositioned by a one-armed streetwalker (who sadly didn´t offer me a handjob, cruelly ruining a raft of punchlines.) Even having my beard stroked over a wonderful dinner in Pamplona by a gay German, who christened me his ´beautiful Afghan´ and invited me back to his, after telling me ´it´s ok, I vill no rape you, ja?´ Watching a Spanish football match and the sun go down on the Med from my luxury apartment, and staying in a 10 Euro a night hostel so cold frost formed on the inside of the window. Riding in the dark, on a road like greased glass, to Trevelez, the highest town in Spain, which welcomes you with the sign ‘Welcome, enjoy our ham and hospitality.’ I enjoyed both, while clumsy bats flitted in the crystal air above me. Being accosted by a crazy pin-prick-pupilled smack head, who was still hanging on to my panniers as I screamed off at top speed. I loved it all, but Europe was only ever a stepping stone to reach Africa. Thirteen days of travelling saw me on another ferry, this time on my way to Tangier, and Africa.
Some people say Morocco isn’t really Africa, but my Michelin map says otherwise, so I choose to ignore them. Besides, even if the people are an eclectic European influenced hodgepodge of Afro-Arabs, the roads are most definitely one hundred percent African. I speak Arabic well, and French acceptably, so reading the rules of the road was not a problem. The problem is that nobody else seems to. It’s a vertical learning curve, where the penalties for slow learners are high. While the Cub was hopeless on the open roads of Europe, nothing could have been better in these snarled up smoggy side streets and donkey clogged four lane city centres. No gap too small for the scoot and no road too rough, the kitten was finally at home, buzzing through palm lined pathways alongside Moroccan MBK pilots, carrying loads so unlikely looking that it made my own seem positively featherweight. It was still raining. Morocco was in the teeth of their worst winter in thirty years, and the mud tracks of the Rif had turned into rivers. In many places the roads had been swept away, leaving vast stinking quagmires in their place that sucked and pulled at my two inch treadless tyres. More than once I found myself in puddles deep enough to kill the engine, and had to get off and push the bike - lesson - always check the depth of a puddle before riding into it.

I was into my rhythm, waking up, packing, riding for as long as I felt like before stopping and finding a hotel or a quiet pitch to camp, then sleeping and repeating. Bimbling down the coast all day, sleeping out under Saharan skies while listening to the Atlantic eating away at Africa all night; Morocco soon became Western Sahara, with its endless roads across nowhere. A misanthropists’ wet dream, I went for days without speaking to a soul. On a powerful bike, you could dispatch the long straight road to Mauri in a couple of days, but I was in no hurry. On my last night in the disputed Moroccan administrated territory, I pulled off the road to camp, and after some bread and olives, I fell asleep on the back of the bike. Not just a Nick Sanders style power nap either, but a full on gonk, with my legs hanging over the bars, and head on my luggage bag. At three I was awakened by lights in the pitch black night, and for over an hour I watched smugglers, no more than a hundred metres away, unload huge numbers of parcels from a boat that had been waiting in the inky dark offshore.

I had been warned by almost everyone I had spoken to that Mauritania was unsettled, and that I would definitely be a victim of corruption at best, kidnap at worst. Like most of the advice I received before leaving England, it was complete nonsense. The Mauritanians could not have been friendlier. Yes, there were numerous police checkpoints, but most held me up for so long simply because they insisted that I come inside to chat about my journey and drink and eat with them. It is impossible to stop at the side of the road without some passerby offering assistance. I was invited to the wedding of a guy who I had met only minutes earlier, and throughout the entire ceremony he insisted I sit with him as his guest of honour. Huge steaming plates of mansaf and lamb did the rounds, and even bigger joints followed them, filling the room with dense swirling smoke. When the food was finished, the women brought an oil drum in, which was beaten and all the guests took turns to sing. Then they looked at me, they expected me to sing? Put on the spot I couldn’t think of anything better to sing than ‘Thunder Road,’ so came about possibly the first rendition of the Springsteen classic at an Islamic wedding ceremony. The groom loved it, and told me I must take one of his relatives as my girlfriend. I was given a flower, and directed to give it to the woman who most took my fancy. Mauritanian women are stunning in a most cute and feminine way, and choosing was no easy task, so I gave it to the girl who had been friendliest to me. She took it and blushed, before pulling the leaves off in turn, while her friends sang, ‘yuhibiny, la yuhibiny,’ ‘he loves me, he loves me not.’ I did love her apparently, and she hugged me, before making me dance with her. White men don’t dance. Or shouldn’t at least.

I was sad to leave Mauri, but my Visa said I must, so Senegal beckoned.

Rural Senegal; what I wanted from my Africa travels. Out of the sticky riot of the topsy-turvy Dakar scrum, the roads calmed and started to conform to what Africa ‘should’ be. Skinny kids with heads too large for their bodies playing football in the street, topless women washing their bright clothes in dark waters, sharing the road with clumsy doe eyed cows under a sun high in the thirty degree sky. Idyllic. The creased up concrete leaked away until the roads were just sandy memories of long gone French construction projects.

I was bouncing along, enjoying the solitude and the scenery, when out of nowhere, in the middle of nothing, a snarling mongrel leaped out of the bush at me. I love dogs, but not when they look like an extra from ‘Resident Evil.’ Its eyes were red and welted, its drool flecked with foam, patches of hair had fallen out like a radiation victim, revealing weeping ugly sores. Its bones jutted out of drum skin stretched hide, which seemed too tight to contain the mangy carcass. It snapped at my feet, and got a flip flop in the face for its efforts. I felt bad, but it was either him or me, which over rode my almost illegal love for animals. I tried to accelerate away, but in my shock I had throttled off, and was down to fifteen miles an hour, and still in third gear. I cracked the throttle wide open, and felt the Cub judder under me as it converted petrol to noise and vibration, while gaining all the forward momentum of an Italian tank. The chain was loose; I could feel the sprockets click clacking as it slid around their teeth. Meanwhile the dog had recovered from the shock of a size ten in the mouth, and was making to chase after the Cub. I would have to stamp into second gear and hope it didn’t kick the chain off. If it did, I would be wrestling with Satan’s best friend. I slammed the lever down, and the bike protested loudly underneath me, but the chain stayed on! My speed increased, but so did the dogs, he was almost literally on my back wheel. As I gained speed, he seemed to with equal rapidity, but as the Cub got into its stride, his faltered, I could see him receding in my crazy paving cracked mirrors, until he finally stopped, puffing and drooling his disease flecked saliva into the bone dry sand. I can’t believe it had the energy left in its abused body for the chase it put up.

I filled up with petrol at the last village marked on my map for a few dozen kilometres. I didn’t want to be running out miles from civilisation, but the back water middle of nowhere roads to clay and rush shanty shacks are so worth the risk. There was no petrol station, but locals pointed me to a shack with several rusting drums sat outside it. It was staffed by a surly crew cut kid; too young to shave, but old enough to wear a rotting green uniform, and have a rusting and derelict rifle propped up the side of his shack. It must have been WW1 vintage, possibly a Henri Martini, a gift, a left over vestige of long gone colonials. The breech was open, clearly empty and clearly filthy; it looked as if it had been used to dig holes, but still a poignant reminder of what white men brought Africa. I insisted on using a bit of rag to filter the petrol, despite his assurances that it was fine. When we had decanted 5 litres of essence into my tanks, I showed him the previously white cloth, now coated in sand and rust flakes. He just shrugged, unimpressed, and asked for far too many CFA’s. I ended up giving him less than half of what he asked for, but it was still expensive petrol, Senegal isn’t cheap.

Ten kilometres later, God started his laughing. Miles from anywhere, I crashed.

I may be the first person to high side a 90cc Cub. Forwards momentum threw me violently upwards, and I let go of the bars. Time slowed, and I had plenty of it to wonder how hard the ground was going to be. I flipped in the air, and rolling I hit the ground right shoulder first. I skidded on the loose dirt, then bounced to a halt in the thorny bushes beside the road. The ground was as hard as I anticipated it would be. I was winded, and as I lay on my back, coughing dry vomit noises like a paralytic in a gutter, the flawlessly calm azure sky was soundtracked by the tumbling of the bike.

The rocks and corrugations just wouldn’t let it slide. The poor kitten was cartwheeling down the road end over end. In the silence of the Senegalese bush, the tumbling metallic cacophony of the Cub was obscenely incongruous. The gentle rustle of dry branches and the low singing of crickets were replaced with a noise akin to a lorryload of octogenarians shagging in a skip of scrap metal. The sounds of happily empty bush were drowned by cracking, snapping, scratching, crashing, scraping and clanging; the death wails of the stricken kitten.

It creaked to a halt twenty foot past me, the now calm engine making no noise except for cooling metallic ticks. ‘Ting, ting, ting,’ was all I could hear as I lay under the canopy of impossibly blue Senegalese skies. I wiggled my various extremities, and to my surprise, could feel nothing seriously hurt. My knee was slightly twisted, and I was undoubtedly bruised, but essentially in one piece. I uncertainly stood up, and went to check the bike, which was obviously much less fortunate.

Immediate inspection revealed cracked and broken plastics. A lot of cracked and broken plastics. Never mind, tis but a flesh wound. All my indicators hung unblinking from the fairing, dangling on their wires like sightless eyeballs from their sockets. The mirrors had both gone and my footpegs were at crazy angles. The gear and brake levers had been forcefully readjusted, and the bars no longer lined up with the front wheel, instead choosing to sit at a jaunty angle, as if permanently in a right hand turn. Nothing that a good battering with a hammer wouldn’t sort, all I had to do was get the bike to the next village, it was all essentially cosmetic damage anyway. Then I saw the engine casing, I had put a crack in it as long as my little finger. The Cub was dead. Long live the Cub.

That was that. The story seems quite light and happy, but I figured nobody would want to pay to read my whinging, so I kept it deliberately fluffy. Several people have told me that I shouldn’t have given up so easily, but by that point I realised I was doing everything wrong - I needed to bring a little extra baggage with me if I was to do it correctly. I hitch hiked back to Dakar, and flew to Heathrow the same day.

I posted on Horizonsunlimited.com while I was away, and one post in particular sticks out for me. A man in a similar situation to me was asking if he should go away on a trip, even though his girlfriend couldn’t. I was in Essouira at the time, and thoroughly missing Hannah. It sums up my state of mind at the time quite well.

I rode through the Sierra Nevada, the Pyrenees, the Rif and the Atlas, and they were stunningly grand and life affirmingly belittling. But if you squint they could be the Peak District, or the Cairngorms, where I have spent wonderful holidays with Han. I swam in the Med and the Atlantic, and tasted their warmth and foreign salt. I have watched incredible sunsets that set the whole sky on fire and turned the world red, and seen cities wake up under tentative morning suns, but I have woken up under them alone. The world is an incomprehensibly beautiful place to live. BUT, it is the people who make our world, which is no more than a lonely rock to live and breathe on.

You can see the sun set over every city in the world, climb every mountain and swim every sea, but if the person you want to be with isn't there, you may as well stare at a candle, stand on a molehill and splash yourself with tap water for all it will make you feel.

Birdy

This time I am not making the same mistake. Hannah and I are going together.

Chapter 2

With a comfortable amount of money behind us, and Hannah in a comfortable job training to be a teacher, we could have been comfortable. ‘Comfortable,’ what an awful word. We are too ‘comfortable’ in Britain. No epitaph ever bore the word. Nobody ever says their favourite colour is grey, in the same way as nobody sits on their deathbed happy in the knowledge that their life was merely ‘comfortable.’ In a country like England where danger and excitement are being systematically erased from everyday life and replaced with ersatz replacements or shuffled under threadbare carpets of distractions, there is nothing to ever stimulate - to let you know you are alive. Yes, it’s comfortable, but it’s not for me. Nor for Hannah, we had to get out before we fell into it. We can still find comfort, without necessarily being ‘comfortable,’ it’s relative.

Instead of consolidating and building on our capital, we started planning to go away and spunk it, practically as soon as I walked through her door. Well, as soon as she had stood for a couple of seconds, dumbstruck at my unannounced return, before uttering ‘you f**king c**t.’ Not the words I was expecting, but as she threw herself on me, I knew they were meant affectionately. After her getting over the surprise and me washing the smell of sweat and Africa off, we started plotting our departure. Hannah quit her job, and we immersed ourselves in map porn and minutiae.

We already had most of the kit we would need for long term travel, from my previous trip, and time in the army. The only major issue we hadn’t got a solution for was how to store months or years worth of insulin. Hannah is an insulin dependent diabetic, and insulin requires keeping at a steady and cool temperature. We had already decided that we wanted to go on a small bike, so there was no space to install a fridge, even if the bike battery could take it. Google knows the answer to everything, so the oracle was consulted. The solution we found was a piece of kit called a ‘friopack.' When immersed in water, the clever little bags undergo a chemical reaction and will stay cold for several days, even in hot climates. We bought three, enough to hold just over a years worth of insulin. As long as we continually refresh them in water, we will be able to keep the medication at a safe temperature.

After finding this kit, and knowing that the diabetes issue wasn’t a show stopper, we could move onto the exciting bit; buying a new bike. We decided on a budget of five hundred pounds and a capacity limit of 125cc. With these two constraints, there was only ever really one bike in the running - the Honda CG125. After 5500 miles of trouble free motoring on the Cub, I was keen to stick with the Honda marque. I may be a bit of a ‘Honda man,’ my other bike is a Blackbird, and my first bike was a CBR125. There are hundreds of old CGs out there, but as a learner bike and a popular hack, most have seen better days. We viewed half a dozen before we found ours. Sitting innocuously outside a farm in Surrey sat our new baby, a little rusty and a little unloved, but mechanically it seemed sound. 2 owners from new, and only 4000 miles on the clock. The first owner had used it as a London runabout before his demise, then his daughter had inherited it, and left it gathering dust on the farm for the best part of two decades. I took her for a brief test ride (the Honda, not the daughter) and although everything was stiff and rusty, I couldn’t resist. I asked Hannah’s opinion before buying, and she was of the opinions that it ‘was a bike,’ and was ‘pretty,’ so we were sold.

The tank was the only issue. Although the CG is famously frugal, 2-up with luggage, we would need far more capacity than the little 10 litre tank that she wears as standard. We looked at bigger tanks from other Jap bikes, but all were far too long to fit, and we looked at carrying jerry cans, but where do you put them on a bike as small as the CG?! The only feasible option was to enlarge the tank we already had, which presented several secondary problems - it involved prepping, cutting, and welding a steel vessel - all tasks that lurk a little beyond the capabilities of a retired teacher and a retired interpreter. Fortunately Mr Birdy Snr has all those capabilities, so in exchange for a day spent working for him, he completed the necessary work. The resulting tank holds nearly twice as much, and should give us a range of almost 300 miles. The only other modification we have made is to throw a sheepskin over the seat, in an attempt to make the plastic perch at least bearable. After all, comfort is relative.

Chapter 3

One day until departure.

People keep telling us that it is a bad time to quit a job, as we are unlikely to find another. Seems like the perfect time to me, especially if you aren’t looking for another. The country is going to the dogs, nobody has any money, savings that people have worked all their life for have disappeared, half the tax paying nation is propping up the other half, who are threatening to outweigh them any day, influenza outbreak is prompting panic buying of respirators, the government is extricating itself from one unwinnable war to focus more extensively on another, we have too many Chiefs and not enough Indians and the top stories for several weeks have concerned a reality TV ‘star’ dying of cancer, and some MPs saying nasty things behind each others backs. The house is burning down and Britons are making sure the cutlery is nicely arranged on the dining room table. The other thing people insist on sharing is that this trip is ‘dangerous,’ and ‘expensive.’ Of course it is, no shit. Life is dangerous, it will kill you. Life is also for living, is it not better to face that danger, and attack it head on, rather than pretend it isn’t there? Death is always going to be sitting on your shoulder, lurking and rubbing his hands while you pretend he doesn’t exist and expand your portfolio, or close that deal. I for one would rather spend my money doing something that I can remember until the day I die, rather than concentrate on accumulating more for some theoretical day when you can spend it. Cancer doesn’t care that you own four city centre properties, heart disease won’t give you any sympathy for working thirty years for the same company, car crashes happen to the rich as well as the poor, influenza doesn’t discriminate and that ulcer growing in your stomach gives no quarter for savings. Get out there and do, before it’s too late. If one good thing comes from the over saturation news of the very real reality death, it will be that a lot of people who hadn’t considered the possibility of dying young with no power to prevent it, will think about that now. The hordes of mourners and the outpouring of grief wasn’t all for her, it was the wailing of a generation who had forgot they were mortal animals, destined to live and die, not just read Heat and dance at the weekend. Jade could be a martyr, a catalyst to get people out from in front of Jeremy Kyle, burning politicians, tearing down office blocks and planting seeds of the future to grow in the ruins, ripping the calendar up and waking up every day a little younger, more powerful and uninhibited, more capable of love and free of Monday morning ache. Live a little; if you don’t like it, quit it, regret nothing, don’t wait until tomorrow.

I think that is my way of saying I am excited about leaving. Hannah is too - she’s having a loose perm right now, as we have been reliably informed that it is the best way to insure against RTW hairmairs. Not particularly revolutionary, but each nut and bolt is as important as the bridge itself

On a slightly less positive note, we have a split crank case gasket, and are waiting for one to come by special delivery today. If it doesn’t come, I am not entirely sure what the solution is.

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