mutch’sdiary
What a weekend Devon MAG had for their first ‘Yer Tiz rally!’ Eighty six degrees – eighty six! This was biking weather! And so I rode my bike. I rode out of my
litter-strewn street, past the cranes and drills on the Olympic site, through the East End and the West End and the chic Sloany Chelsea end, on to the A3 and the M3 and the rip roaring undulating tarmac of the A303, past the monoliths of Stonehenge, across the rolling dusty late-harvest plains of Wiltshire into Somerset and on through the afternoon into the high cholesterol buxom cleavages of lush Devon hills a-moo with cows and a-bleat with sheep. Ahead of me a full-fat sun sank over the horizon awakening America beyond the Atlantic as darkness cloaked Great Britain. Saturday was roasting and I joined a ride-out to a cafe for tea. I rode my bike in my wafffer thin multi-coloured Senegalese hippy cotton strides, sold to me on the Streets of St Louis by a smiling man approved by nobody with a license to dispense nothing. Of course they posess all the protective quality of a paper bag – oh the irresponsible insanity of it all! Why this reckless flight in the face of best practise 21st century ROSPA protocol you may ask? Why no triple-armoured, impact- resistant, abrasion-cheating, NASA-tested atmosphere re-entry-proof, thermo-nuclear detonation-cheating, DOT-certificated clothing? Answer – because I was comfortable. What? Yep, I was comfortable and happy. I didn’t feel cramped, constricted, restricted, cosseted, encapsulated, armoured or emasculated by my clothing. Shameless libertarian that I am, I felt free and it was a good way to feel; it was a very good way to feel. I was enjoying myself – ooh wash my mouth out with soap and water and stencil the Highway Clothing Code on my forehead 20 times!
Of course the other side of the coin is that I wasn’t riding like a raving nutter. I wasn’t flipping the bike about at high speed like a GP rider on amphetamines. There were no three figure speeds registered on the clock face staring up at me from the fuel tank. I was gently perambulating the leafy lanes on B roads studying the spectacular contours of a 1200 Bandit rider’s lower limbs as she gently eased her under-stressed muscle bike through clouds of late-to-bed butterflies bouncing over straw bale waggons spilling dusty yellow stalks through the autumn sunlight dappling warmth-softened tarmac.
The astonishing thing is that there are forces out there who would make me a criminal for indulging such pleasures and that’s without the sad fantasies inspired by the spectacular contours.
Already we learn that Iceland has
Cotton strides and paper-free offices
The editor in the starkly minimilised chalk room
Why no
triple-armoured impact-resistant, abrasion-cheating, NASA-tested atmosphere re-entry-proof, thermo-nuclear detonation-cheating, DOT-certificated clothing?
compulsory protective clothing laws and others are already drafting plans along the same lines. We’ve had compulsory helmets for 38 years now and we drew a line in the sand at the other side of that incursion even though most of us wore the things voluntarily. It was the principle and principles don’t change, not in a year not in 38 years, not in a thousand years. Motorcycling is never going to be the safest form of travel. Anyone who thinks that it can be is living in cloud cuckoo land. MAG does its best to make it as safe as we can in ways that don’t conflict with our enjoyment. Proper training for all road users is fine, filling potholes and replacing metal manhole covers with composite ones is good and diverts the enemy’s attention. In the end however we are defending a mode of transport and a source of exhilaration that will never be divorced from danger any more than climbing mountains will become as safe as knitting. The thing that fills me with hope that we can ultimately win on all fronts is that the pendulum always swings. Nothing is forever and the most certain of ratchets eventually tumble into reverse just as the strongest dam is ultimately overwhelmed by a trickle of water. The longer you live, the clearer this great truism becomes.
Who’d have thought that the Soviet block would fracture and the iron curtain lift? Who would ever have thought that New Yorkers would question unbridled capitalism? Who would have thought that the European Union would start shaking like a jelly on quicksand. Newton sussed it centuries ago – ‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ On another tack completely, my office is now almost totally paper free. Gone are the cardboard box files, open folders and trays. Gone too are the hundreds of CDs on racks; that is already old technology. Three external hard drives hold everything I need. The walls of my operations centre are clear of clutter and have been repainted a matt chalky white. This invokes a simplistic serenity that clears my mind of distraction and enables it to focus on the sublime. Ravi Shankar’s Sitar music now plays softly against an atmosphere perfumed with scented oil vapourising over a night light in an earthenware burner. And from this crucible of creativity you may expect a great deal of wisdom. And so I say to all who have issues with their fellow riders. Put aside these differences and step into my world of harmonious peace. Let us unite to butcher the enemies of motorcycling with a merciless sword that spares not one of the miserable lackeys of conformity, for they are a pestilence and must be exterminated from the earth. Ian ‘Ommmmm’ Mutch
The ROAD 3
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