Mutch's Diary
The Road's editor
Up to Hull to take a ferry to Zeebrugge for the Brussels demo on licensing. Some people commented that this was a long way from London to go to catch a ferry but there was method in the madness. Someone in Yorkshire had suggested I was a fairweather biker who never went out in the rain nor dared go any further North than Luton, so it's 'ya boo sucks' to you.
A week later I was back oop North at the Yorkshire AGM where I'd been booked to talk nonsense for ten minutes. So it was that I found myself the guest of our Vice Chairman in the pub where they film 'Last of the Summer Wine.' It's another world up there. No wailing sirens and blaring horns, no harbingers of doom pacing the streets in sandwich boards, and no language school touts shoving flyers into your hand inviting you to learn the mother tongue. Nope, only the thick mist on the dry stone walls, the gurgle of moor-bred streams and the squawk of migrating birds as autumn belatedly cloaks the land in its moist and chilly cape.
Out of the AGM and on down the line of the Welsh border toward the Severn Bridge where I am planning to photograph the famous 'Hoggin' The Bridge.' I turn off the M5 in early evening to explore accommodation possibilities but end up going further and further south at modest speed in fifth gear, just revelling in the subdued gurgle of the big twin as it unfolds the black tarmac before me at a pace which challenges neither the stability of mind or machine.
By eight O'clock I pitch up at the Aborium, a large rambling guesthouse in Glastonbury with an idyllic garden boasting wonderful cedars and a room with a ghost. I wasn't bothered in the night but when I told my ex bearfriend about it she confided in astonishment that she'd slept in the same house, same room, same bed, and had a strange experience in the early hours. Next day after a hearty breakfast I saddle up and rumble off to the Severn Bridge where the massed ranks of motorcycles are assembling.
I take up a position on the Welsh side of the bridge where the TV cameras are already stationed along with a few amateur snappers. Parking up off the carriageway I go into sniper mode, lying flat on my belly with a long lens aimed at the ranks of machines trundling past me, their riders waving and shouting jocular remarks. Just as the stragglers are dribbling by, a police officer appears and begins shouting at me in an aggressive manner that I find bewildering and entirely unnecessary. Apparently I am still on a stretch of road subject to motorway regulations that is easy to forget given that I've just come over a toll bridge. 'Keep your shirt on' I think but I say nothing and trot back to my bike whereupon he approaches to harangue me some more. There's a venomous Australian snake that behaves like this and it's especially feared by Bushmen, as within the world of legless reptiles it is unique in attacking repeatedly when unprovoked.
Feeling somewhat aggrieved by all this unpleasantness I fired off a shot at him next to his car in order to capture the registration with a possible complaint and a definite new column for THE ROAD in mind. OK I'd been technically in the wrong with the road being a motorway but this was a charity event and I couldn't have got the bridge in the background of the shot if I'd been farther from it. In any case I didn't feel I deserved to be bawled at like some Chav scum caught breaking saplings in the park. As my father once said to a raging Ferrari owner whose car he'd scraped in his battered Vauxhall, 'are you quite sure you've got your priorities right?'
Anyway PC angry went incandescent when he clocked me photographing him and welcomed me to the £30 fixed penalty for parking on the hard shoulder. Worse was to come when he demanded to see my tax disc. I led him round to the front of the bike to point at it and blow me down, some low life had nicked it! The triumphant joy in his voice was something to marvel at. 'No tax! That'll be another sixty pounds,' he shrieked with the smug pleasure of a schoolboy who's smashed his opponent's conker. I hopefully suggested he could check the registration on his in-car system, as I knew the tax was paid. 'Doesn't matter' he retorted with theatrical glee, 'failure to display, that's £90 now!'
Needless to say I have requested a court appearance at which I intend to sound forth on the state of nation, police priorities, chav scum, inadequate sentencing and the squalid nature of our city streets, after which I will doubtless be castigated for the vile criminal I am and fined hundreds of pounds of court costs. I shall keep readers advised.
Off to Bristol to give a power point presentation on MAG to the Bristol HOG chapter. This is my first effort with this new technology and it actually works which I count as a minor miracle. Next night I do the same thing for Thames Valley HOG and a few more members are drawn into the fold. It would of course make life far simpler if people would just join without any coercion but I guess I'm dreaming.
Reaction to the new look mag seems to have vindicated the decision to go down this route. We've made some changes on the design front for this issue, which I hope, will be appreciated and I trust that the magazine will continue to improve. Most contributions whether text or pictorial are now coming in digitally which is great and really this is how it has to be for this to continue as a one man show, there just isn't time for scanning in photographs and keying in pages of text, though members' letters will remain a special case.
We are trying to use the magazine to get more members so you may see it popping up for sale in a number of places. I hope that members will understand that we need to try this in order to encourage the growth that we need to expand our activities. The surest way to get THE ROAD will always be to pay the hilariously small annual MAG subscription that blessedly an increasing number of riders are now doing.
Down to South London to see off the Brigadier and Dave French who is Irish on their epic Sahara voyage. See more on this inside. I had been invited to join them on the run to Mali in West Africa and decided to compromise by travelling with them as far as Guildford. It's the thought that counts.
Ian 'public enemy' Mutch
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