Laughing in the rain

My buddy, No Problem Pete called around with his little 400 sporty Honda yesterday. I forget the model, but kinda like a CBR 400, an early R45. A Jap import. Cute little bike, 1985, a bargain buy on eBay.

“Take it for a spin”, he said, so I did. Couldn’t go far, as the alternator wasn’t charging the battery, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to run her up the blacktop and back. Haven’t been out on the bike in a few weeks, for various reasons, not one of them being all that good, but there you are. No matter. Got my lid and gloves and off I went in just my workshop overalls under the black rain clouds and soaking wet roads for a quick blast on this cute little number of a bike.


No, not this one, but one very like it.........



You fit in this little bike, as all good bikes, like you were born as a part of it, like you always were a part of it, like you’ve known it for years and not just been introduced. Everything fits, she feels good under you. Feels like she approves of you right off, and you feel just the same. It’s an instant thing. Like women, some bikes are introduced to you, unexpectedly met or whatever, and there is a polite time when you are more than aware you are strangers, but some, oh boy, some feel like they were always around, like you knew them before. Familiar. Comfortable.

Doesn’t happen all that often, but, bike or chick, when it happens it feels real good. Real special, and you know it’s going to be good from the get go. It’s a bang, crash, wallop love thing, and you can’t wait to get together. Wanna forget all the getting–to-know-you protocols, and get stuck right in.

Know what I mean?

If you don’t, I sure hope you get to knowing before you grow old and die, because you can live years out in a few seconds when you gel like magic. I’ve had moments in life when I’d sacrifice all that was to come for another second of it.

This bike felt like that good. We went off, me and this little gem of a bike. She was old by today’s standards, but even so she felt so damn good. Revved clear to the red line at fourteen thousand without a hesitation and would go past it eagerly given half a chance. So light, so small, so agile. Wet roads, old tyres, but she was as eager to please me as could be.

Hungry for me. I felt suddenly alive within yards, and the years dropped away, like they always do when I go down the road on a good bike. Hell, it happens on any bike really, but on something so cute and special, it really kicks in and the world beyond the bike and the road just vanishes. Like magic I’m not fifty-bloody-seven any more. I’m a young greaser on a motorcycle and once again free of the years that age us. The willing engine revved up and I shifted her through the gears in split-second clutchless changes, with barely a slight off and on flick of the throttle.

The old magic returned and I let her run free. She was loving it. What she was created for, what we were born to do together. Slipping off the side of the seat into the bends, wary of the old tyres on the wet road, and hugging the bike up real close, we gambolled together down the road as one in the spray we kicked up behind us. Laughing together at the fun of it all, the world stripped away to the simplicity of the moments flashing by second by second.
The only way I know to be a boy again, at least momentarily, free of all the crap the years have heaped onto my once free and wild spirit.
We hit a huge downpour and I was soaked through in seconds, the rain hurting my naked skin under the thin blue overalls. I was laughing out loud and screwing her open wider, making her wail harder, and she was so alive under me, urging me to whip her harder.

"Harder, big boy, harder, and fuck the rain."

It was real hard to turn her around and go home again.

On her back, I was just a boy on a bike, ....... laughing  in the rain.

Oh dear, ......he's gardening {:oI

Hi y'all,

I can’t believe the last pathetic attempt to gee myself up into action and start writing on here regularly was so bleddy long ago.

Or that I failed so immediately either.

I am sooooo weak.

I’ve just done a Tweet Thing on the Tweeting Twitter Thing website…… I signed up and did a couple Tweet Things ages ago. Not really sure about the point of it really, but there we are. An Old Greaser has to at least attempt to keep abreast of these exciting times we live in. Anyway, if you’re desperately bored senseless, and want to stimulate a couple of brain cells, go you ahead and visit my Tweeting Twitter Thing.

It really will change your life………….

http://twitter.com/#!/slurryoffagrape

So………. What exciting news, here on the Fortress Wheelrest front?

Biggest thing…… lost my job……. Well, not as in ‘sacked’ or made redundant, but I finally just threw in the towel. It had got unbearable to carry on. Thirty-eight years caring for people, and poof……… it ends with a whimper.

So be it.

Fare thee well, fellow carers…… I’m gone. End of.

Unemployed whilst depressed is the new deal.

Hopefully it will, eventually, be just ‘unemployed’. Then maybe, eventually, I’ll find some way of making some dosh again…….. Everything is kinda ‘eventually’ in my life right now. I’m faintly having some very faint illusions of being faintly self-employed, although just how or doing what is even fainter in it’s clarity, but, hey ho, who knows what’s around the corner.

Who gives a shit…….. that’s what’s getting me through right now. Who gives a shit.

Ok, ………on a positive note….. a habit I’m trying to muster into my day to day way of being……… Positiveness……… On a positive note….. I’m trying to get a vegetable garden going.

A WHAT!!!!!?????
Yup, a vegetable garden. My New Thing….. An idea stimulated ‘cos Unemployment whilst depressed Plan ‘A’ entails living off savings in a minimal way for as long as possible in the hope that Something Will Come Along…….. I’m kinda thinking like the Calvary always did for good old John Wayne. What’s good enough for good old John Wayne, is good enough for me. Bound to happen. Always does on the films.

It doesn’t come easy to an Old Greaser, though. A vegetable garden is second only, and a very close second, to that of caravanning. I wish to be shot if I ever even get close to doing something other than using a caravan as another shed. The only thing I can think of as a honourable use for one besides that of living in one as a simple way of life. That’s ok too. The holiday towing-them-around-for-fun thing is quite something else……… still, everyone to their own perversions, so don’t get upset if it’s your thing. I just wish y’all didn’t bugger up the ‘flow’ for me and Hoover as we ‘press on’ in blissful harmony along our beloved blacktop.

Where was I? Yes the vegetable patch. There are two now…. Veg patch No.1 and, yes, you’ve guessed it…. Veg patch No.2


Veg Patch No.1 .....early on in the digging struggle.
Helluva job digging them over, and I’ve recently planted a few bits into the mud. Well, it wasn’t mud, but dry earth, until I thought it a good idea to water it before planting…… THEN it was proper mud. Like all my schemes that seem a good idea at the time, it suddenly wasn’t a good idea.

Never mind.

Life is a never-ending learning curve. (Sigh)

Some plant things I'd bought already growing in pot things from a garden centre. Not cheap either. A pot thing with four raspberry stick things in it..... over nine bleddy quit they were!!! Jeeees!!!!


Veg Patch No.1 ..... finished and with some evidence of plants attempting to grow.

What made it worse was the fact that I felt real odd in the garden centre. It wasn't natural for an Old Greaser.

Everyone knew it too. They were all staring, I’m sure-certain. I thought my dick was hanging out for a minute, but you can usually tell...... kinda cold and tingly on the end. I felt like saying “You lookin’ at my Bird?”, ......from habit, as you do, ..........but I was on my own. Right now I still haven’t got a Bird…… (that’s a Bird, as in a Chick). These are desperate times I'm living through, let me tall you. Even if I did have a Chick, somehow it wouldn’t have been a good idea anyway,…. the "You lookin' at my Bird" thing...... Aggression in a garden centre just doesn’t work really, does it? Pretty much for the same reasons as it doesn’t in a Church ……… just not done, is it? So I didn’t get all iffy about it...…. just kinda pretended I was dreaming and wasn’t really there, all nonchalant and cool, but in fact was wandering around looking like a lost soul trying to figure out what was what.

I tell you, there’s a helluva lot to it y’know. God only knows how the planet ever got started, ‘cos you gotta do it just right, or the bleddy stuff won’t grow y’know. It’ll just keel over and die. I've read all about it I have. I tell you, it's way easier to do the timing on Hailwood's racing 250 Honda Six. In the dark too ………..with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper. Way easier. If you don’t know anything about it, that Honda had six cylinders, and believe me, it would be a right soduvajob to get the timing right with just an old pair of pliers and a bit of fag paper.

No, I’m not going to explain. Ask an Old Greaser …..if you can find one amongst the newbie fairies riding around in disguise these days.

So,........ 'Unemployed and Growing Vegetables'.

I’ve even…… and I sure would appreciate your discretion in this matter……… I’ve even purchased several gardening magazines. Just, y’know, to get the gist of it, and maybe gee-up something akin to enthusiasm for growing stuff. Got twelve six-pint milk bottle bottoms with various seeds growing way past the point where they should be ‘Pricked Out’........ ‘Pricked Out’ I believe it’s the correct term, so I hope you’ll excuse my using it, ………and please stop sniggering at the back there, Peterson…. It’s not smart and it’s not clever.

I fished out some lettuce seedlings from their overcrowded crowded milk tub yesterday(‘seedlings’…..see, I’m getting into it), and shoved them in the mud. Seemed like a waste of time…… they looked like they’d died as soon as I dragged them out of the cosy bit of compost they were huddled up in, and if they last a bleddy week, let alone actually grow, no one will be more amazed than me.

Ok, that’s it for now……. I rilly rilly WILL try and write to this blog more often. I won’t make any more promises to you, dear gentle reader, having been broken more than the once before, I won’t swear to every day, but maybe at least once a week wouldn’t bend a push-rod, eh?

Have to see………

Take care out there, y’all,
K.xxx {:o)