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Definitely. I rode about 50 metres from my parking space in the supermarket to the petrol pump with no gloves this morning and I didn't like even that short distance! I was talking to a young lad in a bike shop a few years back and we got onto the subject of bike gear. He said that when he started riding he used to wear nylon tracksuit bottoms and an anorak and no gloves. All was well until one day, whilst showing off to his mates by pulling a wheelie, he binned it and slid up the road on his arse. Took the skin off both palms of his hands, but he said the friction melted the nylon tracksuit bottoms. He said the indignity of having his mum using tweezers to remove pellets of melted nylon from his arse prompted him to get proper bike gear from then on!

I don't have a van. so, I always wear gloves when riding.

Liar , liar pants on fire

.......for all us Geriatric Thrillseekers! Sanatorio de la Sierra de la Alfaguara In the province of Granada, among the terrifying places that exist, there is the sanatorium of the Sierra de la Alfaguara. This was a hospital for tuberculosis patients founded by the Dutchwoman Berta Wihelmi in 1923, after the death of her daughter because of that disease. But she died there shortly after. It is not known whether her death was caused by herself by not bearing the pain suffered or by a stroke. But, since it was abandoned in times of the Civil War, this place is one of the darkest in the province of Granada. Experts in paranormal phenomena who have visited it have witnessed the strange events that occur there. They have said that parked cars turn around 180º and that voices are heard. Although the most terrifying thing happened to some experts in parapsychology, who took a photograph of the area in which a figure could be seen in the thick of the forest and, when compared with other photographs, they saw that it was Berta, the woman who had founded the hospital. This place really is in the middle of nowhere.......and it's going to take some offroading to reach it. Remote Abandoned shit? Ghosts? I think that has to go on the list for Autumn and Winter! And no @boboneleg........I'm not going to get bummed by some homicidal Dago! If any of you Casuals were here you'd definitely shit out of visiting this place!

We set off along the dark steamy tunnel. I was doing my duck like shuffle. My hands were held to each side pushed hard against the old brickwork in a desperate attempt to ensure perfect balance, thank god they'd given me gloves. No way was I going to fall forward or backwards. At least there wasn't any room to fall side ways! The water came up to just below my crouched down backside. It had turds and toilet paper floating on top and underneath the water was a thick bed of sludge. I was warned to not kick the 'silt' too much, but rather to tread on it gently otherwise I would be releasing possibly dangerous gases. The bloke at the top proved correct, there seemed to be no horrible smell now I was down here. There were no rats either, although I saw a few bait holders screwed to walls in some of the manholes. I was told that they would know we were down here and usually went into hiding till we'd gone again. As we moved along we occasionally came into slightly wider parts where there was a manhole above our heads. This allowed a brief moment to stand upright before ducking down to waddle again. In one we saw a sewer worker slightly up some of the rungs, doing some pointing work, the lid open above him at one of the vented manholes. I was told that some men even took their sandwiches down with them if working at lunch time, I took that to be a joke, but you never know. After about 10 sections between manholes the sludge started to get higher and higher until it finally blocked our way forward. The lead man called it a day and said we all had to go back to the next open manhole to exit the sewer. This was easier said than done. By the time I had managed to turn 180 degrees, desperate not to stumble forward, I think my waders were still facing the original direction and the seat of my fetching yellow rubber suit seemed to be in front of my bollocks now, cutting off my testicular blood supply somewhat. We made it to the next open manhole and climbed the rungs up to the road. After struggling to get myself and my battery pack through the lid again, I gratefully stood up in the cool air and crossed the road to a waiting man who had connected a stand pipe to a hydrant. He hosed us all down and gave us black sacks to put our gear in. For some reason they didn't want my suit, boots or gloves back, so I kept them in my locker for many years until I lent them to a friend to clear a castle moat with. He never gave them back, every time I asked about them he'd purse his lips and say, “Ooooh, don't mention the waders”, wink and walk away. I googled some pictures to show you what sort of thing we had gone down, the black and white picture looks like a slightly bigger diameter, but otherwise is pretty accurate. The colour picture is the usual view I got when going through the video surveys, only with a fatburg instead of shite.

Avoid the white sauce.

Do you mind, I’m about to have a rump steak

Wish I'd have kept the super 10. Big heavy thing but like riding an arm chair, and you could get it through some quick corners when needed.

Rashid, the Afghan who's name I have finally recalled, took me to one end of The Highway. This is the main road that runs east west across the top of Wapping and ends at Tower Bridge. It used to be the edge of the marshes before Wapping was formed by draining them. This is shown in it's former name, The Ratcliffe Highway (red cliff highway) scene of a famous murder mystery in the 18th century, worth looking up. Waiting for us were some sewer workers who had coned off a couple of manholes along the centre of the road. That was it, just some plastic cones to protect us from the heavy goods lorries bombing up and down a few inches away. They had opened up manholes at each end of the stretch we were to walk in order to let any poisonous or explosive gases vent out. One of the sewer workers opened up his van and started to dole out some kit to me. First was an all in one yellow rubber suit with hood. Before you ask Pete, I don't have it any more. I put this on followed by thigh high white woollen socks. These were covered by thigh high rubber waders. I was dressed as a dirty old man's dream boy. I was then given a plastic hard hat with a lamp attached and a connected battery on a belt. I felt like Arthur Scargill on holiday. The boots had metal studs in the soles (for grip in shit I suppose), so I clicked and slipped across the road between speeding vehicles to the open manhole. I was told to sit on the edge of the manhole with my feet on the rungs set into the old Victorian brickwork. Someone ran up and gave me the gloves they had forgotten earlier. I put these on gratefully and turned to climb down the ladder. First problem, the battery on the belt jammed on the frame. I had to grab it and do a bit of twisting to get past the frame and into the slightly wider manhole. The stink of shit wafted up to me and I gagged a little. “That's a bit ripe” I said to the sewer worker. “Don't worry, your nose will switch off when you are down there, it only smells up here”. He was right actually. I started to climb down the rungs. There was dried shit on some of them, proof of how high the water could get during heavy flooding. The sewer workers said they checked for rain many miles away before planning a visit down below to prevent drowning. At the bottom of the manhole was the cement benching with the semi-circular base of the sewer running through it and a small arch, slightly bigger than the sewer itself on either side, which I was told to squat down in so the next man could come down the ladder. So I'm crouched down with my face near the turdy water and the next bloke knocks a bit of dried crust off one of the rungs and it plops in the water splashing my face a little, good start!! It was very hot down there, like a green house on a summer's day. When there were four of down there I was told I would be the 2nd in line to move along the main pipe, behind the man with the gas detector. This was not the large pipe you see in old films. This was an egg shaped brick built pipe which I could only get along by squatting and waddling along, hard work on the thighs I can tell you. They are egg shaped to make them self cleaning. “If you get cramp Ian, you just sit down in the water until it passes” said the gang leader. “Ahh, the rubber suit will keep me dry and clean then will it?” “No, they all leak, cheap and nasty crap, but it will help with the cramp. Ready?”

When I first started at the Council they had an informal training scheme where you had to do 6 months in each team. I'd done 6 months in Traffic Management, then another in Highways Planning. In those I'd done simple traffic scheme design, added stuff by hand to information maps and then legal type stuff to do with highway enquiries, street naming/numbering, land charges, searches etc. My third department was Mains Drainage. A small dark office which contained an Arab manager, an Afghan with very shaggy eyebrows and an obvious wig, two cockney wide boys and an Indian. They were pleased to see me, because they had work no one wanted to do and they all liked to go home early but had to provide office cover to 5pm as a legal requirement. I was shown a tv set with a video recorder and a cupboard full of VHS tapes. These were tapes made by cameras being dragged along every foul sewer in the borough, yes, they were shit tapes. There must have been a few hundred as well. The Arab manager told me I was to go through every tape and grade the sewer condition between each manhole. They were to be graded between 1 and 5. 1 was perfect, 5 was crushed flat and you could see the sky. Any training with this I asked? He said of course, they weren't amateurs. He then gave me an A2 sized poster with 5 sewer pictures on it, a number next to each picture. Training was over. I could only use the tv set after 11am, as at the time Stingray was being shown each morning and the Afghan would insist on watching it, the bloke loved it. I always thought that was a result of coming from a landlocked country. The tv was in a cabinet and the doors to the cabinet had to be angled carefully so the Borough Engineer couldn't see what was on the screen from his office window across the quadrangle. The first 15 videos of 3 hours each were in black and white, that was grim enough. But I soon got the hang of it and the manhole numbering system and I started to slowly cross sewers off as done on large scale plans of the borough. Then I hit on an idea. I went and saw the Arab and suggested that coming all the way in just to watch videos was a waste of time, why didn't I just take a load home and work from there, I could even start before 11am and not cause an incident at the Khyber Pass. He agreed and my poor parents were treated to the site of about 60 videos plonked in their front room in dusty boxes. I had agreed to do two videos a day (6 hours of tv). All went well till they had obviously upgraded to a colour camera. My poor Dad walked in many times from work to eat his dinner, only to be confronted by a picture of brown horror on his tv screen. I soon found I could fast forward and still see all the details, so the work speeded up considerably. I also found that some tapes only had 30 minutes on, I didn't pass the information on, just stuck to my two tapes a day routine. After about 2 months I decided I needed to do something else or my time would be wasted. I asked if I could actually go down one of the sewers large enough for a person. The Arab (Omar) took me to the shaggy browed Afghan and commanded him to make this happen. So a few days later I found myself in the Afghan's car. Worst driver in the world!! I still recall my terror when he used to put his arm through the steering wheel to cancel his indicators. This was fine if he had already straightened up, but on one occasion he was still turning a corner, stuck his arm through the wheel and when he tried to straighten his arm got jammed and we carried on turning, ending up on the footway, pedestrians scattering in all directions.

Ducati Superlight, 900SS/SL. When this bike hit the showroom I spent half an hour staring at it and running the numbers in my head. I was still paying off my 907ie and couldn't handle two payments. I should have sold the 907 but didn't. Oh well... it was a one year only model in the USA. Had I known that, I may have sprung for it. I've owned three 900ss's since then. I'm considering building a tribute bike with the same body work but different details (944cc, FCRs, Ohlins shock, differnt wheels, etc) or even selling my 851 and buying a real one. Could very well be my favorite street going Ducati...

I've been to the same wall but can't find pictures now. It was a day trip while we were in Scotland. I tried to rent a Jeep but they didn't have any, so I told them to give me whatever they had sitting around. This thing didn't work so well off road. Stayed with some friends at some quaint little place out in the woods.

There are still characters about, there are certainly many on here, the motorcycling fraternity is by it's very nature full of contrary, stubborn and colourful people. When I left the structures department for a new job in a devolved council I was asked if I would still work weekends for Structures as they had lots of drawing work and very few draftsmen. Being low paid, I jumped at the chance. There was a bit of a row with my new employer over it, but the head of Structures sweet talked him and it was allowed. Time and half on Saturdays, double time on Sundays, happy days. My first weekend working session I met my Structures replacement for the first time, a young Arab looking lad called Abed. He was later to be called Rabid Abed or sometimes Mr Bean. The last nick name was because he owned an Austin Mini. He was not the full shilling. He was a Rotring short of a full pen set! He apparently kept a spare engine in his front room for the Mini just in case! At this first meeting we were introduced by the manager and then left to start work. Abed asked me if I had a degree and when I said no he never spoke to me again, just blanked me from that point on. I didn't care, I just put my Walkman headphones on and wacked up the volume to Nirvana and ignored him. Years later they recombined the council and cutbacks in staff were made. Rabid Abed by this time had upset a lot of people with his strange behaviour and loud rages, so he was made redundant and put on the list where they would try to place him in a different job if possible. When I heard they were interviewing him for a job where I was based I'm afraid I might have put in a bad word or three for him. Interviews were carried out in a small narrow office. One of the people doing the interview had strange ideas. He put some maps and other posters up on the wall upside down to see if anyone commented. No one said a word apparently. Last one in was Rabid Abed, I think they were looking forward to him after my comments. I needn't have worried about them giving him a job. The first thing he did was ask if he could move his chair a bit, then turned it 90 degrees and sat with the side of his head to them through the interview. I don't mean he twisted his neck to look at them, I mean he never looked at them at all and they spoke to his left ear throughout. The last I heard they put him on a front desk dealing with the public. That only lasted a day or so, he went off on one and he ended up being made properly redundant.

Look what I just found in Almeria.......

Last time in Europe I rode without gloves, too bloody hot. When we stopped in the evening the back of my hands were burned to a crisp with the sun. Next day I butchered a pair of socks which worked well but the day after that we tracked down a bike shop and both got some summer gloves which we both still use.

I have gone around the block when testing the bikes without gloves but my head don't like it. It starts reminding me of all the gravel i had embedded in the palm of my hand after a falling off a pushbike at low speed when i was a kid and how much it hurt at the hospital when they cleaned it out

I go with all the cool, all the time, works for me, and the Fonz.

But it's only you I want to see get bummed

Get your arse up that track , I want to see you get bummed by Bertha's ghost

HOMERS! When I did my apprenticeship and afterwards whilst working in the factory I'd go to one of the shops to get something done. There were machine shops, fitting shops, carpentry shops, electrical wiring shops and even a perspex moulding shop. So, I'd go in and say that I needed something done: "Sorry son, we're flat out busy at the moment. It'll be at least a month before we can take a look at it" "Ah, ok lads. Just let me know when you can sort it for me please?" "No problems son. Anyway, what's it for?" "It's a bit on my motorbike that's broken" "What? Why didn't you say that it's a Homer? Come back in half an hour and we'll have it ready for ya" In the factory, homers were top priority!

I just saw a dude ride up our road on a XJR1200 and he wasn't wearing any gloves . Now I'm definitely not a ATGATT type of bloke but it shits me up seeing someone ride without gloves on . Do you ever ride without wearing gloves ?

You see some interesting shit in the sewers, we were working on a pumping station in the St melons area of Cardiff years ago, i was there to isolate the pumps so the wet well could be cleaned out, they found an engine block in there it had been washed along the sewer and dropped into the sump how it got into the sewer only god knows. Also found someones glass eye in one of the micro screens

You might have hit the jackpot finding that there's a real good chance you'll get bummed there, just remember to video it so @boboneleg can watch

Don't know the plant/flower but the bees love it.

Now you would think the resident idiot would realise that quoting me not long after blocking me just means he lives up to his name. But it’s hard to resist taking about yourself while trying to insult someone else.

It's an abandoned mining village......apparently troops used it for training purposes before being deployed to Kosovo.

I didn't even know they had Butlins in Spain??

BLOCKED

That was on Saturday and I suffered like a catholic. Today Im doing it special-like, with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and spam. Wednesdays I like it simple.

On holiday, no gloves, jacket or boots, too hot usually or don't have them there. If I stop for groceries on the way home in the UK, no gloves for the 800 yards between the supermarket and home. Mostly I wear gloves and helmet on the bike because bugs hurt when you ride through them.

What is this sick obsession that you have with seeing men getting bummed Bob?

Z1000R Eddie Lawson Replica, 1984 was the year, took a test ride but the gixxer 550 had already got me to 9 points so I sold that and got a Jap import pre production DR800 from “Bat Motorcycles?” who were importing all sorts of weird stuff at the time.

My third bike.......must have been around 1977.

In my early days at the council there was a legendary character, known to most people as Grouty, or Len of Bow. He worked at that time for our Highways Construction team, but spent most of his time either in other offices giving his opinions which were always right and varied, he thought he knew everything about every subject. He also spent a lot of time doing his own private work. He was our union shop steward as well, which is probably why he got away with so much. In those early years when I was still a trainee he would sometime be lent me to help him, supposedly carrying out levelling surveys. Usually I would be left guarding the surveying equipment whilst he nipped off for a few minutes, these minutes usually ended up being a few hours. He had a van so awful looking that once he went away on a foreign holiday and the council towed it away as an abandoned vehicle and crushed it. BUT it did have the advantage that he would just pull up and not bother locking it or even winding the windows up on a hot day. He was married to a Finnish girl at that time, nice lady met her all the times we had to call home on the way to a site so he could collect or drop off things to do with his private work. After a few years he moved, or was pushed to various other departments. He spent a while in our Structures team and so took his turn doing tunnel and bridge inspections. Seeing an overtime opportunity followed by a day off, he volunteered for the unloved night time tunnel inspections around the Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane areas. He would open them up so that people like BT or Gas board could get down to their plant, then check they were undamaged and lock them back up in the wee small hours. He did this for quite a few months. Now these areas are where Jack the Ripper did his work lowering the prostitute numbers back in 1888 and although he is long gone, the ladies of the night still thrive. The first week or so, they would walk up to him sitting in his car waiting for BT and ask if he wanted female company. He would gently explain he was only there to do work and tell them what he was doing. By week 3 he was on first name terms with them and they with him, they even got him coffees and he got them some in return. All was well until his wife suggested she could come to work with him one evening as she hardly saw him these days. He spent so long talking her out of it that she sulked for ages. But as he told me, what if she had come along and a procession of prostitutes had walked past, all gaily greeting him by name and asking him if he wanted his usual yet (coffee). Many years later he went a step too far workwise with something and got suspended. He was escorted from the building and the contents of his desk were seized to check for financial irregularities. They had no chance, I'd seen his desk, he couldn't find stuff he knew was there, they had no chance. He ended up off work on full pay whilst the investigation went on. This at a time when he was doing up a house from a ruin as well, they couldn't have timed it better! He got his own back against the man who had him suspended. He was in our Drainage section when it got taken over by Thames Water and they took most of the staff over as well. Now he didn't work for us he could stand for councillor, representing the Labour party. He won as well. He was doing that for 4 years, he made that man's life a misery until he finally left, became chief exec at some coastal authority I think. He got the sack from Thames Water in the end, kept forgetting to turn up for work I heard. Grouty is still about, now he works for himself lending his huge knowledge to local developers. He's on wife number 3 or 4 and child number 8 I think. I have to go to meetings with developers about works he is involved with and he is banned from them because he has put formal complaints in about almost everyone I work with. I'm alright though, I think he likes me. Historical note. I did hear that his father took the rap for a certain crime family's misdemeanour in the 60s as a favour (See Tom Hardy's film list for the family name) and got given a pub as a reward. His father went to prison for their crime and his mother moved another bloke in to the pub and told him she never wanted to see him again. His father hanged himself in prison. I've been in the pub and it has a very strange extra bit of triangular wall in the kitchen that shouldn't be there, I am sure there is someone walled up behind it. It mostly catered for market workers having their lunch at 2am, but is now a trendy wine bar.

Nothing wrong with the bike but yes I got accustomed to that bit more leg room.

its not Mawsleys dog for sure..... you just cant get that excited watching Leicester

I've got my Mad Max DVDs as a good substitute, although not as many dwarfs in those.

Very atmospheric photographs. I fancy a doughnut now though. Too late, just got back from the shop as well....

Easier on the teeth

I was the other way round, spent the first 5 years of life abroad, then came home in time to start school in England. Didn't go abroad again till my school trip to Boulogne at the age of 13 and then not again till I was in my 20s.

I wish I hadn't sold my R1150GS because it was a great bike! And I wish I'd kept my Kawasaki 500 H1......mainly because it would be worth a mint today. As for the others.......no! They just served a purpose at the time. Bit like ex-girlfriends really!

Waiting for the boat to come take them out on a flotation towed device The dough might be similar, except these are fried, no hole in the middle, and completely open with filling inside On really the most severe of storms, they are getting quite close to where the waves get, but I don’t think they have much to worry about for a few more years. They are not top of the line insulation, so with high winds and ocean spray I would guess they’re not confortable at all in winter.

Today's article, one of my favourite types, just an ordinary person's life. I've worked out what road he lives in so will keep my eye out to see if I can spot it. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/08/25/stan-jones-of-mile-end-x/

Colours and paint, Pete, make wheels pretty again?