yen_powell

That's a piece of art, I'd have that on my sideboard on a little stand.

All my high mileage bikes have been owned by just me, they look awful but the engines, suspension and brakes are usually in full working order.

I had bought my dream bike, a second hand GPz750 in 1986. I really liked it. I even used to wash and polish it. Then suddenly after 3 years I decided I was going to buy a brand new one so I could look after it from scratch without another owner being involved. I found out they had stopped making them the year before, but tracked one down to Eddy Grimsteads in East Ham. Cash and a part ex were arranged and I turned up on the day to pick up my shiny new bike, identical in every way to the one before but with a different number plate. After all the paperwork and handing over my hard earned wedge, I was led out to the side street by one of the mechanics to where the bike was sitting on the centre stand. "I'll just run over the controls and everything with you", he said. "No need, my good man, for I am perfectly familiar with this bike, you may sod off back inside, for I am in need of no further assistance!" What I didn't know was that the side street had such a camber on it, both wheels were hard on the ground as well as the centre stand. If I pushed it, the whole thing was just sliding about on the tarmac making loud screechy noises, it wouldn't come off the stand. I had to traipse back into the shop to get the same mechanic out so he could stick his boot against the stand whilst I pushed forward at the same time. I was as red as the Kawasaki's paint scheme.

Old glass eyes could explode when coming into a hot room for outside in winter. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/23/david-carpenter-ocularist-x/

I also saw the one about the Regiment of Solicitors and their D Day mission. Bit of a story there, if it could go wrong it did go wrong, but they still soldiered on, probably charging for every quarter of an hour of fighting as well.

It's a pain to park anywhere round there, even most of the illegal spaces are full. I had a friend who had major surgery in the new hospital and there were no nearby motorcycle spaces and at the time I had my kidney stent in so long walks were not an option. I brought forward a a bit of work around the corner, parked my bike in the middle of it and had the blokes put the safety barriers all round the job and my bike. They were under strict instructions not to leave site till I got back. Then I headed off to the new building and promptly got lost inside. The new hospital is a maze. Another visitor to my friend whilst I was there was a local rozzer and he said all the local police know the proper routes through the hospital from visiting the victims of violence all the time to take statements. I hadn't known he was old bill until then, he was just someone I saw at bike rallies/parties.

Well worth a watch

Saw a youtube video about the Cold War era Harrier jet that flew on its own with no pilot and the Harrier jet that got lost and had to crash land on top of a container ship in the middle of the ocean today. Brilliant stories.

It's not an interest you have, it's just a burning obsession that sooner or later someone will have left some loose change just lying about. This has made you the man now known across all of Spain as El-Trespassero!

This place had no guides only the speaker things you carried with you. It also had no cashier, it was all self service in the canteen, even paying in an honesty box (cash only preferred, but a self service card machine was there as well for entry/tea food etc. Years ago we used to pay for the trials practice ground across the road by putting money in a sunken box with no one to check.

So the cast of The Only Way Is Essex could all be saved in the event of a nuclear war. It's just a drunken Uber trip away for them.

It depends on what I'm thinking about.

Early 90s it was decommissioned. I think I saw the figure £550,000 somewhere. It was definitely a sealed bid auction, I remember that clearly. The name label on the side of the old PC screen is a friend of one of the group I was there with, it was bought from their employer as it was the right age and type to go on display. A few hundred people were expected to live inside, with military unit living outside to defend it.

Same as up top I reckon, they have both doors open through the day. Took about an hour and half, would have been longer if I had watched all the films, but we all saw Protect and Survive when they released it in the 80s, so I know how to wrap grandma's body in plastic and label it clearly and to wipe down my tins of food before opening them to get the fall out off them.

First of all apologies for so many blurry pictures. I deleted a few, but some, like the cardboard coffin or looking up one of the stairwells, I left in. Trying to take pictures on my particular phone with one hand meant I wobbled a bit taking some of them (the other had the guided tour doodah in it, the wand mentioned in the wall notices). The first picture of my bike is in the gravel car park which I later realised is on top of the complex itself. So, the secret nuclear bunker as it is now called, is in the Essex countryside not far from Brentwood. The land was bought off the present owner's grandfather by compulsory purchase in 1950. A local road was shut and screens raised to hide what the builders were doing. They removed a small hill and put down a few metres of gravel as a cushioning device before building the concrete bunker with carbon steel reinforcing then popped the hill back on top. They constructed the standard tacky cottage they liked to use to hide doors as one of two entrances. It's a big place. The entrance corridor is designed to make it difficult to move along whilst being shot at as well as a blast reducing measure. There were a few films running in some rooms. One comment that stuck was that when morphine ran out for the surviving population at large after a nuclear incident the police would be authorised to use firearms to put people out of their pain. This made me think of the Monty Python Bring Out Your Dead sketch where the not yet dead husband is claiming he's getting better as his wife tries to put him on the death cart. There is a huge amount of diesel stored there still (increasing in value as I type), plus large tanks of drinking water. All human waste would be stored in a giant tank until it could take no more, then pumps would push it out into the next door hollows dug in the surrounding fields and woods. It was still being maintained up until it was declared surplus to requirements and auctioned off, the same family managed to get it back. Apparently one of the generators was taken to pieces to be repaired when it was shut down and the thing is still sitting there in pieces. The final pictures show the communication aerial and air vent, plus a ropey looking tracked vehicle that was there back in 95 when myself and Strange Dave visited on our trail bikes before the visitor road in was built. It doesn't look as if any restoration work has taken place.

I reckon the Africa Twin is under priced, they go for that for the 750 models nowadays and the 650 is rarer and better put together.

The picture of The Tower with its moat full of water was a surprise, only ever seen it as lawn. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/11/21/the-fogs-smogs-of-old-london-x/