yen_powell

Once his balls dropped he sat higher on the seat.

I spoke to the mechanics in one of the SL articles today to find out what days they were closed so we can do stuff to their cross over. The place opened up at the end of the war as a workshop and in the fifties and sixties they were working on Police cars and the local villains get away cars at the same time. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2012/06/17/at-the-mansell-st-garage/

I've heard about people doing that quite often. It's usually people not in their usual sleeping place though, in a hotel or staying with other people. My mate Charlie woke up in a tent at a rally and proceeded to piss in a pair of Ugg boots the girl he had brought had placed there. She was not best pleased (her only footwear that weekend) and they were placed on his wing mirrors for a few hours to dry out and I nearly had a coronary next day trying not to laugh when she proudly showed me photos looking down from the ski lift on the Isle of Wight and a stained pair of ugg boots were in shot.

"I only had a hundred quid but I made it to Kashmir by hitch-hiking, where my sister sent me another thirty quid to get home. It cost me six quid to get from Istanbul to London and I sold my blood to do it. When I got back, it all fell into place." https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/10/19/rodney-holt-designer-set-builder-x/

This was a band who busked all over London, first one of their videos, good car driving song, singing the chorus as loud as you can when I'm in the mood. Then them busking and Arnold the passing dancer.

No idea why this popped up, but I know the song from the UK TV series (comedy?) MUM which is brilliant and well worth a watch, by the same writer as Him and Her I think.

Cambrian Rally in the 90s. Where the photographer knows if he makes you look like you're going for it he is guaranteed a sale. Bikes are CRM250 lent by The Container Company and my first DR350, the one that was kickstart only and wasn't that keen on the whole starting thing anyway.

Oh yeah, Riding my XL250R along a city street and there was a man standing with his back to the kerb looking at his roof. Just as I passed he stepped back to get a better look and my left handlebar gave him a crack and I wobbled to a stop fighting my handlebars which were going everywhere. On my FJ1200 riding along a busy shopping street just coming up to a zebra crossing. From behind me on the right a large dog was running like a loon. He passed me and turned suddenly left across the zebra. Just as I was thinking, 'I'm going to hit him', a car coming the opposite way ran him over, went over his back legs and belly. I stopped the other side of the crossing shaking like a leaf, when I looked round the dog had got up and was running in circles yelping. Pedestrians dragged it into the vets right next to the crossing, no idea what became of him.

Going too fast on my CX500 on a dual carriageway, saw a queue and started braking, brakes not up to it so carried on down the middle still braking like mad, reckon I passed about 15 cars before I got to the speed I should have been filtering at. Riding into the Blackwall Tunnel when a metal hub cap came flying at my face from traffic going the opposite way. I jerked my head so quickly to avoid getting knocked out I had a bad neck for about a week afterwards. On my GPz750 late at night, I came flying round a corner on a dual carriageway hill in town. Two cars had stopped for no apparent reason so I braked and came to a nice controlled stop. Looking in my mirror I saw a Ford XR3 Turbo thing with all its wheels locked up screeching up behind me. I clenched everything and it stopped gently touching my number plate.

That was most marvellous!! I was a bit embarrassed reading the sign in the convent. More room was taken up with all those ridiculous titles than the main text. I think the Duke of Wellington was Irish so I can't imagine he used all the titles in day to day conversation, it would interfere with drinking time.

There are shitloads of you tube clips of mad inventions and if you look at one the place will plague you with suggestions for others. Honestly, how did we not get a man on the moon before the Yanks I'll never know.

I've probably told this before, but just in case I haven't. A well known character I worked with bought a house cheaply because of the shocking state it was in. He added an extra level in the roof and extended the basement out the back, the place was huge when it was finished. Next door was the Bishop of Stepney's official residence, huge garden full of old fonts I recall. It ended up worth a small fortune and he was very proud of it. The well known character came wandering in to our office and my boss at the time shouted out, Boss: Oi Grouty, I hear your house value has dropped down. Grouty: What do you mean? Boss: I see in the papers that there has been a new Bishop appointed. Grouty: So? Boss: Well he's a black bloke. Grouty: You're talking out of your arse, what difference does that make? He's a man of God AND a Bishop. Boss: Well yes, he is, no denying that, but you're not telling me that you won't be bringing your car stereo in at night from now on.

It's a fine art and there's going to be mistakes during the training period, that's just a fact.

Stinky Sheridan had one leg and used to sell matches in Whitechapel Rd, I mean, this stuff is gold. I'm also going to dig out some of my old school reports and post them up I think, then you can see what a truly lazy bugger I was at school. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/10/14/barbara-jezewska-teacher-o/

I only had a bike licence for years and then one day two blokes who had moved to a different new bit of the council came to see me when I was a trainee and asked me if I would like to go and work for them. You'll get a pay rise, a new donkey jacket and a car they said. I don't have a car licence I said. Well get one and watch out for a job advert they said. My first lesson was a few hours after the 87 hurricane, shit, trees and water everywhere. The job advert was so specific it was embarrassing, only myself an a chef at Sainsburys applied. The interview was worse, I was rung up the night before and told what the 5 technical questions would be. Then at the actual interview, the same silly sod asked me the whole 15 on his sheet because the HR person was looking over his shoulder. Luckily she didn't know the answers and I could make stuff up. For the next few years if I mucked anything up they used to moan that they should have had the chef. I did eventually get the car, it took a lot longer than they promised and then the tax man crucified me over it a few years later.

Spanish dwarf photographer, apparently the place is heaving with them.

Must be something to do with these pretend BMWs, because when I had a picture taken with one I stood so that a bit of volcanic rock behind me appeared to be a gnarled dick sticking out of my right pocket and nodules growing on my left fore arm..

The pillar box trick. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/10/13/aubrey-silkoff-at-the-boundary-estate-x/

That got there quickly, God bless the Royal mail, I only posted it a few days ago. It's a Molotov cocktail for you, but I think the petrol must have leaked out leaving just the fuse.

Looking for a salary note I made a few months back and have since lost (I want a rise), a drawn out search uprooted this document buried deep in my personal documents. Back at the turn of the century when we all had our own desk and PC I used to have my PC on top of the desk. Everyone else had theirs on the floor where they sucked in all the fluff and crap and whenever they had to check cables or connect anything they would crawl about on the floor and you would hear the gentle bonk of head on wood and the creak of knees and backs when they finally emerged. My boss kept telling me to move it and I would just ignore him. Then the boss of my boss told me I had to move it. I explained why I liked it where it was and asked why I had to change its location, he said because I had been told to and that was an end of it. I asked what would make him change his mind. He replied that nothing short of a Papal decree would change his mind (he was a good Irish Catholic and a big bastard as well). Challenge accepted I thought. I checked out the Vatican website and found that the then Pope had letters to various groups of people on there. I harvested a letterhead and saw the general style and knocked up what I think was a pretty good version of a decree. As explained in my Yen Stories thread, I was mostly known as Motorhead then, hence the reference in the text. I printed it out, popped it in a nice envelope and using a red wax road marking crayon, I sealed it using a bit of ribbon and a foreign coin from my holidays. This then got posted in with the general mail in the mail room. I was allowed to keep my PC where it was, the big fella took the joke in good heart.

Beautiful photograph. I've seen a fair few of those chapels now and they never look like happy places. Maybe it was the weather affecting my mood.

That's some sort of squid isn't it. You must have terrible trouble getting bike gear to fit. Put everything you will want on the ferry in one place so you can grab it easily as soon as you have secured your bikes because we weren't allowed back to the bikes after we left port. This meant me paying through the nose for sea sickness tablets and wishing I had my book and more snacks with me. Having said that I just watched this bloke do a trip to Spain and eventually Tenerife and he was allowed back to his vehicle (UK/France though). Worth watching for places to stay in Spain, they had some good results, especially as it was only a few weeks ago so still current.

I'm not going down there, I'll get my shoes all mucky!